Why do you need to reference your work?
- If you write an essay, report or piece of coursework, you will often have looked at books, websites and leaflets to find useful information. These are called ‘sources’
- It is expected that any sources you use when writing up your assignments are clearly indicated. This is called ‘referencing’ or ‘citing sources’.
- Failure to reference your sources is PLAGIARISM. Plagiarism is claiming other people’s thoughts or data as your own. This is taken very seriously, and there have been cases of students thrown out of university for plagiarism.
It is important to reference your sources because
- people who read your work may want to follow up your ideas
- your teacher needs to know what is your own work, and what your ideas are
- your teacher wants to give you marks for extra reading and being able to incorporate other people’s ideas into your own work.
Referencing sources
There are three main questions that need to be asked when constructing references and bibliographies.
- Who is it by?
- What is it called?
- How/when/where was it published?
Most of this information is available on the front cover of the book or on the inside page.
It is very useful if you write down this information before you even open the book. This makes it easier to construct your references and bibliographies later on.
The Harvard system of referencing
Each time you use a source of information you will have to make two entries in your work
A short entry in the text itself
- A short entry in the text itself.
- A full record of the source in your bibliography.
Harvard system of referencing in the text
If a source is mentioned (or an idea from a source) in the text you need to state the author of the source, it’s date of publication and the page number where that idea comes from. All of this information is placed in brackets immediately after the text to which it is describing.
i.e., There are a number of milestones that help to chart a child’s development. (Baldwin; 1993, p.68)
If you directly quote a source, you should enclose the text with speech marks. The same information about the source of the information is included in brackets after the quote.
i.e., “Milestones are rough guidelines of what the average child can be expected to do at certain stages of development.” (Baldwin; 1993, p.68)
Bibliographies
A bibliography is an alphabetical list of sources (with time and place of publication referred to) that were used in preparing a document etc.
It is important to get the order right when constructing a bibliography.
- Author (surname first, then initials)
- Date (in brackets)
- Title of the source
- Place of publication
- Publishers name
i.e., Baldwin, D. (1993) All about children: an introduction to child development. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Citing books
In the text:
(Author; Date, Page number)
In your bibliography:
1. Author [Surname, then initials]
2. Year of publication (in brackets)
3. Full book title.
4. Place of publication and publisher’s name
Citing websites
In the text:
(Author, Date)
In your bibliography:
1. Author [Surname, then initials]
2. Year when written (in brackets)
3. Title [of the webpage]
4. Publisher
5. Available from http://www….. [quote the url]
Citing journal articles
In the text:
(Author; Date, Page number)
In your bibliography:
1. Author [Surname, then initials]
2. Year of publication (in brackets)
3. Title of article
4. Title of journal
5. Volume of journal
6. Pages for the article
Help is at hand.
Think you’ll never get everything in the right order?
Have a look at Citation Machine
