Use et al. without making APA citations ambiguous
Apply APA author-count rules, distinguish different author groups with matching et al. citations and keep each shortened citation attached to the correct work.
About 4 min read · Allow extra time for the practical checks
In APA 7, a work with three or more authors normally uses the first author’s surname followed by “et al.” from its first in-text citation. Before applying that shortcut throughout a draft, check whether two different works would acquire the same citation. A shortened citation still needs to identify one particular reference.
This guide concerns individual author names in APA 7. Check the required style and keep organisational-author abbreviations separate from the examples below.
Start with the actual author list
Open the source record rather than counting the names visible in an imported short citation. APA’s author–date guidance distinguishes one or two authors, whose names remain in each citation, from three or more authors, whose names are usually shortened. The same page identifies exceptions that need a separate identity check.
The following names, years and source labels are entirely fictional teaching material. They are not publications to cite or evidence about any research.
For a fictional work by Rivera and Malik from 2024, the narrative form is “Rivera and Malik (2024)” and the parenthetical form is “(Rivera & Malik, 2024).” Do not turn a two-author work into “Rivera et al.” merely because its name appears often.
For a different fictional work by Rivera, Malik and Chen from 2023, ordinary forms would be “Rivera et al. (2023)” and “(Rivera et al., 2023).” The abbreviation applies on first use too. These examples illustrate citation construction only; a real sentence must still make an accurate claim about the source it names.
Look for collisions before shortening everything
Suppose your paper uses two fictional five-author works from the same year:
| Working label | Complete author group in this exercise | Ordinary shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| Work A | Rivera, Malik, Chen, Osei and Bell; 2024 | Rivera et al. (2024) |
| Work B | Rivera, Malik, Nair, Patel and Reed; 2024 | Rivera et al. (2024) |
The shortened forms now conceal the distinction. A reader cannot tell which work supports a sentence, even if both full references are present.
APA’s guidance on matching et al. forms instructs writers to retain enough surnames to distinguish the works and shorten the remaining names in each citation. In this invented pair, the third surname supplies that distinction:
- Work A: Rivera, Malik, Chen, et al. (2024).
- Work B: Rivera, Malik, Nair, et al. (2024).
In each case, two names remain behind “et al.” Keep the expanded form attached to the corresponding work everywhere it is cited. Do not reserve the distinguishing names for the first paragraph and then recreate the ambiguity later.
Do not use et al. to hide just one name
Consider another wholly fictional pair: Vale, Kim and Osei wrote one work in 2025; Vale, Kim and Patel wrote another. Only the final author differs.
Retaining “Vale, Kim” and adding “et al.” would still leave the reader with the same form for both works. Adding the differing last name before “et al.” would leave nobody for the abbreviation to represent. APA explains that this plural expression cannot stand for a single remaining name; in this situation, include all the names in every citation.
For this fictional pair, narrative citations become “Vale, Kim, and Osei (2025)” and “Vale, Kim, and Patel (2025).” Parenthetical forms use an ampersand before the final name: “(Vale, Kim, & Osei, 2025)” and “(Vale, Kim, & Patel, 2025).” These are deliberately small examples so you can check the remaining-name count directly.
Keep this separate from year letters
Different author groups that collapse into the same short form are not the same problem as two works with identical authors and publication years. Do not automatically assign 2024a and 2024b to Work A and Work B above. Their author groups differ.
For an identical-author/year group, use the separate same-author, same-year citation guide. Compare the complete author lists before choosing either repair. A shared first surname, a matching year and a tidy reference list are not enough to establish that the groups are identical.
Finish with a source-to-citation check
Keep a working row for each source: its full author group, year, chosen in-text form and the reference entry it identifies. Then check the passages in which the shortened names appear. The practical question is whether each occurrence leads to the intended work, not simply whether it contains the right punctuation.
After adding a source or refreshing citation software, revisit groups that share the same first author and year. Inspect the resulting output rather than assuming the application resolved every collision. Finish with the broader citation-to-reference audit. A short citation succeeds when the reader can follow it without guessing which source you meant.
