According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest number of authors to work on a single peer-reviewed academic paper is 15,025. While you may not ever encounter a source with that many authors during your own research, you’ll probably come across works with more than one author.
In this post, we’ll show you how to cite multiple authors in APA style, both in the text and on the reference page.
To write a reference list entry for a work with two authors, follow this basic format when listing the authors:
List the authors by their last names and initials, and use a comma followed by an ampersand to separate the two names. Here’s an example of what this might look like for a book entry:
APA 7 differs from APA 6 on how to cite 3–20 authors on a reference page. APA 6 requires listing up to six names in full, followed by an ellipsis and the final author’s name. APA 7 requires that you list all the authors’ names, with an ampersand separating the last two. Follow this basic format for up to 20 authors in APA 7:
Here’s what this might look like for a book on the reference page:
In APA 7, if a work contains 21 or more authors, list the surnames and initials of the first 19, followed by a comma, an ellipsis, and the name of the final author. Follow this basic format:
Note that you should not use an ampersand in this scenario, only an ellipsis.
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When writing a narrative citation for a work with two authors, use “and” between the authors’ names rather than an ampersand. Immediately follow the authors’ names with the year of publication in parentheses. For example:
However, for a parenthetical citation, use an ampersand between the authors’ names, followed immediately by a comma and the year of publication. For example:
When citing a work with three or more authors, include the first named author, followed by “et al.” and the year of publication. In a narrative citation, this will look like:
And here’s an example of this in a parenthetical citation:
For direct quotations, you should also include the page number(s) along with the names and year.
Ensure your academic paper follows all current APA guidelines by having it professionally proofread by our experts. Send in your free sample of 500 words or less today!
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