How do I cite…. items with multiple authors in APA7?

This post follows on from our post on using ‘et al’ in citations but has a slightly different focus – do read them both!

As you may know, in-text citations can be written either as parenthetical or narrative citations. Parenthetical citations place both the author name and date in brackets, while narrative citations incorporate the author name into the sentence, with the date appearing in brackets after the author. The choice between these formats depends on how it flows in your written work. 

Citing items with two authors: 

If a work has two authors, separate their names with an ampersand (&) in a parenthetical citation or “and” in a narrative citation. 

• Parenthetical citation: (Holmes & Nunn, 2024) 

• Narrative citation: Holmes and Nunn (2024) 

Citing items with three or more authors: 

If there are three or more authors, include only the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” (meaning “and others”). 

• Parenthetical citation: (Robertson et al., 2022) 

• Narrative citation: Robertson et al. (2022) 

 Avoiding ambiguity in in-text citations:

When multiple items with three or more authors have the same first author(s) and the same year of publication, their in-text citations may shorten to the same form, leading to ambiguity.  To resolve this, write out enough author names to distinguish the citations and then abbreviate the rest to “et al.” 

For example, if you want to cite the following articles: 

van Riper, C. J., Lum, C., Kyle, G. T., Wallen, K. E., Absher, J., & Landon, A. C. (2020). Values, motivations, and intentions to engage in proenvironmental behavior. Environment and Behavior, 52(4), 437–462. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916518807963

van Riper, C. J., Foelske, L., Kuwayama, S. D., Keller, R., & Johnson, D. (2020). Understanding the role of local knowledge in the spatial dynamics of social values expressed by stakeholders. Applied Geography,123, 102279. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.APGEOG.2020.102279 

Here is how the in-text citation should look to avoid ambiguity: 

Parenthetical citation	Narrative citation
​​(van Riper, Lum, et al., 2020)​	​​van Riper, Lum, et al. (2020)​
​​(van Riper, Foelske, et al., 2020)​	​​van Riper, Foelske, et al. (2020)​

 

When only the last author differs, you should spell out all the names in each citation. 

Parenthetical citation	Narrative citation
(Sparks, Stokes, Abranson, & Knowles, 2019)	Sparks, Stokes, Abranson, and Knowles (2019)
(Sparks, Stokes, Abranson, & Barefoot, 2019)	Sparks, Stokes, Abranson, and Barefoot (2019)

 

If you found this post useful, you may also find our post on referencing multiple items with the same author in APA7 interesting too, where we explain how to reference items with exactly the same author(s) and publication year. 

Please note: Cranfield supports two different referencing styles – APA7 (Author-date) and Numbered (NLM). Please make sure you use the style preferred by your supervisor or lecturer. If you have any questions about referencing, please contact the Library.

Public domain image by Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/books-bookstore-book-reading-shop-1204029/, CC0