If you are citing two papers by the same author as the first author (the work has multiple authors) and published in the same year but there are more than three authors how do you do the in-text citations for this?
For example, if you have one paper with the authors Smith, Jones, Brown, & White published in 2017 and a second paper with the authors Smith, Harris, & Davis
also published in 2017 how would you cite this in the text?
Follow the directions here:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/
I would list all the authors for the first citation each (as shown in the example on the webpage linked above).
For any subsequent citations, I'd list the first two authors for each work and then put the year and page number (if needed).
OK, thank you!
To cite multiple papers by the same first author published in the same year, you can distinguish the citations by adding lowercase letters after the year. Here's how you can format the in-text citations for the papers you mentioned:
1. For the paper with authors Smith, Jones, Brown, & White published in 2017, the in-text citation would be (Smith et al., 2017a).
2. For the paper with authors Smith, Harris, & Davis also published in 2017, the in-text citation would be (Smith et al., 2017b).
By adding lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.) after the year, you differentiate between the two papers. This allows readers to easily identify which paper you are referring to in your text.
Please note that in APA style, when citing works with three or more authors, you typically only mention the first author's surname followed by "et al." and the year for the first citation. For subsequent citations, you continue to use the first author's surname followed by "et al." This abbreviation signifies that there are additional authors beyond those mentioned.