2

I am trying to figure out why, when using biblatex with style = apa, there is no .et al abbreviation in my text with more than 3 authors. I cannot think of any plausible explanation, maybe someone sees smth that I don't in my latex preamble.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}


\usepackage[
backend = biber, 
style = apa, 
defernumbers=false,
uniquelist=true]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{english}{american-apa}

\usepackage{xpatch}

\AtEveryCitekey{\ifciteseen{}{\clearfield{namehash}}}

\xpatchbibmacro{cite}
  {\printnames{labelname}}
  {\ifciteseen
     {\printnames{labelname}}
     {\printnames[][1-99]{labelname}}}
  {}
  {}

 \xpatchbibmacro{textcite}
  {\printnames{labelname}}
  {\ifciteseen
     {\printnames{labelname}}
     {\printnames[][1-99]{labelname}}}
  {}
  {}


\addbibresource{dummy_lit.bib} %name of the .bib file with my references

\begin{document}

I would like to have the abbreviation "et. al" in the running text whenever the references have more than three authors and not this:

\textcite{Author2000}


\end{document}

This is my bib entry stored in a separate file called: dummy_lit.bib

 @Article{Author2000,
   author       =  {Last name1, Firstname 1 and Last name2, First name2 and Last name3, First name3 and Last name4, First name4 and Last name5, First name5},
   title        =  {The title of my article},
   journal      =  {The journal},
   year         =  {2000},
   volume       =  {1},
   number       =  {2},
   pages        =  {1-10},
   keywords     =  {ref}
}
Jo-Achna
  • 501

1 Answers1

5

APA style requires that up to five authors are shown in full on a first citation, lists of three to five authors are only abbreviated to "et al." on subsequent citations. See for example http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/11/the-proper-use-of-et-al-in-apa-style.html or 6.11 and 6.12 in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

And indeed if you cite an entry with five authors twice, you get.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[backend = biber, style = apa]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\textcite{herrmann}

\textcite{herrmann}
\end{document}

Herrmann, Öfele, Schneider, Herdtweck, and Hoffmann (2006)//Herrmann et al. (2006)

So this is expected behaviour of the APA style as implemented by biblatex-apa.

If you want to change that behaviour, have a look at Setting maxcitenames for biblatex-apa and set \apamaxcitenames to 3 in the example.

Note that your two \xpatchbibmacro calls do nothing, because the patched code does not exist in the macros your are patching.

moewe
  • 175,683