Fertilizer and other agricultural waste pouring into the Gulf of Mexico creates a larger and larger patch of lifeless ocean each year. Finally, the EPA has a plan of attack. Is it enough?
The abbreviation et al. means and others. It is most often used when a work you are citing in your paper has multiple authors. When a work has two authors, cite both names every time the reference occurs in the text.
Academic writing is full of little conventions that may seem opaque to the uninitiated. One of these is the Latin phrase et al., an abbreviation meaning âand others.â It is used to shorten lists of author names in text citations to make repeated referencing shorter and simpler.