Mixed up style in one document

Why in some cited papers all the names shows and while in others et al is added. I am using APA 7th edition. This problem makes my referencing style mixed up and not following single style. How to solve this.

example: (Dietz, 1997; Doležal et al., 2022; Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, Mudrak, et al., 2021).

Here, the last citation shows all names, in the entire document. Tried with removing and re-adding the file to zotero.
  • The APA Style Manual (and thus Zotero's implementation of it) adds names before et al if the citations would otherwise be identical. I'm assuming you have another citation by Dolezal, Jandova, Macek and another 4th author in the document, in which case this is correct APA style.
  • Oh yes. There are (Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, Mudrak, et al., 2021) and (Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, & Liancourt, 2021).
    Now I got the issue.

    Thanks a lot.
  • Isnt it should be like Dolezal et al. 2021a, 2021b? How to use this format in APA 7th edition? Can you please tell me?
  • No, because they have different authors. Your first is Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, Mudrak, et al., 2021 and your second is Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, & Liancourt, 2021. If you shorten them both to Dolezal et al. 2021a, 2021b, a reader might assume each publication had the same team of authors, which is not the case. This is why APA changes one to Dolezal et al., and the other to Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, Mudrak, et al., to show the difference in authors.

    Apologies for barging into the conversation. Was searching for another APA-related questions and stumbled upon this one, which I've also wondered about. Hope I could help!
Sign In or Register to comment.