2 In-line referencing issues re: APA 7

Hello, all. I'm having issues for 2 sets of issues with APA 7 in-line referencing for a large document I'm submitting. I'm hoping someone can help me with the following:

1. I have 2 instances when 3 authors that co-write, published something in the same year but swapped 2nd and 3rd author positions. For example, these are both papers I lead authored but my co-authors switched positions on papers. Both papers were published in 2022 and should therefore appear as (Author et al., 2022a) for one and (Author et al., 2022b) for the other. However, they are appearing as (Author, co-author1, et al, 2022) and (Author, co-author2, et al, 2022). It's happening for me and my co-authors as well as another set of authors I cite. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

2. A few references are showing with first initials in my in-line references, though they should not require those. I have gone through some other Zotero forum discussions and found that I should ensure author spelling is the same throughout so Zotero knows this author is the same throughout and not another Smith for example, thus requiring initials. To date, I have gone through the document, clicked on the in-line reference, opened it up, and then hit enter, prompting the in-line reference to update accordingly. However, I have to do this for each instance throughout the document which gets old and of course overridden when I refresh the bibliography. Any suggestions for this as well?

Thank you.
  • 1. Is just correct APA style. Authors in different order (or with different co-authors) should not be grouped under the same et al. Other than modifying the APA CSL style to not follow that rule, there's nothing you can do, no.

    2. I'm not quite sure I understand-- if the authors are actually spelled exactly the same way in your Zotero database, the initials will just go away when you refresh the document (and, if that fails, switch to a different citation style and back). They would definitely not revert to initials unless there are, in fact, different authors.
  • 1. I didn't realize that. Multiple editors have corrected these as Author et al, 2022a or 2022b. Do you happen to have the reference for this? I can't seem to find it.

    2. The authors have been updated (using copy and paste) to ensure they're all the same. For some reason, sometimes they refresh when I refresh the document and other times, they do not. Before I switch to a different citation style and back...I'm working on a 200 page thesis that I'm turning in tomorrow. Therefore, I don't want to do any missteps. Are you sure it's ok to change styles back and forth with such a large document?

    With that in mind, if I save a copy of my file as something else and break those Zotero links, I assume that second copy will have broken links while the original file will remain linked. Is that correct?
  • 1. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/same-year-first-author

    They don't specifically have an example for the same authors in different authors (and I don't think it's in the manual), but this is implied in the rule as given:
    To avoid ambiguity, when the in-text citations of multiple works with three or more authors shorten to the same form, write out as many names as needed to distinguish the references, and abbreviate the rest of the names to “et al.” in every citation.
    and also the logic for this rule, which is to ensure that citations as cited let you infer exactly where they'll be found in the bibliography (and APA bibliographies sort by the whole author chain).

    2. I mean -- obviously save before you do this in case something goes wrong, but generally this should be fine, yes. But if you're actually seeing items *revert* this isn't going to work. I'd suspect those then are disconnected from the items in the Zotero database and use metadata stored in the document.
    In that case and if there are not too many, yes, unlinking citations in a copy of the document and fixing them there is fine and leaves the citations in the original version of the document untouched.
  • Fantastic. Thank you so much, adamsmith. I really appreciate your quick and thorough response! I'll give these a try and see how things go.
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