[texhax] Help with displaying optional bibliography fields with Bibtex

[Thomas Jacobs]

Newbie question.  I am trying to understand where to look if I have
bibtex entries with optional fields such as month in an article entry
and they are not displayed in my bibliography.  I am using a style
file recommended for Finance papers (jf.bst) but am unfamiliar with
the details of how such files work with/control bibliography entries.
I scanned through the style file and found the following entry:

FUNCTION {article}
{ output.bibitem
  format.authors "author" output.check
  author format.key output
  format.date "year" output.check
  format.title "title" output.check
  crossref missing$
    { journal emphasize "journal" output.check
      format.vol.num.pages output
    }
    { format.article.crossref output.nonnull
      format.pages output
    }
  if$
  note output
  fin.entry
}

which coincidently seems to specify just year for date format on an
article.  Is this typical or am I mistaken?  Is the workaround to
create a year entry with month and date included in my bibtex entries
or is this a bad idea?  Thanks.

Tom

-- 
Thomas Jacobs