In your work you may sometimes need to cite two (or more) publications published by the same author in the same year. To help your reader distinguish between the items in the text, you can allocate lower case letters after the publication date.
The first source you cite would have a lower case a after the year and the second source would have a lower case b (and so on if there were further sources with the same author and date).
In-text citation example:
While effective listening skills are key to communication in nursing practice (Ali, 2018a) it is also important to consider the power of non-verbal communication skills when engaging with patients (Ali, 2018b).
The corresponding reference list would look like this:
Ali, M. (2018a) 'Communication 5: effective listening and observation skills', Nursing Times, 114(4), pp. 60-61.
Ali, M. (2018b) 'Communication skills 3: non-verbal communication', Nursing Times, 114(2), pp. 41-42.
