How do I stop Mendeley referencing in text citations with two names before et al. ? It ONLY does this for references with 3 authors

Question

My in text citations must be harvard referencing but with et al. if there are more that 2 authors. Listing only 1 name followed by et al. : (Smith et al., 2009) However, Mendeley is writing the names of two authors before et al. but only when there are 3 authors in total. How do i stop this? These are my inline citation et al. settings:

et-al-min 3, et-al-use-first 1, et-al-subsequent-min (left blank), et-al-subsequent-use-first (left blank)

In text these are the citations I get: 1 author (Smith, 2009), 2 authors (Smith and Jones, 2008), 3 authors (Smith, Jones, et al., 2007) <<<< how do I stop this??, 4 authors or more (Smith et al., 2004)

Answer 1

If you want just the first author followed by et al when there are two or more authors you should set et-al-min 2, et-al-use-first 1, et-al-subsequent-min (blank), et-al-subsequent-use-first (blank)

As per CSL specification use of et-al-min / et-al-use-first attributes enable et-al abbreviation. If the number of names in a name variable matches or exceeds the number set on et-al-min, the rendered name list is truncated after reaching the number of names set on et-al-use-first.

So that would mean it first uses one name (et-al-use-first 1) when there are a minimum of two authors (et-al-min 2) before showing et al.

Answer 2

I had the same problem (seemingly), but it turned out that it was caused not directly because of CSL regarding et-al settings: It results from two papers of the same author and year in my bibliography. If I delete one of the paper citations, then this issue does not appear any more.