Small style update to APA 6 - name field for single names/orgs

ksnediker

According to the style experts at APA, if a work is created by two authors with a single name (or two group authors) there is no comma after the first name before the ampersand. Correct examples would be:
Madonna & Cher. (2000). Title etc.
Smith Institute & Jones Academic Trust. (2000). Title etc.

Zotero is currently (incorrectly) putting a comma after the first name when both author fields are in single field mode. Not a high priority, certainly, but hopefully a quick and easy fix. Thanks!

bwiernik

That doesn’t appear anywhere in the manual and doesn’t follow the logic of APA style—multiple authors are always delimited by commas. Could you point to an example where that is not the case?

If you intend to refer to “Madonna and Cher” as a single unit, ala “Hootie and the Blowfish”, then you should enter it as a single group author.

ksnediker

You're right, we couldn't find any example or specific reference to this situation in the APA manual, so we emailed them. We were surprised by the answer as well, but this is the question we asked:

If a work is created by two authors and both have a single name, do you still add a comma on the reference page after the first author? The question came up on a blog posting citation.

Sherlock, & Homer. (2019, May 2).
Or
Sherlock & Homer. (2019, May 2).

... and the response we received:

Thank you for your question! No, do not use a comma after the first author in this scenario. In a standard reference with two individual authors, the individual author names are made up of two elements each: the surname and the initials, which are set off by commas. If an author does not have initials, then the commas are not needed, just as they would not be needed in a reference with two group authors.

Examples:
Smith, A., & Jones, B. (2014). Title etc.

Smith & Jones. (2014). Title etc.

Smith Institute & Jones Academic Trust. (2014). Title etc.

bwiernik

Their comment about not needing a comma for multiple group authors is also wrong according the manual. The manual simply states “Use commas to separate authors, to separate surnames and initials, and the separate initials and suffixes...” (p. 184). No special rule for group authors is given. The APA style expert is wrong here—that happens sometimes.

adamsmith

I disagree. Given that it's (Smith & Marx, 1776) in the text, I think it makes perfect sense that it's Smith & Jones. (1776) in the bibliography. The reason for the comma in Smith, A., & Marx, K. is the off-set initial.

This also just makes sense with common English usage. There is no reason to have a comma between just two words with an "and" (or ampersand) between them.
(Obviously you put the comma after every author -- including single-word ones, with more than two authors because it's a list then)

fbennett

Allen & Overy & Ernst & Young ... ?

bwiernik

But the rules in-text and the rules in the bibliography are different. APA always uses a comma with only two authors in the bibliography. And not doing so can lead to weird occurrences like Frank points out.

bwiernik

All that being said, this isn’t something that CSL supports, right (delimiter-precedes-last=conditional only for non-inverted names)?

adamsmith

No, CSL currently only has delimiter-precedes-past="after-inverted-name", which is based on the same idea, but would not put a delimiter before the ampersand in a list of three or more, which would be unambiguously incorrect.

(I do think that the case for the behavior described by the OP is quite strong, though: 1) It is grammatical 2) It allows application of the same rules to in-text citations and reference list and 3) it's endorsed by the APA style expert. Individually, I agree each of these wouldn't be sufficient, but taken together I find this very compelling)

bwiernik

Before I would count on the third point, I would want to see it confirmed again by a different person. They tend to be somewhat inconsistent with this sort of thing, and what they are saying contradicts the manual.