BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Abbreviated Author List when more than two Authors

[rasmerla]

I am rather new to LaTeX and I try to layout my master thesis using it. As APA is rather close to the citation style suggested by my university, I found the apacite package and it is almost perfect. However I have a problem.

I need the reference for a paper with three authors (or more) in the text to be formatted as "Name et al., 1998" rather than "Name, Name & Name, 1998". In other words: that "et al." is replacing all but the first author if more than two authors. I do realize that this is not according to APA standard, but that is how I want it to look.

Do any body know how to do this or could tell me where to make changes in the style file? I have been looking through it but know too little to understand what to do.

I have found some customization options in the manual of apacite, but nothing seems to cover this problem. I have searched for a solution, and searched through this forum without any success.

[kaiserkarl13]

According to the documentation (HINT: search for "et al."), there is a \shortcite command that prints the abbreviated author list, even the first time (default for 3-5 authors, again according to the documentation, is to print the full list the first time and the "et al." version subsequent times).

[rasmerla]

I feel embarrassed. I can't see how I missed that one. I even searched for "et al." in the documentation file.

How ever, thank you very much for the quick answer! I am very grate full!

[kaiserkarl13]

I feel embarrassed. I can't see how I missed that one. I even searched for "et al." in the documentation file.

How ever, thank you very much for the quick answer! I am very grate full!

Don't be---we all miss something. I've answered many questions (on this forum and in life and general) that could be answered by reading all the relevant documentation, but it was either missed or the documentation was 5000 pages long and it was faster to ask....

By the way (speaking of embarrassment...), the words are "however" and "grateful."