Unusual APA6 issue in EndNote7 Mac

EndNote EndNote Styles, Filters, and Connections
1

I’m citing two papers, both with the same first author and in the same year. One paper has five authers, the other six. The five-author paper is formatted correctly (all authors listed first time, first two subsquently in order to distinguish it from the other paper). The six-author paper is formatted correctly starting the second time (first two authors, to distinguish it from the other paper). However, the first time, it comes out just as “First, et al.”, which is incorrect. The style I’m using has, under Abbreviated Author List - First Appearance, “If 6 or more authors, list the first 1 author(s) and abbreviate with ‘ et al.’”

So, EndNote is clearly doing what the style is telling it to do, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to make a style that will to disambiguate the author list the first time a 6+ author paper is cited. (Note that under To Differentiate Ambiguous Citations, I have checked: include author initials…; Add more authors…; and Add a letter…)

Is there any way to handle this situation?

Thanks,

Greg Shenaut

2

Hello, Greg:

I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m quite following. Can you provide examples of how it is displaying now versus how you believe it should be appearing?

3

In fact, I decided to send this problem to the tech support as well. I received a reply that they couldn’t replicate the problem and a suggestion that I try the current APA6 format. I did so, and it handled this case correctly. I compared it to the custom format I was using, and found that in mine, in the fields handling the first citation for 6+ authors, I had «, et al.», whereas in the current APA6 here, it just had « et al.» with no comma. When I removed the comma from mine, it worked correctly.

Here are some examples, for two papers like this: A, B, C, D, E (2004) and A, F, G, H, I, J (2004).

Correct first citations:

A, B, C, D, E (2004) and A, F, et al. (2004).

Correct subsequent citations:

A, B, et al. (2004) and A, F, et al. (2004).

With the comma, mine was incorrectly producing A et al. (2004) for the first citation of the six-author case.