I have made minor edits to the APA 7th output style to:
only list the first author of a paper with 3 or more authors and then use et al.
use the word “and” instead of “&”.
I now have some citations (Reference Type: Journal Article) that do this correctly. Some that list all authors (up to three), and some that list the first two authors. Moreover, this seems to happen with the original APA 7th output style as well.
EndNote was recently updated to EndNote 20.0.1 (Build 17232). I am using Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365) Version 2307 (Build 16626.20068 Click to Run).
Did you make your adjustments in the “citations” Author Lists or in the “bibliography” authors list.
Are you expecting to seeing the output in in the “citations” Author Lists or in the “bibliography” authors list?
Did you rename your edited style and switch to that style in your word processor. Never give it the same name, as Endnote keeps edited styles in a different place from installed styles, and will default to the original style if both exist.
it is common to list 3 authors and apply the 1 et al to more than 3, as a rule, but if you put in 3 or more, it should convert 3 authors to 1st et al.
Abbreviated Author List - for First and Subsequent Appearances:
Number of Authors 1 to 2 before last " and "
If 2 or more authors, list the first 1 author(s) and abbreviate with: et al..
Expectation is in the citations in the text. What I am getting is (for example):
1 author: “Tamblyn, 1999”
2 authors: “Ma and ten Cate, 2023”
3 authors: “Harden, Crosby, and Davis, 1999”
4 or more authors: “Frank, Snell, et al., 2010” or “Cooke et al., 2010”
For four or more authors, it is consistent through the manuscript. If it shows up as “Frank, Snell, et al.” it will always show up as “Frank, Snell, et al.” If it shows up as “Cooke et al.,” it will always show up as “Cooke et al.”
Saved edited style name separately and linked to that style name in Word.
I have tried deleting and re-entering references in the database. It still shows up with the error. Not sure I know what I am doing wrong.
Sorry I accidentally deleted that when I realized you wanted 3 to show and 4 or more as et al, but here is what I said – obviously you have 4 or more selected in both first appearance and subsequent appearances.
I suspect the “Frank, Snell, et al.” one is because you have two citations with Frank and the two records would be considered ambiguous by Endnote, and so it is adding in the second author to “disambiguate them”. See what your Ambiguous Citations settings are. Is “add more authors until the citation is unique” selected? the two author one, is what you would expect it to show. No? That is usual. (setting is 3 or more) I did two different styles so I could show the two different citations options in one screen shot.
