Text Formatting ⇒ error message

[karthiksrao]

Hello,

I'm a relatively new user of latex. I'm getting this error message when I try to scan the tex document:

Runaway argument?
{{8}{
! File ended while scanning use of \bibcite.
<inserted text>
\par
l.41 \begin{document}

As I understand it, runaway argument occurs when I miss out on a } someplace. But I have searched the whole document, and I can't find any missing }.

Could the error message be due to anything else?

I have encountered missing } before. But so far its been in the figure captions and the runaway argument error message clearly used to specify that the error is in the line containing the figure. This is the first time I am encountering a runaway argument error message with something to do with \begin{document}. I can't figure out what is wrong.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Karthik

[frabjous]

It it impossible to diagnose without seeing the code generating the error. I'd recommend following the advice here:

http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/mini-en.html

for working your document into a minimal working example of the problem. Perhaps that process itself would reveal the error. If not, post it here.

The mention of bibcite however, suggests the problem may have to do with the bibliography or citations.

[CrazyHorse]

Hello,

I'm a relatively new user of latex. I'm getting this error message when I try to scan the tex document:

Runaway argument?
{{8}{
! File ended while scanning use of \bibcite.
<inserted text>
\par
l.41 \begin{document}

As I understand it, runaway argument occurs when I miss out on a } someplace. But I have searched the whole document, and I can't find any missing }.

the macro \bibcite has a missing }

Herbert

[rf]

\bibcite is the command that goes into the .aux file when
you have a \cite command. errors at \begin{document} are
usually because of something silly in the .aux file.

next step: look at your .aux file for the mismatching {

once you've found that, you ought to be able to trace back
to the errant \cite command; the question is "what is there
unusual about it?"

without knowing what the \cite is, what bibtex record(s) it
references (and possibly something i've not thought of), it's
not possible to diagnose.

but once you have the information, it might be obvious what's
wrong. if not, make a minimum example, with a bibtex file
with the relevant bits in it, and post that.