APA Second Reference - Suppress Multiple Authors

johnsheffernan · September 26, 2012

I was wondering if Zotero can automatically suppress the secondary authors when using a in-text citation. I believe that is what the APA sytle calls for. If not, should I delete them in Word or in Edit Citation. Thanks for any help. I am new to Zotero and it is a life-saver but I had trouble with this particular issue.

adamsmith · September 26, 2012

Zotero should do that right for APA - it lists up to 5 authors for the first citation (and then uses first author et al= and no more than two for subsequent citations (and then first author et al= which is what APA prescribes.

johnsheffernan · September 26, 2012

I am not getting the "et al", I am getting the full list again using Word 2012 for Macintosh. I will keep messing around.

adamsmith · September 26, 2012

This only works using the Word/Libre Office plugin - you are doing that, right?

The next step would be to try this in a minimal document to rule out that something else is interfering - start a new document and just insert the same reference twice.

As an example of what the APA style is programmed to do:

First citation:
(Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson, & Yared, 2005)

All subsequent citations of the same item:
(Acemoglu et al., 2005)

johnsheffernan · September 26, 2012

Thanks. I did figure this out.

If I shift-drag over from Zotero to Word, it does not work as I would expected.

If you use the Zotero toolbar in Word, it will work if you choose the "cited" option and not the "my library" option.

adamsmith · September 26, 2012

It will work with both options in the Word toolbar. If it doesn't that most likely indicates that you have multiple versions of the same item in your database.

And yes, shift+drag won't work - that simply uses the clipboard, Zotero has no way of knowing whether this is a first or subsequent citation.