Post History
Suppose I have the following references to literature: Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999) Miller, F., & Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as...
#3: Attribution notice added
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#2: Initial revision
Suppose I have the following references to literature: - Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999) - Miller, F., & Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as: Miller & Smith (2002) - Miller, A., & Smith, J. (2003): … Referred to as: Miller & Smith (2003) - Miller, B., Smith, J., & Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2001) - Miller, B., Jones, K., & Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2004) How to sort those entries? “Logic” (?) says to first use - Miller, A., & Smith, J. (2003): … Referred to as: Miller & Smith (2003) because all authors are “Millers” but Arthur’s given name begins with the first letter of the alphabet. - Miller, B., Jones, K., & Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2004) would follow, because “B” comes after “A” and “Jones” before “Smith”, - Miller, B., Smith, J., & Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2001) - Miller, F., & Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as: Miller & Smith (2002) and - Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999) would follow. On the other hand, practically would sort as follows: - Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999) because this is a “one author reference”. - Miller, F., & Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as: Miller & Smith (2002) Before - Miller, A., & Smith, J. (2003): … Referred to as: Miller & Smith (2003) Because these are two-author references and “Miller & Smith (2002)” is chronologically before “Miller & Smith (2003)”. From the reference “Miller & Smith” the given names are not known to the reader (before looking in the references), thus sorting after the known year would make sense. Therefore also - Miller, B., Smith, J., & Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2001) would go before - Miller, B., Jones, K., & Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2004) Which sorting order is “better”/more common? Or is there another sort of ordering which makes more sense?! There is no style guide, required format, standard or something like that for the planned publication.