APA Citations With Multiple Authors and Et Al.

APA 7 handles multiple authors differently in in-text citations and the reference list. In text, cite both authors when a work has two authors. For three or more authors, normally use the first author’s surname followed by et al. from the very first citation. In the reference list, include all authors for works with up to 20 authors.

For works with 21 or more authors, list the first 19 authors, insert an ellipsis, and then add the final author’s name.

These two different thresholds are one of the most common sources of confusion in APA citation formatting.

APA Multiple-Author Rules at a Glance

Number of authors	In-text citation	Reference list
1 author	Name the author	List the author
2 authors	Name both authors every time	List both authors
3–20 authors	First author + `et al.`	List every author
21+ authors	First author + `et al.`	First 19 authors, ellipsis, final author

The normal rules can change when shortened in-text citations would become ambiguous. In those cases, include enough author surnames to distinguish the works.

Two Authors in APA 7

For a work with two authors, cite both surnames every time.

The punctuation depends on whether the citation is parenthetical or narrative.

Parenthetical citation

Use an ampersand:

(Morgan & Carter, 2025)

Narrative citation

Use the word and:

Morgan and Carter (2025)

This distinction remains the same each time you cite the two-author work.

Do not shorten a two-author citation to Morgan et al.

Two Authors in the Reference List

List both authors in the reference entry in the order given by the source.

For example:

Morgan, T. R., & Carter, M. J. (2025). …

Use an ampersand before the final author in the reference list.

Do not alphabetize the authors within one source. Author order is part of the publication record and can reflect contribution or disciplinary convention.

Three or More Authors in an In-Text Citation

For a work with three or more authors, APA 7 normally uses:

First Author et al. (Year)

or:

(First Author et al., Year)

from the first citation onward.

For example, a work written by:

Morgan, Carter, and Rahman

becomes:

Parenthetical: (Morgan et al., 2025)

Narrative: Morgan et al. (2025)

You do not list all three names the first time and shorten them only later. That older pattern is a common source of confusion when users encounter APA 6 examples.

What Does “Et Al.” Mean?

Et al. is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase meaning “and others.”

In APA citations:

et is not followed by a period
al. is followed by a period
the expression is not italicized
it follows the first author’s surname in a normal three-or-more-author in-text citation

Correct:

Morgan et al. (2025)

Incorrect:

Morgan et. al. (2025)

Incorrect:

Morgan et al (2025)

The period belongs after al. because it is abbreviated.

Do You Use Et Al. in the Reference List?

Not as a replacement phrase for author names.

APA 7 reference entries list authors according to the number of authors on the work.

For two through 20 authors, list all authors.

For 21 or more authors, do not write et al. in the reference list. Instead:

list the first 19 authors
add an ellipsis (…)
add the final author

There is no ampersand before the final author in this 21-or-more-author pattern.

This differs from in-text citations, where et al. is normally used for three or more authors.

How to List 3 to 20 Authors in an APA Reference

For a source with up to 20 authors, include every author in the reference entry.

Use commas between names and an ampersand before the final author.

A short fictional example with four authors:

Morgan, T. R., Carter, M. J., Rahman, L. A., & Ellis, D. K. (2025). …

The corresponding in-text citation is much shorter:

(Morgan et al., 2025)

Do not delete the other authors from the source record merely because the in-text citation uses et al.

The full reference and the in-text citation follow separate author-display rules.

How to List 21 or More Authors

When a work has 21 or more authors:

include authors 1 through 19
insert an ellipsis
include the final author
omit the authors between the nineteenth and final author
do not place an ampersand before the final author

The pattern looks like this:

Author 1, A. A., Author 2, B. B., … Author 19, S. S., … Final Author, Z. Z. (Year). …

The ellipsis represents omitted author names.

Do not use et al. in the reference entry as a substitute for this APA 7 rule.

University of Melbourne’s current APA 7 guidance likewise states that references include up to 20 authors and, for 21 or more, use the first 19 authors, an ellipsis, and the final author.

Keep Authors in the Original Order

Do not rearrange the authors of one work alphabetically.

If the article, book, report, or chapter lists authors as:

Morgan
Carter
Rahman
Ellis

your source record should preserve that order.

The reference list itself is alphabetized based on the first author of each reference, but the authors inside an individual reference remain in publication order.

This distinction is especially important for academic papers, where author order can carry disciplinary or contribution meaning.

Parenthetical vs. Narrative Citations With Multiple Authors

Two authors

Parenthetical: (Morgan & Carter, 2025)

Narrative: Morgan and Carter (2025)

Three or more authors

Parenthetical: (Morgan et al., 2025)

Narrative: Morgan et al. (2025)

The ampersand-versus-and distinction applies to two-author citations because both author names are displayed.

With three or more authors, et al. follows the first author’s surname in either form.

What If Two “Et Al.” Citations Look the Same?

This is an important exception.

Suppose your paper cites two different works published in the same year:

Morgan, Carter, Rahman, Ellis, and Chen (2025)
Morgan, Carter, Patel, Gomez, and Lee (2025)

If you shortened both citations using the normal rule, each would become:

(Morgan et al., 2025)

The reader would not know which reference you mean.

APA therefore requires enough author surnames to distinguish the works before adding et al.

The citations could become:

(Morgan, Carter, Rahman, et al., 2025)

and:

(Morgan, Carter, Patel, et al., 2025)

Include only as many names as necessary to make the citations unambiguous.

This is one reason a citation generator should not simply apply a fixed “three authors means et al.” transformation without considering the other sources in the same paper.

APA Citation Builder should only claim automatic disambiguation after those project-level cases have been specifically tested.

What If Only the Final Author Is Different?

Et al. means “and others,” so it must represent more than one omitted author.

In unusual ambiguity cases, if shortening the citation would leave et al. standing for only one remaining author, additional names may need to be written out.

These cases require careful comparison of the competing author lists.

Do not manually apply a shortened form just because a source has three or more authors if that shortened form becomes ambiguous in your paper.

Same Author and Same Year

Another type of ambiguity occurs when the same author or identical author group has more than one work from the same year.

APA distinguishes these works with lowercase letters:

Morgan (2025a) Morgan (2025b)

or:

(Morgan, 2025a, 2025b)

The letters must also appear in the corresponding reference entries.

They are determined according to the ordering of the references, not simply according to which source you happened to cite first.

Do not add a and b independently to an in-text citation without checking the reference list.

Different Authors With the Same Surname

Suppose your paper cites works by two different people:

J. Carter
M. Carter

APA may include initials in the in-text citations to prevent confusion.

For example:

(J. Carter, 2024) (M. Carter, 2025)

This is an exception used for disambiguation.

Normally, APA in-text citations use the surname without initials.

Multiple Works in One Parenthetical Citation

When several sources support the same statement, you can include them in one parenthetical citation.

Arrange the works in the same general alphabetical order used in the reference list and separate them with semicolons.

For example:

(Carter & Morgan, 2023; Ellis et al., 2025; Rahman, 2024)

Do not combine sources in the same parentheses merely to save space. Each cited source should genuinely support the statement.

Organization or Group Authors

Organizations can also be authors.

For example:

(National Research Council, 2025)

If a long organization name has a familiar abbreviation and will be cited repeatedly, APA allows an abbreviation to be introduced where doing so helps the reader.

Do not shorten a group author’s name using et al. simply because the organization’s name contains several words.

Et al. is used for multiple authors, not for shortening one group author’s name.

Multiple Authors in Journal Articles

Journal articles frequently contain large author teams.

The source record should preserve the complete author information needed for the reference, while the in-text citation follows the shorter APA author–date rules.

For a paper with six authors:

In text: (Morgan et al., 2025)

The reference still includes all six authors because the work has fewer than 21 authors.

Use the APA Journal Article Citation Generator to enter journal-specific information such as author list, article title, journal, volume, issue, pages or article number, and DOI.

Multiple Authors in Books

The same broad APA author rules apply to authored books.

For a two-author book:

Parenthetical: (Morgan & Carter, 2025)

Narrative: Morgan and Carter (2025)

For a book with three or more authors:

(Morgan et al., 2025)

The full book reference preserves the appropriate author list.

Use the APA Book Citation Generator for edition, publisher, DOI, and other whole-book information.

Editors Are Not Automatically Authors

An edited book can contain both:

book editors
authors of individual chapters

If you cite a separately authored chapter, the in-text citation normally uses the chapter author, not the editor.

If you cite the edited book as a whole, the editors may occupy the author position of the whole-book reference.

Do not replace chapter authors with editor names simply because the editors appear prominently on the book cover.

What If an Author Is Missing?

Do not use et al. as a replacement for an unknown author.

If one author name is absent from incomplete metadata, first check the source itself.

If the entire work genuinely has no author, APA uses the title in the author position and applies title-based in-text citation rules.

See APA Citations With No Author or No Date for the full missing-author workflow.

Common Multiple-Author Citation Mistakes

Using et al. for two authors

Wrong:

(Morgan et al., 2025)

when the source has only Morgan and Carter.

Correct:

(Morgan & Carter, 2025)

Listing all three authors in every in-text citation

APA 7 normally uses the first author plus et al. immediately for three-or-more-author works.

Using “and” inside parentheses

Correct parenthetical form:

(Morgan & Carter, 2025)

Use and in narrative prose:

Morgan and Carter (2025)

Using an ampersand in narrative prose

Do not write:

Morgan & Carter (2025) found …

in ordinary narrative citation prose.

Use:

Morgan and Carter (2025) found …

Using et al. in a normal reference entry

Do not write:

Morgan, T. R., et al. (2025). …

as a shortcut for a six-author APA reference.

List all authors for works with up to 20 authors.

Using an ampersand before the final author in a 21+ author reference

For 21 or more authors, the reference uses the first 19 authors, an ellipsis, and the final author, with no ampersand before that final author.

Rearranging author order

Keep the order given by the publication.

Do not alphabetize coauthors within one reference.

Ignoring ambiguous et al. citations

If two shortened citations would look identical, include additional author names until readers can tell the sources apart.

Adding year letters only in the text

If you use 2025a and 2025b in text, the same designations must appear in the corresponding references.

How APA Citation Builder Handles Author Lists

APA Citation Builder stores authors as part of the underlying source record rather than requiring you to type an already-shortened in-text author string.

That is important because the same source can need:

a fuller author list in the reference
a shortened author element in the in-text citation

Do not enter only the first author and et al. as the source’s author list.

Enter the authors that actually belong to the work.

The current citation workspace can generate matching reference and in-text outputs from supported source records, but unusual author-list disambiguation cases should still be reviewed manually until project-level long-author and ambiguity handling has been specifically validated.

Read Accuracy, Source Review, and Limitations for more about what automated formatting can and cannot verify.

Multiple-Author Checklist

Before using a citation with multiple authors, check that:

[ ] authors are entered in the order shown by the source
[ ] a two-author in-text citation includes both surnames
[ ] parenthetical two-author citations use &
[ ] narrative two-author citations use and
[ ] three-or-more-author in-text citations normally use first author + et al.
[ ] et al. is punctuated correctly
[ ] references with up to 20 authors include all authors
[ ] references with 21+ authors use the first 19, an ellipsis, and the final author
[ ] no ampersand is added before the final author in the 21+ pattern
[ ] ambiguous shortened citations are distinguished with additional surnames
[ ] same-author/same-year works use matching year letters where required
[ ] different authors with the same surname are distinguishable where needed
[ ] the in-text citation still points clearly to the correct reference entry

For the overall author–date citation workflow, use the APA Citation Builder. For finished list formatting and ordering, see the APA Reference Page guide.

The official APA Style website and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition remain the authoritative sources when an unusual author configuration requires a rule beyond the supported workflow.