Someone told me that in APA style you treat parenthetical versus non-parenthetical in-text references separately when applying et al.
For example, let's say you're citing Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012).
You would write
Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith, Jones & Roberts, 2012).
That is, because in the second line it is the first time you mention the authors parenthetically, you have to restate the authors' names....
I always thought you treat parenthetical and non-parenthetical citations the same. So it would be the following:
Smith, Jones, and Roberts (2012) write that bla bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (Smith et al., 2012).
Can anyone confirm or clarify this for me?
The reference they gave for this rule is table 6.1 on page 177 of the APA Manual, 6th edition. They interpreted the column titled "First citation in-text" and "Parenthetical Format, first citation in text) as indicating that those two formats should be treated separately. However, this doesn't make sense to me and I think that APA would have made this more explicit if it had intended this interpretation.