et al inconsistent

Hello,

For all in-text citations in my document, "et al." is shown after the first author when there are at least 3 authors on a paper (e.g. Smith et al.). There is one paper, though, where it shows the first two authors and then the "et al." (for a paper with 3 authors): "Smith, Miller, et al.).

Does anyone know where this inconsistency comes from? Thank you!
  • It's almost certainly disambiguation: for many styles (including most notably Chicago author-date and APA), additional authors are added before et al. to avoid ambiguity, so the style would print
    Smith, Miller, et al. 2020, Smith, Meyer, et al. 2020 instead of the somewhat misleading
    Smith et al. 2020a, b (which suggests the same author group).

    This can be turned off in the automated style, but it's in there by design and required in many style manuals.
  • You're right!
    What would I have to change in the code if I wanted
    (Smith et al., 2023a) and (Smith et al., 2023b)
    for the two papers with the same first author but different co-authors?
    a: Smith, Miller, Carpenter, 2023
    b: Smith, Brewer. Fisher, 2023
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