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APA 7th edition - Reference guide: Number of authors listed

Reference guide for APA 7th edition, a guide intended for students at the Univesity of Fort Hare to learn how format references according to the APA 7th edition style.

Number of authors listed

Number of authors listed

The maximum number of authors listed differs between the in-text reference and the entry in the reference list. The maximum number of authors per source stated in the in-text references is two. If the source has three or more authors, state only the first author followed by “et al.”. The maximum number of authors per source stated in the reference list is twenty. If the source has twenty-one or more authors, list the first nineteen authors followed by three dots (. . .) and then the last author.


Examples:

In-text reference  
(Beletsky, 1996) According to Beletsky (1996), the…
(Fiscus & Fath, 2019) Fiscus and Fath (2019) mean...

(Chiara et al., 2019)

(Gow et al., 2019)

Chiara et al. (2019) found...

Gow et al. (2019) state that…

Reference list

Beletsky, L. (1996). The red-winged blackbird: The biology of a strongly polygenous songbird. Academic press.  

Chiara, V., Portugal, F. R., & Jeanson, R. (2019). Social intolerance is a consequence, not a cause, of dispersal in spiders. PLoS Biology, 17(7), Article e3000319. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000319

Fiscus, D. A., & Fath, B. D. (2019). Foundations for sustainability: A coherent framework of life-environment relations. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2016-0-00343-1

Gow, E. A., Knight, S. M., Bradley, D. W., Clark, R. G., Winkler, D. W., Bélisle, M., Berzins, L. L., Blake, T., Bridge, E. S., Burke, L., Dawson, R. D., Dunn, P. O., Garant, D., Holroyd, G., Horn, A. G., David J. T. Hussell, D. J. T., Lansdorp, O., Laughlin, A. J.,  . . . Norris, D. R. (2019). Effects of spring migration distance on tree swallow reproductive success within and among flyways. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7, Article 380. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2019.00380