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Should "et al." be written in italics, or not?

My impression was that it was, but http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~jowens/commonerrors.html and http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/02/et-al-when-and-how.html says it should not be italicised, but I previously thought it should be, as does this side-remark in this answer.

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Golden Cuy
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  • Yes it is not necessary to italicize it. –  Jun 24 '14 at 07:36
  • It is often written in italics (as are other Latin expressions), but I think that this is a matter of style. In science, it clearly depends on the journal. Note that for some reason, "e.g." and "i.e." are not printed in italics even in journals that use italics for "et al.". – painfulenglish Jun 24 '14 at 08:12
  • Relat5ed (possible dupe): http://english.stackexchange.com/q/1289/8019. – Tim Lymington Jun 24 '14 at 11:50
  • @TimLymington the accepted answer of that question has only a single sentence on italicisation of foreign words. – Golden Cuy Jun 25 '14 at 01:56

1 Answers1

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Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (p.365) says that commonly used Latin words and abbreviations should not be italicized, and lists "et al." as an example.

GMB
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    Any idea about other style guides, whether they recommend the same. or the contrary? Would be interesting to get a broader overview... – codeling May 23 '20 at 18:40