APA 7th ed.:single citation vs. multiple citation differences

terber

I have observed a behavior that I would appreciate someone explaining to me.

All with APA 7th ed. style, US-English locale.

Reference 1:
A1, A2, & A3. (2025). Title1.
A1, A2, & A4. (2025). Title2.

First Citation by Zotero: "(A1 et al., 2025)". Ok.
Second Citation by Zotero: "(A1 et al., 2025)". Ok.
Both citations exported from Zotero at once: "(A1, A2, & A3, 2025; A1, A2, & A4, 2025)". ???

This does not meet my expectations and, to my knowledge, does not comply with the requirements of APA 7th edition. Could someone explain to me why this is the case?

[UPDATE: My expectation was *wrong*, Zotero behaves correctly according to https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/same-year-first-author]


To make the former case more interesting:

Reference 2:
A1, A2, & A3. (2025a). Title1.
A1, A2, & A3. (2025b). Title2.

Both citations exported from Zotero at once: "(A1 et al., 2025a, 2025b)" - which is correct (at least IMO).


Reference 3:
A1, A2, & A3. (2025). Title1.
A1, A2, A3, & A4. (2025). Title2.

Both citations exported from Zotero at once: "(A1, A2, & A3, 2025; A1, A2, A3, et al., 2025)" - which, again IMO, should instead result in exactly the same citation as the last example: "(A1 et al., 2025a, 2025b)".

adamsmith

The first example is definitely correct APA style. Adding authors to disambiguate differing author groups has always (as in: at least since the 5th ed) been prescribed in the manual.

The third one is a borderline case, but only because APA would want A4 instead of et al in the second citation, a quirk in its rule based on the dubious claim that et al is always plural that CSL/Zotero has always ignored

bwiernik

And notably even APA’s own journals do not follow the manual’s “et al is always plural” rule.

terber

Thank you for the explanation, @AdamSmith!

Just after I wrote my post I found the relevant link:

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/same-year-first-author