What number of authors warrants "et al"?

Asker

I'm using an edited version of APA 6th edition and whenever I cite a work by several authors, the in-text citation will include the last names of all authors. I thought if there were more than 3 authors the style would use et al? Either way I'd prefer the in-text citations to say et al whenever there are more than 3 authors.

adamsmith

APA says to use up to 5 authors the first time an item is cited and up to 2 authors for all subsequent cites (i.e. et-al-min-first="6" et-al-min-subsequent="3" for CSL purposes). You can edit those parameters accordingly.

Asker

I see! I can't find the correct line in the code editor though...

adamsmith

It's the one starting with <citation

bwiernik

Correct APA style is to cite up to five authors the first time. If you are using APA style and intend to submit to a journal (or if you are a student being asked to write in APA), I recommend you follow this rule, which Zotero follows.

If you do want to always use et al, even on the first time an item is cited (which again, is not APA), then you can use this version of the style:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bwiernik/zotero-tools/master/apa-short-authors.csl