problem with printing multiple cck value inside node-type.tpl.php
Your code uses foreach which takes $node-&gt;field_authors[0,1,etc] and relays that value through $item.  If you want to know the key for the current field inside your foreach loop, rewrite the code like this:

$dots = '';
$i = 0;
foreach($node-&gt;field_authors as $key =&gt; $item) {
    $i++;
    if ($i &lt; count($node-&gt;field_authors)) { $dots = ',  '; } else { $dots = '.  '; };
    print '&lt;span&gt;'. $node-&gt;field_authors[$key]['view'].$dots.'&lt;/span&gt;';
    // note: $node-&gt;field_authors[$key] is the same as $item['view']
}