UNDERSTANDING GRAMMAR – 5
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ETC, AND ET AL.
Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat singh etc. sacrificed their lives for the freedom movement of India.
Does this etc. sound respectable.?
No , this small usage spoiled the respect which the sentence wanted to show.
This should have been – Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chnadra Bose, Bhagat Sing et al. sacrificed their lives for the sake of the nation.
So, “et al.” is used to indicate a continuation of a list of people , while “etc.” is used to indicate a list of items.
‘Et al” is an abbreviation for et alia means ‘and others”. Whereas “ et cetera” which is Latin phrase that means ‘ and the rest’.