[Tex/LaTex] In-text citation with biblatex-apa not using et al. correctly? Two authors listed before et al

apa-stylebiberbiblatex

I'm writing my thesis, and have had the strangest behavior from just one in-text citation. I'm using biblatex/biber with the following setup:

\documentclass[letterpaper, 11pt, twoside, openright]{book}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa, 
            language=american, 
            backend=biber, 
            natbib=true, 
            hyperref=true, 
            uniquelist=true]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{Bibliography.bib}

I had been using bibtex/natbib earlier, hence the natbib=true, but swapped out all the \citep and \citet references for \parencite and \textcite.

The issue is with this entry:

@article{nowak2014,
    title={Tree and forest effects on air quality and human health in the {United States}},
    author={Nowak, David J. and Hirabayashi, Satoshi and Bodine, Allison and Greenfield, Eric},
    journaltitle={Environmental Pollution},
    volume={193},
    pages={119--129},
    year={2014},
    publisher={Elsevier}
}

This is the only work I have for Nowak in 2014. As you can see it has five authors, so, according to my best understanding of APA style, the first reference should list all authors and subsequent references should just list (Nowak, et al., 2014) or Nowak, et al. (2014).

But that is not what I get:

\parencite{nowak2014} yields (Nowak, Hirabayashi, Bodine, & Greenfield, 2014), but then

\parencite{nowak2014} subsequently yields (Nowak, Hirabayashi, et al., 2014), and

\textcite{nowak2014} yields Nowak, Hirabayashi, et al. (2014)

According to all the APA references I can find (for example), this is not the correct behavior. Is there something wrong with my setup or with my understanding of APA? All my references work correctly except this one. What's different?

Best Answer

The code you've posted, made into an MWE, does not produce the issue you are describing.

\documentclass[letterpaper, 11pt, twoside, openright]{book}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,
            language=american,
            backend=biber,
            natbib=true,
            hyperref=true,
            uniquelist=true]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{nowak2014,
    title={Tree and forest effects on air quality and human health in the {United States}},
    author={Nowak, David J. and Hirabayashi, Satoshi and Bodine, Allison and Greenfield, Eric},
    journaltitle={Environmental Pollution},
    volume={193},
    pages={119--129},
    year={2014},
    publisher={Elsevier}
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\parencite{nowak2014}

\parencite{nowak2014}

\textcite{nowak2014} 

\end{document}

non-problem

I am guessing that you have another entry where the first author is Nowak, the year is 2014 and there are other author(s). If so, uniquelist=true is responsible for the behaviour as it causes biblatex to ensure that labels uniquely identify bibliography entries. Without that, it would not be clear which Nowak et al. (2014) you had in mind. (Did you mean Nowak, Smith and Jones (2014) or did you mean Nowak, Hook and Waverly (2014)?)

However, without a proper example i.e. code we can use to reproduce the problem you are seeing, this must remain no more than a guess.

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