Some sources will have several authors. If there are two authors, write (Surname A and Surname B, Year). In your text, your citation could look like this:
Example: A number of practitioners have tackled the issue of teaching information skills in the university setting (Webb and Powis, 2004).
If there are more than two authors, you can use et al. which means ‘and others’ in Latin, e.g. (Surname et al., Year). For three or more authors, don’t list all of them, just the first one named: …There has been some debate amongst medical practitioners on the issue (Williamson et al., 2008) …
However, in your reference list you must make sure you give credit to all the authors (don’t use et al.). Instead, write all the authors in the order that they appear on your source as shown below:
Williamson, G. R., Jenkinson, T. and Proctor-Childs, T. (2008) Nursing in contemporary healthcare practice. Exeter: Learning Matters.
Remember: et al. should be in italics with a full stop, as it is an abbreviation. We only use the comma after et al. in certain circumstances. When using the authors’ names in a sentence, we do not include the comma unless the grammar of the sentence needs it:
Chi et al. (2022) suggest…
Chi et al., (2022) although cautious, identified a link…
When citing the names and year in brackets, always use the comma: (Chi et al., 2022).