The Editorial Committee talked about displayForm but in the MODS guidelines it has the following definition:

"The unstructured form of the name as given on the resource."

with additional guidance:

"The <displayForm> element makes it possible to display personal names in direct order rather than inverted.

For some applications, contractual agreements require that the form of the name provided on the resource be provided.

If the display name is an entire statement of responsibility, <displayForm> may be indicated in a note (with type="statement of responsibility") along with any other text in the statement of responsibility and also repeated here if desired."

So in the case of et al. it is the lack of any names, with et al. as a placeholder (which is not the name given on the resource). We didn't think this fit the definition.

Rebecca

On Jan 23, 2013, at 4:21 PM, Saašha Metsärantala wrote:

Hello!

an empty element, as in <etal/>, or
I consider that this is a good idea.

for example <etal>et al.</etal>; in this case
the content is what is suggested for display.
In this case, the semantics of the text content of the etal element reminds me of the semantics of the text content of the displayForm element.

<displayForm> MAY NOT occur.
Are there some reasons not to allow the occurrence of displayForm and instead require that the etal element should be empty? What I wonder is: Are there big enough semantic differences between the text content of the displayForm element and that of the intended etal element to put this text in two different elements?

Regards!

Saašha,