Et Al. not appearing for in-text citations when using APA 7th
I'm trying to use Zotero to add in-text citations. (Using desktop word with Zotero plugin on a Mac). When I add the in-text citation using the Zotro plugin, it appears, but it lists every author instead of (Author1, et al., year). I've verified that APA is selected for the style in Zotero & Word. What is wrong?
You select a style for your document in Word in the Document Preferences under the Zotero tab (not under the References tab). If you are selecting simply "APA", you are in the wrong place.
Make sure you follow Zotero's instructions for this: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage
Sometimes, it helps to change the style to something else and back. Also, make sure your citations are active (do you see them in the red pop-up window when you click Add/Edit Citation while you are on a citation).
As adamsmith said, it would help to copy/paste exactly how the citation appears in Word for a few of those here.
(An, Y., Kaplan-Rakowski, R., Yang, J., Conan, J., Kinard, W., & Daughrity, L., 2021)
This is what it should be: (An et al., 2021).
This is what's in the author field which was auto-generated: An, Y., Kaplan-Rakowski, R., Yang, J., Conan, J., Kinard, W., & Daughrity, L.
How can I tell if the authors are listed as one?
I sincerely appreciate your help. I'm completely new to Zotero, as I've always done all my citations by hand.
An, Yuno
Kaplan-Rakowski, Regina
Yang, Junhe
Conan, Jenna
Kinard, Widad
Daughrity, Leanne
If not, that is the problem. Each author should be on a separate line. If all authors are on one author field line Zotero will recognize that as a single name.
Tell us how / where you imported the article.I hope that you didn't hand-enter the article metadata. If you did hand enter, copy and paste the following DOI into the "magic wand" and download the article metadata that way.
10.1007/s11423-021-10008-5
There should be a Zotero icon near the URL field in your web browser. That icon will change depending upon the type of the thing you wish to import. For an illustration visit: https://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
and scroll down to "capturing items" (it is about halfway down the page).
For example, you will see the Zotero import-article icon by visiting the publisher at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-021-10008-5
Google Scholar will sometimes export article metadata with all authors in a single line. It is always better to follow the GS link to the publishers' websites and capture the metadata from there.
I believe that sometimes certain ProQuest social science databases also do this. The ERIC database sometimes has this problem.
If this citation (and the other broken ones) is from one import from one bad source, you may be able to sort your library in Zotero by Date Added (right-click on the column headers where Title is), and fix them manually. If there are too many to fix by hand, you may be able to export their IDs (like DOI), and use Zotero's Add Item by Identifier function to get fresh, higher-quality data into Zotero, and delete or merge with the original items.