Quick editing question about 'and' and '&'.

[MirandaGoshawk]

I'm editing a document in which the author quotes from books & then puts his sources, but where there are more than one author sometimes he uses 'and' and sometimes '&', e.g. both 'Jones & Rotherham, 1988' and 'Fleabitten and Haugh, 1973' (NB not real authors.) I know that I have to decide on whether it's Jones & Rotherham or Jones and Rotherham, but is it OK to mix the two with different authors, as in the first example? It's US English, if that makes any difference. And life's too short for me to track down every book to find out what's written on the cover!

TIA for your advice.

I think I'd do the '&' for all the citations and then use 'and' in the proper prose.

That's probably loads and loads of work unless you can do a find and replace!

Sorry

There aren't that many citations. So you mean 'Blahblahblah' (Smith & Jones, 1993) but
In their seminal work Bullying on Website Forums, Smith and Jones (1993) state that... ?

Another thought - obviously I haven't seen the books he's quoting from, so I don't know if the ones that have two authors use '&' or 'and' on the covers. But I feel I should use one or the other all the time, ie with all of them. What do you reckon? This is starting to drive me nuts!

Oh gosh, I can really see your dilemma. I think I would just have a quick check on that 'well-known book website' to see what a couple of them are.

However, on further reflection, I think I'd put all the ones in parentheses as '&' and the ones in the text as 'and'. I don't think it matters whether it's US or English English - it's more what looks tidy!

OK. That seems logical. Thanks - much appreciated!

No problem - glad it helped!