General ⇒ apacite: decrease number of mentioned authors

[Noviomagum]

I'm using apacite for the citations in my PhD-thesis. I am not completely satisfied with the APA-standards, however. Articles that have 6 or less authors are cited using all author names. I know this is what APA says, but I want it different. What I want is that a maximum of, say, 3 authors are mentioned in the text. So, in stead of:

Burning desire sets my soul on fire (Hendrix, Cox & Miles, 1970).
The queen! She's wicked (Grumpy, Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful & Sneezy, 1937).

I would like to get:

Burning desire sets my soul on fire (Hendrix, Cox & Miles, 1970).
The queen! She's wicked (Grumpy et al., 1937).

So if there are 3 or less authors: name them all. If it are more: use "et al.".

My question is: what (and where) should I change in the apacite package to get what I want?


("aren't there seven dwarfs?", I hear you think? yes, but Dopey is not talking, remember?)

[corderin]

In your case, I will typ only 3 authors in the .bib file authors field this way:

author={John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen and others}


You will get what you want...and you will spare time writing the rest of authors if you don´t want to get them...

[Noviomagum]

Yes, this would solve the problem of how the authors appear in the text, but the bibliography would become incomplete, because that is the place where the full list of authors should be available... There must be some variable hard coded in apacite, because they have got it working for 6 authors, but I cannot find it...

[Stefan Kottwitz]

To not let this topic stay without a hint to the solution: See the post of Lian Tze Lim: “Why is LaTeX doing all the APA citations wrong?”

Stefan

[Noviomagum]

Wow, it's impressive to receive a suggestion after all those years. Thanks!

(unfortunately, I've finished my thesis in 2010, so it's a little too late...)