(eplain.info)Formatting bibliographies

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4.3.2 Formatting bibliographies
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You may wish to change Eplain's formatting of the bibliography,
especially with respect to the fonts that are used. Therefore, Eplain
provides the following control sequences:

'\biblabelwidth'
     This control sequence represents a '\dimen' register, and its value
     is the width of the widest label in the bibliography. Although it
     is unlikely you will ever want to redefine it, you might want to
     use it if you redefine '\biblabelprint', below.

'\biblabelprint'
     This macro takes one argument, the label to print. By default, the
     label is put in a box of width '\biblabelwidth', and is followed by
     an enspace. When you want to change the spacing around the labels,
     this is the right macro to redefine.

'\biblabelcontents'
     This macro also takes one argument, the label to print. By default,
     the label is printed using the font '\bblrm' (below), and enclosed
     in brackets. When you want to change the appearance of the label,
     but not the spacing around it, this is the right macro to redefine.

'\biblabelprecontents'
'\biblabelpostcontents'
     Macros expanded before and after '\biblabelcontents', respectively.
     For example, to get left-justified numeric labels (they are
     right-justified by default):

          \def\biblabelprecontents{\relax}
          \def\biblabelpostcontents{\hss}

'\bblrm'
     The default font used for printing the bibliography.

'\bblem'
     The font used for printing the titles and other "emphasized"
     material.

'\bblemph'
     Typesets its argument using '\bblem', then inserts an italic
     correction.

'\bblsc'
     In some styles, authors' names are printed in a caps-and-small-caps
     font. In those cases, this font is used.

'\bblnewblock'
     This is invoked between each of the parts of a bibliography entry.
     The default is to leave some extra space between the parts; you
     could redefine it to start each part on a new line (for example). A
     part is simply a main element of the entry; for example, the author
     is a part. (It was LaTeX that introduced the (misleading, as far as
     I am concerned) term 'block' for this.)

'\biblabelextraspace'
     Bibliography entries are typeset with a hanging indentation of
     '\biblabelwidth' plus this. The default is '.5em', where the em
     width is taken from the '\bblrm' font. If you want to change this,
     you should do it inside '\bblhook'.

'\bblhook'
     This is expanded before reading the .bbl file. By default, it does
     nothing. You could, for example, define it to set the bibliography
     fonts, or produce the heading for the references. Two spacing
     parameters must be changed inside '\bblhook': '\parskip', which
     produces extra space between the items; and '\biblabelextraspace',
     which is described above. (By the way, '\hookappend' won't work
     with '\bblhook', despite the names. Just use '\def'.)

   If you are desperate, of course you can also hand-edit the .bbl file
that BibTeX produces to do anything you wish.