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in text citations in university essays

eg in text citation (Sammy et al., 2019)
and my bibliography will contain all the names of the contributors.

To meet the word count I usually cut out the et al. in my in text citations
Will I get penalised for this??

Reply 1

cheadle

If you do that, your in-text citation will be incomplete. Plus, if it's a direct quote there should be a page number (if available). If I was marking your essay, I'd certainly notice and the % for referencing would reflect this.

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 2

gjd800

As above, I'd not award marks for this.

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 3

Lancaster Student Ambassador

Official Rep

Original post by SamRands123

Hi @SamRands123

Unfortunately removing "et. al.," would make the citation invalid, as it would be implying there was only a single author, so it's important to include! I'd recommend looking through your essay/report and seeing if there are any filler words you can cut or sentences you can reword to reduce your word count as most mark schemes include a certain % for correct referencing.

It may be worth double checking the referencing format that your university/lecturer wants. In my biochemistry course at Lancaster I am asked to use Harvard referencing with in text citations in the format you showed above, however, one lecturer allowed us to use superscript numbers, like on Wikipedia, if we preferred, so our in text citations could use less words (but this has only happened to me once).

I hope I could help!
Rebecca (Lancaster Student Ambassador) :smile: