User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-88790-20130503164346/@comment-865955-20130514150243

I've used "et.al." a number of times myself, mostly for the space & time saving reasons mentioned above. Listing every story in which a Dalek shot a sentient being, for example, could indeed become cumbersome; and, on the off chance (haha) that the Daleks reappear in the future, there could be a lot of back work to be done adding in the new story as citation for the relevant areas. Citing only notable examples is fine of course, but very subjective. Eventually, we'll end up with a list of every time a Dalek gun was ever fired. In the body of an article, that kind of list is pretty distracting.

Would something along the lines of footnote citations be an alternative? It still ends up taking up space, but it's at the end of an article rather than in-line. I'm not totally sold on the notion myself, it's just a thought.