The record entry for the reference looks like this:
Author: Smith, John A.; Jones, Tom B.; Curly, Joe
(Names changed to protect the innocent.)
When I drop in a second citation, it correctly gives me an “et al.”
But for some reason, my “et al.” looks like “et,al.”
And I went through all the configuration menus … there’s no reason I can see for that stray comma.
And all my other "et al."s are correct.
I even tried changing the “Author” record into 3 lines (1 author per line) … no fixy.
I COULD just edit the cite in text, but if I go to refresh, the comma will return.
I COULD just remove the link and correct it as text without the ability to refresh every again, but that kind of defeats the purpose. And how do I know when it will re-occur in some other citation?
I COULD waste hours clicking around, tweeking this or that hoping for some quirky solution to this quirk problem, but I’ll probably break something else in the process.
I would like to know why … otherwise I’ll have a difficult time trusting the software.
You need to do both of Tony’s recommendations – as after you edit the record to have single authors per line in the record,
Smith, John A.
Jones, Tom B.
Curly, Joe
then you will need to then “convert to unformatted citations” then “update citations and bibliography” to fix this, as I suspect that the unformatted temporary citation will have multiple authors {Smith, John A.; Jones, Tom B.; Curly, Joe, Year #recNo} and so it isn’t matching your single author per line record and is being pulled from the old “traveling” version of the record embedded in the word document. After fixing the record and unformating, Endnote will ask for the correct citation from your edited library.