The term et al. originates from the Latin and means “others”.
It is mainly used in academic writing, when citing an article that was written by more than two authors.
For example: Berg et al. instead of Berg, Yohanan, & Stein.
There is almost always a dot after the “al.” unless the authors’ guidelines state otherwise.
There is, however, never a dot after the “et”.
The following two examples show how “et al.” is used together with the publication year:
This page was written by Berg et al. (2022).
This page is very informative (Berg et al., 2020).