An issue with the in-text citation based basically on APA style (conflict)

I have based my Word document on APA style. Therefore, the in text-citation should appear something like ( last name, date), however , sometimes ( not for all entries) it shows like ( first name initials Last name, date).

This caused me a problem with my supervisor and consumed time to fix every instance manually.

I really hope to find a solution.....
  • (And to be clear, it is correct APA style to add initials for disambiguation when two different authors have the same last name.)
  • Actually , it adds initial for the first author although the other authors are completely different.
    For example, this article:

    Factors Affecting Customer Initial Trust in the Mobile Payment Service Providers: An Empirical Study.

    the authors are

    Hengliang Wu and Weiwei Zhang

    the citation comes to be (H. Wu & Zhang, 2017)
  • Right, but if you have any other article with the first author Wu in that document, it does (and should) use H. Wu.
  • Yes I think , I got the point thank you very much.
  • Hello everyone,

    Having this disambiguation feature caused me some hassle. I read the post of how to fix it but unfortunately it worked in the ''style preview'' panel only and didn't work in the Word document it self.

    I followed these instructions
    https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

    Any help to get ride of this feature
  • I guess the first question is why you don't just use a different style, since you're not following APA anyway. Most other styles only disambiguate where strictly necessary.

    But if you do want to modify APA -- are you changing title and id and re-installing it as a new style?
  • This is APA 6th edition, but without author disambiguation and always using et al for 3+ authors: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bwiernik/zotero-tools/master/apa-short-authors.csl

    But, if your journal/publisher asks for APA style, you should leave the disambiguation in. This is correct APA style.
  • @adamsmith

    I have to use the APA style but my supervisor doesn't prefer the disambiguation feature and every time tells me to use the correct APA style.

    It seems my problem resides in how to save the style after editing. At the style editor when I do any change I cannot save it. I only have the option to Save As . I tried to give it another name and reinstall it but failed.
  • Hi guys thank you very much. I have done it successfully , but I wonder how to change the style name effectively to avoid any confusion.

    @bwiernik

    It worked well.

    @adamsmith
    But how I can change the title and id of the style?

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