Writing Style and Usage

Question

Is it OK to use the term, "etc." when writing lists of people?

Answer 1

When you are recording references, you use et al. (Ex. Smith, J., Cook, C., Dragon, T., et al)

Answer 2

In a nutshell, no! For example, a sentence such as, "Some of my favorite classical musicians are Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, etc." is completely unacceptable.

You can't include an unnamed person into a list, because people are unique individuals. We need to know the exact people you are referring to for the sentence to make perfect sense. A better way to handle situations like this is to rewrite the sentence, i.e., "Some of my favorite classical musicians are Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, and other composers whose music sounds like theirs."