To a Frenchman, everything is a platitude that is not a paradox. The Bramleighs Of Bishop's Folly Charles James Lever A platitude that nobody has expressed and that nobody has acted on is a great truth. The Ghost in the White House Gerald Stanley Lee It is tolerated to-day for no other reason than that it has cornered the platitude market.
It is short for the Latin et alii ('and others'), which means and others.. For example, the phrase IBM, Microsoft, HP, et al. means IBM, Microsoft, HP and others or Carrâ¦uthers et al.- Carruthers and others.
For example, in a bibliography, rather than listing five authors of a scientific paper, we can list the first author's name and then use et al. for the remaining four authors. Et al. always refers to people--not things. Doug was suggesting the use of et al. to avoid greeting a list of people.