Virtual Librarian

Hello Marty

When a citation is et al. all that means is that there are many authors and that means that in the reference list you have to cite them all. There cannot be et al there. If you have the names of ten authors, the first six have to be listed in references when you list the name of the article and then you can use ellipses for the others; so then when you do in-text citations you have the right to use et al. If you do not cite them all in references, then et al. does not work in an in-text citation. In the past if you had 10 authors you had to list all of them but that has changed. So if you had two in-text citations with the same name you could have e.g. (Smith & Jasson, 2018a) and (Smith & Jasson, 2018b) but they have to be written by the same authors in the same year to do that.

See this link

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_author_authors.html

Do let me know if you have any further questions.

Gloria Dikeogu,

Gangwish Library