Why Et Al. Errors Appear So Often in Malaysian Theses
If you ask Malaysian postgraduate students which part of APA citation rules they find most confusing, et al. usage comes up consistently. And it is easy to understand why — the rules changed between APA 6th and APA 7th editions, which means students who started their thesis under older guidance and then updated may have mixed rules. Getting et al. right in APA citation rules is not a trivial matter: examiners and journal reviewers notice these errors, and in a thesis with hundreds of citations, a systematic error in et al. usage creates a poor impression across the entire document.
This article focuses specifically on the rules for et al. in APA 7th edition, which is the standard required by most Malaysian public universities and many Malaysian journals.
The Basic Rule: Three or More Authors in APA 7th
In APA 7th edition, the rule for in-text citations is straightforward: for any work with three or more authors, you use et al. from the very first citation onwards. This is different from APA 6th, which required you to list all authors up to five for the first citation and then use et al. for subsequent citations. If you learned APA under the 6th edition, this is the most important change to internalise.
So in APA 7th, a source by Ali, Bala, and Chen is cited as (Ali et al., 2022) from the first time it appears in your text. You never write (Ali, Bala, & Chen, 2022) in the main text. Getting et al. right in APA citation rules begins with accepting this simplified rule and applying it consistently across every chapter.
When Two Sources By Different First Authors Share the Same Et Al. Pattern
One situation that trips up many Malaysian students is when two different sources, cited in the same year, produce identical et al. abbreviations. Imagine you are citing Ali, Bala, and Chen (2022) as well as Ali, Karim, and Lim (2022). Both would normally be written as “Ali et al. (2022)” — which is ambiguous. Readers cannot tell which source you mean.
APA 7th handles this by asking you to list as many authors as needed to distinguish the two references, followed by et al. In this case, you would write “Ali, Bala, et al. (2022)” for the first source and “Ali, Karim, et al. (2022)” for the second. This disambiguating rule is not widely understood among Malaysian students, but it is essential for clarity in a thesis that cites a large volume of literature.
Et Al. in Reference Lists Is Different From In-Text Citations
A common misconception is that et al. rules apply the same way in the reference list. They do not. In APA 7th, the reference list must include all authors up to twenty. Only if a source has twenty-one or more authors do you abbreviate, and even then the format is specific: list the first nineteen authors, insert an ellipsis (…), and then add the final author’s name. You do not write “Smith et al.” in a reference list entry.
Getting et al. right in APA citation rules therefore requires you to track two separate conventions: the abbreviated in-text form and the fully listed reference list form. Students who apply et al. in their reference lists are making an error, even if their in-text citations are correct.
Et Al. Punctuation and Formatting Details
The phrase “et al.” is an abbreviation of the Latin “et alii”, meaning “and others”. Because it is an abbreviation, it always ends with a period — “et al.” not “et al” without the period. This applies even when et al. appears mid-sentence or when it is followed by a year in brackets. So you write “Ali et al. (2022) found that…” and not “Ali et al (2022) found that…”.
In APA 7th, et al. is also not italicised. This is worth checking because some older style guides and older versions of reference management software used to italicise it. If your thesis was drafted with an older template or you copied references from older sources, you may have et al. formatted in italics throughout — a systematic error worth correcting before submission.
Checking Et Al. Usage When You Have Used Reference Management Software
Mendeley, Zotero, and EndNote can generate APA citations automatically, but they are not infallible when it comes to et al. rules in APA citation. Getting et al. right in APA citation rules means checking the output of these tools rather than accepting it uncritically. Software databases are sometimes not updated to reflect APA 7th changes, and the disambiguation rule for same-year same-first-author conflicts is particularly likely to be handled incorrectly by automated tools.
After generating your bibliography from reference management software, do a manual pass through your in-text citations and look for any ambiguous et al. entries — same first author, same year. Then check your reference list entries to confirm no et al. appears there. This takes time but is the kind of attention to detail that distinguishes a carefully prepared thesis from one submitted in a hurry.
Quick Checklist for Et Al. in APA 7th
Before your final submission, run through this checklist: every source with three or more authors should use et al. from the first citation; any two sources that produce the same et al. abbreviation need disambiguating author names; et al. never appears in your reference list entries; the abbreviation always ends with a period; and it is never italicised. Getting et al. right in APA citation rules is a detail, but it is exactly the kind of detail that signals to examiners whether a student has engaged seriously with academic conventions — and that impression matters at the viva.
