Style Guides
Basic Style Guides
- APA : How to Cite Information From the Internet and the World Wide Web
- Turabian Style: Sample Footnotes and Bibliographic Entries
Other Style Guide
- Style Manuals
- APA Citation Guide
- Chicago Citation Guide
- How to Acknowledge What You've Read--Harvard Style
- How to Cite Film, TV, and Radio Productions
- MLA Citation Guide
- Online! A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources - overview of MLA, APA,Chicago, and CBE styles
- Turabian Citation Guide
More MLA Style Guides and Assistance
- Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet - expands on MLA-style citations of electronic sources, with particular attention to 4 "ambiguities"
Style Manuals on Paper Reserve
- Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed.
BF76.7 .P83 c.2 - MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 4th ed.
LB2369 .G53 1995 - A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations - Turabian, 5th ed.
LB2369 .T87 1987 c.2
You can ask for these at the Circulation Desk
Referencing
When you write an assignment or essay, it is very important to acknowledge the source of anyone else's ideas that you have used or mentioned in your work. If you don't, you could be accused of plagiarism - a charge that is taken very seriously by the academic world.
This guide will help you understand what referencing is and why you should take it seriously, and gives you a few helpful hints on how to do it with a minimum of pain!
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism occurs when the work of another person, or persons, is used and presented as one's own, unless the source of each quotation or piece of borrowed material is acknowledged with an appropriate citation.
Academic work is not limited to your own views and opinions, but is developed by thinking about ideas put forward by others. It is acceptable and appropriate to synthesise the work of others, so long as you acknowledge your sources accurately. These sources can be books, journal articles, newspaper reports, television or radio programs, conference proceedings, personal communications, email messages or web pages. In fact anything at all!
Of course it's important to keep a note of all the sources you've used so that you can acknowledge and reference them properly.
What is referencing?
Referencing is a standard method of acknowledging your sources of information and ideas that you have used in your assignment in a way that identifies the source. This enables the reader to check your sources of information, to verify any quotations you have used and to follow-up your 'cited' author's arguments.
You must reference direct quotations, facts and figures as well as ideas and theories from both published and unpublished works.
Referencing styles
There are many acceptable forms or 'styles' of referencing.
Some commonly used styles are the Harvard, Chicago Author-Date and the APA (American Psychological Association) referencing styles, but there are many others. In these styles you acknowledge an idea by placing the author's name and the year of publication at the point in your essay where you refer to it. This is called the in-text citation.
Here is an example of an in-text citation:
In 2005, the Arctic ice cap was at its smallest in 100 years (Lippsett, 2005).
The reference list at the end of your assignment then gives the full details of all (with a few exceptions) the in-text citations. The example below is a journal article in the APA style.
Lippsett, L. (2005). Is global warming changing the Arctic. Oceanus,
44(3), 24-25.
Referencing styles follow strict rules of punctuation and indentation and you will need to refer to a style sheet to get your referencing style correct. You will find links to style sheets for the Chicago Author-Date, APA, Harvard and other styles at the top and bottom of this page.
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