Ability to edit "Use 'et al.'?

[Cassady]

Hello all,

I'm a bit stuck - hoping there is a workaround that someone might know of. Unless I'm missing something obvious, which is also likely!

My FIRST Occurrence field order in a Citation, sees all the authors being listed.
The SUBSEQUENT occurrences, must display "et al" where >2 authors exist.

Whereas I appear to be able to edit the "et al" in the line below CASE in the Format Manager - this presumably only effects the FIRST occurrence.
When it comes to the SUBSEQUENT occurrence, 'et al' is controlled by the drop down selector, and does NOT allow editing.

My format requirement is for 'et al' without the subsequent .[period] after 'al', as in "Botha, Greef et al"...

Any suggestions?

[Jon]

Hi,

You're right you can't edit that. But I would question whomever made that citation requirement. "al" is an abbreviation of "alia", and as such the period is proper (Google for this if you want). And to mix the correct and incorrect forms in the same citation style would be bizarre. I suspect there is a misunderstanding (or typo) somewhere.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Cassady]

Hi,

You're right you can't edit that. But I would question whomever made that citation requirement. "al" is an abbreviation of "alia", and as such the period is proper (Google for this if you want). And to mix the correct and incorrect forms in the same citation style would be bizarre. I suspect there is a misunderstanding (or typo) somewhere.

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks Jon.

Whereas I agree on the use of a period in the abbreviation - the style is very minimalistic, with a consistent non-use of fullstops. Par 3 1 2 of the style provision requests the author to "[a]void using full stops and spaces in abbreviations" (and - no full stops between paragraph numbers either! ).

So whether I agree or not, it's what they require. It won't be mixed by the way - first occurrence and subsequent occurrences in bibliography and citations is to have the al without the [period] - but since I can only edit 1st and not the Subsequent, I will simply leave both as is. At least it will be applied consistently.

Should I get called up on it, I will deal with it then. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't a work-around I could use now already.

[Jon]

I see. If the number of references required for use of et al. is the same for the first and subsequent citations and the names are output the same, you can use "Names same as first". However, if they differ (e.g. full names the first time, surnames the second) you can't use that.

Jon
Sonny Software