APA 7th multiple papers by same first author & year citations

angiehillman
I have two papers by the same first author (different subsequent authors), published in the same year. APA 7th is not adding the a or b to distinguish between them. Instead it is using the first two authors, then et. al, ((Bliss, Hilton, et al., 2013 and Bliss, Robinson, et al., 2013) - I have the manual in front of me and can't find if this is the standard/convention or not? I know APA 7th uses et. al for 2+ so maybe this is equivalent to adding initials to avoid ambiguity?
  • adamsmith
    Yes, this is standard and correct APA. Using a/b would actually be incorrect here (for APA; other styles do this)
  • angiehillman
    Brilliant, thank you so much. Wonder why it's not in the manual though.
  • adamsmith
    I'm pretty certain it is @bwiernik has it memorized, so would be able to say quickly.
  • bwiernik
    It is in the manual. Rule 8.18. The idea is that the two citations will appear in different places in the reference list, so adding names aids finding. a/b are only used for the same list of authors.
  • angiehillman
    You're right, I guess it wasn't clear to me that this was my case. Thank you for the swift help!
  • coldcoffee
    Hey, i have the same issue and i thought, it was standart APA to use a and b, because my university explicitly tells us to use APA 7th AND that same authors & years should be marked with a and b. Would it be possible to get a picture/citation of the rule in the manual? Due to Covid i have no access to the Manual in our library right now. Thanks in advance
  • bwiernik
    a/b is only used when it is the exact same set of authors. If the author sets are different, additional names are added instead. The rule is Rule 8.18.
  • adamsmith
    APA covered this on the style blog for the 6th edition here: https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/11/the-proper-use-of-et-al-in-apa-style.html under "Avoiding Ambiguity"
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