Jr., Sr., and Other Suffixes in APA Style
by Timothy McAdoo
Henry W. “Indiana” Jones Jr.: “I like Indiana."
Henry W. Jones Sr.: “We named the dog Indiana.”
Much like the intrepid Dr. Jones, when writing a paper, you never know what riddles you’ll have to solve. (Unlike Indiana, you can always ask the APA Style team for help!) I hope to clear up one such riddle here: how to handle suffixes in author names.
Quick Summary (in case you need to make a dramatic exit before the end of this post!)*
"Jr.," “III,” or other suffixes are not included with in-text citations, but they are included in the reference list entries.
References
In a reference, include the suffix, set off with commas, as shown here:
| Jones, H. W., Jr., & Jones, H. W., Sr. (1941). My adventures in Alexandretta. The Journal of Fictional Archeology, 1, 1–19. doi:46.34262/56637 |
| Belloq, R. (1926). Shiny things. In B. C. Explorateur Jr. (Ed.), Artifacts lost and found [E-reader version] (pp. 210–223). Paris, France: Gaxotte Publishing. |
You may note that in the first example, because the names in the author portion of a reference are inverted, commas are needed before the suffix. In the second example, the suffix is in the editor name; because names are not inverted in the editor portion of the reference, the comma is not needed. More examples can be found in this post on citing book chapters in APA Style.
If the suffixes are numerals, alphabetize the entries by these numerals. For example,
| Lucas, G., I. (2001). Tinkering with details (Vol. 1). Hollywood, CA: A.G.F.F.A. Publishing. |
| Lucas, G., II. (2012). You can always change it later. Hollywood, CA: A.G.F.F.A. Publishing. |
Citations
For the citation in your text, do not include the suffix. Just use the author’s last name as you normally would:
| ...which would lead to a fear of snakes (Jones & Jones, 1941). Jones and Jones (1941) also found that... |
*If you’re feeling adventurous, you can find the keys to this post throughout the Publication Manual. The fourth bullet on page 184 explains how to punctuate suffixes within a reference, and page 204 has an example with “Jr.” (Example 24). The guideline for alphabetizing appears in the second bullet at the top of page 182.
