When analyzing a Harvard Business Review case study, how should I format in-text citations for sources with three or more authors?

For your APA 7th edition case study, the rule is straightforward: when you have a source with three or more authors, you should use the first author’s last name followed by et al. right from the very first time you cite it in your text. You don’t need to list every name, even if it’s the first time the source appears in your paper. APA shifted to this streamlined approach a few years ago to make reading smoother, so you’ll write the primary author’s name, add a comma, include the abbreviation et al. (which stands for the Latin phrase et alii, meaning and others), and then provide the year of publication. For example, if you were analyzing a strategic framework developed by Miller, Thompson, and Rodriguez, your in-text citation would simply look like (Miller et al., 2022). Keeping your citations clean like this helps your professor focus on your analysis rather than getting bogged down in a long string of names that disrupts the flow of your argument. It’s a common misconception that you need to list every author at least once to be thorough, but APA 7th edition is quite firm about prioritizing brevity in the body of your paper. The only time you’d ever list all the names is in your full reference list at the end of the document, where you provide the complete bibliographic details. In the text, however, et al. is your best friend. Just be careful with your punctuation; remember that there is a period after the al because it’s an abbreviation, and you should always include a comma before it if it’s inside the parentheses. If you’re writing a narrative sentence where the authors are the subject—like saying Miller et al. (2022) argued that market saturation is inevitable—you don’t need the extra comma after the name, just the parentheses around the year. One edge case to keep in mind is what happens if you have two different sources that end up looking identical once you shorten them to et al. For instance, if you have a 2021 paper by Miller, Thompson, and Rodriguez and another 2021 paper by Miller, Davis, and Smith, the shortened form (Miller et al., 2021) would be ambiguous. In that rare scenario, you’d list as many names as necessary to distinguish the two sources, adding the next author’s name until the citations are unique. Since these rules can sometimes be updated or interpreted differently depending on specific departmental requirements, it is always a smart move to double-check your professor’s syllabus or reach out to your school’s writing center if you’re unsure. For the most authoritative and current guidance on these formatting standards, you should always consult the official APA Style website or check in with your university’s library resources to ensure your paper meets the exact expectations for your specific course.