Using ‘et al’ in Cranfield Author-date style referencing
30/05/2017

Academic writing is full of idiosyncrasies, one of which being the Latin abbreviation ‘et al’. The term et al means ‘and others’ and is often used in academic literature to abbreviate a list of authors’ names. For this reason, using et al in your in-text citation allows your references to be shorter. It also helps them appear tidier if you are referring to the same citation numerous times in your work.
Whether or not you can use et al is determined by the number of authors in your citation. Where you have three or fewer authors, you will need to list all the authors in both your in-text citation and reference list.
However in the Cranfield author-date style, when a source has four or more authors you can list the first author followed by et al. in your in-text citation. In your reference list however, you will need to list all of the authors (even if there are 20 or more of them!).
Here’s an example with three or fewer authors:
In-text citation (author-date style):
Macdonald, Kleinaltenkamp and Wilson (2016)
Reference:
Macdonald, E. K., Kleinaltenkamp, M. and Wilson, H. N. (2016) ‘How business customers judge solutions: Solution quality and value in use’, Journal of Marketing, 80 (3), pp. 96-120.
… and with four or more authors:
In-text citation (author-date style):
Baines et al. (2014)
Reference:
Baines, P., Crawford, I., O’Shaughnessy, N., Worcester, R. and Mortimore, R. (2014) ‘Positioning in political marketing: How semiotic analysis adds value to traditional survey approaches’, Journal of Marketing Management. 30 (1-2), pp. 172-200.
For more information on referencing, including our guides to both, check out the referencing support page on the MIRC webpages.
As always, if you have any questions about referencing, please contact MIRC or the Kings Norton Library.
Public domain image by Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/books-bookstore-book-reading-shop-1204029/, CC0
Categories & Tags:
Leave a comment on this post:
You might also like…
Working on your group project? We can help!
When undertaking a group project, typically you'll need to investigate a topic, decide on a methodology for your investigation, gather and collate information and data, share your findings with each other, and then formally report ...
Words matter – a conversational Integrated Vehicle Health Management lexicon
There are many well established barriers to successful digital transformation which prevent full realisation of desired benefits. It is generally recognised that only 30% of digital transformation efforts deliver these results. One of the ...
Library support for new research students
Welcome! We are very excited to welcome you to Cranfield, and we are looking forward to supporting you throughout your research degree. We are always happy to help you – all you need to do ...
Finding full-text Economist articles…
If you’re looking for The Economist, the place to go is ProQuest One Business. Follow these step-by-step instructions to get full-text access. Login here and click on the Publications option at the top, above the ...
New IEEE route to gold open access for UKRI-funded research
You probably know by now that if you publish a paper that acknowledges funding from UKRI (including Innovate UK) it must be made open access immediately upon publication with a CC-BY licence. To remind you, ...
OnePetro subscription ending 5 February
Our access to OnePetro will cease at the beginning of February. This database contains full text documents from professional societies that serve the oil and gas industry. It has experienced a significant drop in usage ...