Chicago Manual of Style, multiple authors

margaretha
Hi, I have a problem with a multiple authors text using Chicago Manual of style: whereas the preview pane shows the correct citation, (Revi et. al., 2014; the word file contains all (approx. 20!) authors in the citation :-(. the same happens with this citation in the APA (6th ed.) style. Has anybody an idea what I can do?
the complete citation is like this:

Revi, Aromar, David Satterthwaite, F. Aragón-Durand, J. Corfee-Morlot, R.B.R Kiunsi, M. Pelling, D.C. Roberts, and W. Solecki. 2014. “Urban Areas.” In Climate Change 2014, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 535–612. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.

thanks for your help
  • adamsmith
    That reference is correct the way it is. These aren't approximately 20 authors but exactly 7.

    Chicago Manual says to list up to ten authors in the bibliography before using et al. (see CMoS 14.76)

    APA doesn't use et al. in the bibliography at all, though once you have more than seven authors, you'd get an ellipsis between the sixth and the last author. Since we're at exactly 7, though, that doesn't apply here, either.


    If you do need a style where et al. kicks in earlier, you could try American Sociological Associtation, where you'd get it for more than 5 authors.
  • margaretha
    Thank you so much for the prompt feedback., as ever, these things happen in the panic period of a finalization of a document, so I did not bother about searching for the manuals and did not even have the time for looking into the CLS structrue.....
    I shall try to change the Chicago manual accordingly once I am out of this mess, as even fives eems quite long to me (i am actually not tied to any editor's prescriptions)
  • margaretha
    sorry, one more question: why does the preview pane show me (Revi et. al. 2014) as a preview for the citation, and not all the 7 of them?
  • bwiernik
    Are you previewing APA 6th ed in the Preview Pane? APA style specifies that with 7 authors, you should use et al. for all in text citations, even the first.
  • adamsmith
    Oh I may have misunderstood:
    What I write above is about the bibliography, not in-text citations. Those should come out as "et al." in both styles for the citation above.

    If you get the citation with all authors in Word, my guess would be that you're seeing et-al disambiguation: both manuals specify to add authors before et al. to disambiguate citations that would otherwise look the same. I.e. if you have two Revi et al. 2014 citations, Zotero would keep adding authors before et al. until it hits one that's different.
  • margaretha
    Ok, so I have a problem, who has the solution? indeed my text (ms word) the citation appears with all authors, although the preview pane for this text shows it correctly as Revi et. al. 2014).
    I remember that word asked me some time ago whether to save a mendeley file to (do not remember the extension, I declined the offer in my hurry, can this be connected to the problem?
    (the text was exchanged several times with co-authors and from mac to Pc....
  • adamsmith
    are there other Revi et al 2014 citations in the document? I.e. insert a bibliography - do you see multiple Revi et al 2014?
    That would be the most likely cause as I (try to) explain above.
  • margaretha
    edited December 21, 2014
    Yes, indeed, there it is in a mulitple sources citation, the second of three texts is from an almost identical group of authors; once cancelled this second text, it now looks fine. This is not a real solution, but at least your guess is correct.
    Bthw: how many authors does APA show normally in in-text citations?
  • adamsmith
    APA shows up to 5 for the first citation of an item (after that it goes to first author et al.), for subsequent ones no more than 2.

    Chicago Manual shows up to 3 throughout (also goes to first author et al. after that).
  • Mojo Dodo
    Hello margaretha,

    I am using the "Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (author-date)" and I had the same "problem" as you have.
    In my case I want the in-text citations to be "Author et. al." as soon as there are more than 2 authors. I modified the citation style (meaning the csl-file) as follows:
    from:
    <citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1"
    to
    <citation et-al-min="3" et-al-use-first="1"

    I figured that out by reading this post: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/29125/problems-with-intext-citation-and-et-al/

    If this is what you've been looking for and you have any questions, feel free to ask again.
Sign In or Register to comment.