Referencing and Writing

Citing References

Full documentation of your references is an essential part of any essay or research presentation you write. There are two reasons for this:

• To verify your information.

It enables the reader to follow up the source of ideas, interpretations, and information contained in your essay. Referencing enables whatever information you use to be independently checked. Basically if you say you obtained your information from page 187 of a certain text, then the reader should be able to consult the same page in the book to find the information or quote that you have used from that page.

• To give credit where it is due.

It is important in academic essays to give credit where it is due. Referencing makes it clear when you are drawing your own conclusions from the evidence presented, or where you are quoting or paraphrasing from another person’s work. There are many different styles of referencing - Harvard (Author-Date or AGPS), Chicago, APA, MLA, and Vancouver to name a few. Each of these styles subscribes to various rules for the presentation of intext references and bibliographies. Your Course Outline lists the style to be used within a subject. If not, check with your lecturer. Within Renwick College APA is the style used.

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Plagiarism

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is:

• using someone else's ideas or words without giving credit to the author
• changing or rearranging words from a quotation and not giving credit to the author
• not using your own words when writing your essay
• not providing references or citations to the works you used and consulted
  

Why provide in-text references, citation (reference) lists and a bibliography?

• To give credit where it is due
• So that your work can be independently checked
• To allow other researchers to quickly locate your source of information

When do you need to reference?

Reference whenever you:

• quote the exact words of another's work
• change the word order in a quotation from another's work
• paraphrase (closely summarise) from another's work
• use an idea that is directly based on another's work

What is a Citation, a Reference List, and a Bibliography?

• A Citation or reference is where, written within your essay, you refer to a quotation taken from another source, or you paraphrase another person's ideas.
• A Reference List is an alphabetical list of the sources you have quoted from (cited) in your essay
• A Bibliography is an alphabetical list of the sources you consulted or read for your essay - books, magazines, newspapers, CD-ROMs, Internet, interviews, etc.

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