Now, when a third (or fourth, or fifth) author joins the party, MLA says: keep it chill. Use the first author’s name followed by “et al.”—Latin for “and others.” Think of it as your favorite band’s lead singer doing all the talking while the rest jam in the background.
So in your text: Garcia et al. discovered that cats rule the internet. In parentheses: (Garcia et al. 42). It’s efficient, elegant, and it keeps your sentence from looking like a phonebook. Less is more, baby.
