• 3-minute read
• 21st June 2016

Citing Multiple Works by the Same Author from the Same Year

Referencing is complicated even at the best of times, but gets particularly silly when you need to cite multiple works by the same author that were all published in the same year.

The issue is that many referencing systems use the author’s surname and the year of publication in citations. But if the author and year are the same for multiple sources, your reader won’t be able to tell sources apart!

Luckily, most referencing systems also have a way of handling this. In today’s post, we run through the basics of citing multiple works by the same author using Harvard, APA and MLA.

Harvard and APA Referencing

Harvard and APA referencing both use the system of adding a letter after the year of publication. Two UNHCR reports from 2008, for instance, would be cited as (UNHCR, 2008a) and (UNHCR, 2008b) respectively:

Refugee numbers increased in the 1990s (UNHCR, 2008a) and continued to do so after the turn of the century (UNHCR, 2008b).

These are then added to the reference list with the same letters:

UNHCR (2008a). Displaced Peoples (1990-1999). Geneva: UNHCR.

UNHCR (2008b). Refugee World: A Twenty-first Century Challenge. Geneva: UNHCR.

The main difference is that APA specifies listing multiple sources from the same author and year alphabetically by title, whereas Harvard typically suggests listing them in the order they appear in your work.

APA reference lists also typically use a hanging indent for each line after the first in an entry.

MLA Referencing

MLA citations typically include just the author’s surname and any relevant page numbers, so it’s necessary to adapt them when citing more than one work by a single author (not just when they’re published in the same year).

To do this, simply use a shortened version of the source title in the citations:

Refugee numbers increased in the 1990s (UNHCR, Displaced Peoples 38) and have continued to do so since 2000 (UNHCR, Refugee World 209).

Titles of longer works in citations should be italicised. Shorter works (such as chapters from an edited book or journal articles) should be given in ‘inverted commas’. If the author is named in the text, meanwhile, you do not need to repeat this information in the citations.

These works are added to the ‘Works Cited’ list at the end of your document in alphabetical order by title. For each entry after the first, the author’s name should be replaced with three hyphens:

UNHCR. Displaced Peoples (1990-1999). UNHCR, 2008.

– – – . Refugee World: A Twenty-First Century Challenge. UNHCR, 2008.