Ampersand Usage: The & vs. 'and' Rule Your Committee Will Enforce

APA uses a simple rule for multi-author citations: inside parentheses, use the ampersand (&). In narrative text, use the word "and." So it's "(Smith & Jones, 2020)" but "Smith and Jones (2020) found..." This applies to all multi-author citations, whether there are two authors or you're listing several before et al.

The logic behind this rule is readability. Parenthetical citations are already compact and symbol-heavy, so the ampersand fits naturally. In running text, the word "and" reads more naturally than a symbol. Your committee cares because inconsistency in this rule — using "and" inside parentheses or "&" in narrative text — suggests you're not paying attention to the style guide.

This is another error that reference managers usually handle correctly, but manual citations and copy-paste from reference lists introduce mistakes. The most common error is using "&" in narrative citations because that's how it appears in your reference list. Remember: the reference list always uses "&" regardless of context. In-text citations switch between "&" and "and" based on position.