Talk:et al.

Merge of page?

So, I've actually found this topic as 2 distinct Google results... http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/et_alii and http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/et_al

I'd suggest the canonical page should be the unabbreviated et_alii but the content on this page seems slightly more complete. I'm too new here to make the changes myself but if someone with more experience would care to weigh in? 86.161.27.250 21:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Are "et al." and "etc." really synonymous?

Are et al. and etc. really synonymous? To me they seem quite different; et al. seems to mean "I've listed the most important examples, but wish to mention that there are others (that you can probably look up)", whereas etc. seems to mean "I've listed a few representative examples in the hopes that you'll get the gist". Am I trying to pack too much meaning into short Latin abbreviations? :-) —Ruakh_TALK 00:46, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably not, et. al. is mostly used for animate (i.e. for humans), etc. for inanimate. I've never seen "et. al." used for inanimate incomplete listings --Ivan Štambuk 00:53, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

That's definitely a strong tendency as well, but the entry already addresses that; I think there's an additional distinctive tendency, and was trying to pin it down. I might just be crazy, though. ;-) —Ruakh_TALK 01:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at Fowler's 2nd and 3rd, MW3 and MW Online, and Chicago MoS 14th. (Also Cassel's and Lewis and Short for Latin) MoS14 makes a clear recommendation of et al. for lists of authors in bibliographic citations. Other than that I can not see much ground for distinction. Even in a scholarly context the abbreviations don't specify the inflected form being abbreviated as to gender, case or number. etc. could be (deprecated template usage) et ceteri or (deprecated template usage) et ceteros. If, by convention, it is taken to only mean "other things" and we ignore both Latin etymology and popular usage (which rarely makes fine distinctions of this type), there might be a case for distinctions. It would take someone of a more scholastic turn of mind than me to formulate the distinction, though I might appreciate it once found. DCDuring TALK 01:46, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that the supposed additional tendency stems from this separation of usage, et. al. is used mostly for disambiguation purposes when you list e.g. one author of a work and say a year of publication (his name is just as (ir)relevant as those of others, it's the work that matters), etc. for listing the commonest, example cases, that make a point in question clear. --Ivan Štambuk 08:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Is that a difference in meaning or a difference for usage notes? I'm wondering whether the "abbreviation" part of the definition is appropriate. Should that just be part of the etymology? Trying to focus on the possible inflections seems misleading. In principle, it would be more useful to know how the abbreviations were used over time in ME and English. DCDuring TALK 12:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, they obviously mean different things because they obviously translate differently from Latin, but the difference in usage is orthogonal to that. I.e. I think that both the tendency to equalize etc. and et. al. should be mentioned in the ====Usage notes==== (citations of loose usages of both abbreviations would be great), as well the preference of one form over another in certain contexts. Example sentences should illustrate the literate usage of et. al. and etc, per your reference above. --Ivan Štambuk 17:16, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary as to the Latin, in the closest usage to the ones in question ceterus and alius are synonyms, meaning "remainder". OTOH, the usage difference is clear. Also, if we take etc. to be the translation only of the form et cetera, that does only refer to neuter plurals, which we interpret as "things", apparently following the Latin, which used cetera as a substantive. In Latin et cetera was sometimes used as we sometimes use it to mean "and so forth", not actually merely for list completion. Perhaps that is what Ruakh was thinking of. DCDuring TALK 17:47, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Adverb?

What makes this an adverb? DCDuring TALK 15:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

An adverb is anything that describes anything that is not a noun. Adjectives describe nouns, adverbs describe everything else (not just verbs). The adverb basket is a useful place for linguists to dump words that don't always end in -ly but can't otherwise be easily labelled. Words like 'yesterday'. When we say 'Smith et al first discovered X', et al is not describing Smith, it is describing how he discovered X (i.e. with the help of others). The same sentence would be re-written 'Smith collaboratively discovered X' without much change in meaning. Thus 'et al' is probably an adverb.183.88.62.136 16:33, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Really? I would think the sentence would be re-written 'Smith, Jones, and Fredericks discovered X', making it a pronoun. Sinasohn (talk) 15:23, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Pronunciation

/eɪˈtɑːl/, seriously? Does anybody actually say that? I've never in my life heard Latin et pronounced /eɪt/ in any English-speaking context.

Pronunciation II

I often hear "et al." pronounced as "and coworkers" in a scientific context (similar to pronouncing "e.g." as "for example" rather than "/ˌiːˈdʒiː/"). Should that be added to the pronunciation? And can anyone else confirm this?--131.152.137.39 13:29, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Number of authors & First citation

For example, for the APA style https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/11/the-proper-use-of-et-al-in-apa-style.html Backinstadiums (talk) 13:04, 26 December 2022 (UTC)