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.
The abbreviation et al. (from the Latin et alii) means and others.. Et al. is most commonly used in bibliographic citations and in informal or technical writing to suggest the logical continuation of a list of people (not, as a general rule, of things). A period belongs after the l in et al. (but not after the t).