APA 7th incorrect citations

ZoteroChicago · 2026-03-09T09:49:25+00:00

Hello,
My APA 7 in-text citations are formatted incorrectly and inconsistently. It will seemingly at random include first name in some citations like in the screenshot attached (, and then other times stay with just the last name. (K.-S. Chang) How do I fix this? And, I will refer to the same author and page several times in one paragraph, is it possible to use (ibid) in zotero to take up less space?
Thank you for all tips

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u15897847/r6qwj0jmq4xifxi362na.png

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u15897847/ar85ecol0xnmfolkq20l.png

poettli · 2026-03-09T10:05:59+00:00

This is author name disambiguation: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation. And Ibid. is not used in APA. You would need to create a customized style for that.

bwiernik · 2026-03-09T18:33:38+00:00

It is correct APA style to add initials to authors that have the same last name to avoid ambiguity in determining where to look for the item in the reference list (as items are alphabetized by both last and first names).

APA style (and author-date styles in general) do not use ibid, as it is challenging to determine what item the ibid is referring to. For a short citation style for grant applications that don’t call for strict APA style, I suggest the APA numeric version of the style.