For each piece of work you produce you must record the sources from which you obtained your information and any quotes you have included. This may seem like a real hassle and waste of precious time when approaching a deadline, but accurate referencing is vital for the following reasons

• To allow the reader of your work to locate your sources of information
• To avoid the problems associated with PLAGIARISM. At school, college and university plagiarism is considered a serious offence and will usually result in your work being ungraded or failed. At university you will usually be subject to disciplinary procedures.
• To allow you to keep a record of sources in case you need to refer back to or locate previous research.

The simplest and most commonly used and recognised method of referencing is the Harvard system. In this system you do not have to worry about including footnotes or endnotes – you simply state the reference in the body of your text and in the BIBLIOGRAPHY at the end.

References in the body of your text

• It is not necessary to type quotes in italics. The preferred layout is single spaced and indented, with the rest of your text double spaced.
• After the quote or reference insert the following: (Author’s surname, date:page).

For example –

The car industry was one of the first to make widespread use of robots. The first robot was used by General Motors in the USA in 1962. There are now hundreds of thousands of robots in use worldwide. John Snow is of the opinion that this increase has had a severe detrimental effect on the unemployment rate around the world.

My father was trained in engineering and from the age of thirty was unable to get a job. These robots started taking over the country and taking labour away from those who needed it. It was a terrible time.

Snow, 2003:65

If the quote fits naturally into your sentence there is no need to segregate it from the rest of the text; simply place it in inverted commas and ensure you state the source of information in the same format.

For example -

Iain Banks has claimed that The Bridge is ‘the best of the bunch’ (Banks, 1986:52) as regards narrative innovation.

In the Bibliography

• The bibliography is a list of sources that comes at the very end of your work. Even though you have stated the reference for a quote in the text you must insert all details in the bibliography.
• It is not necessary to include texts that you have read in research – you only need to state those that you have quoted directly or taken ideas from.
• List sources alphabetically by author’s surname.
• Treat Mc, M’ and Mac all as Mac when arranging alphabetically.
• Type sources in the following order: Author’s surname, initials, (publication date), title, place of publication: publisher.
• Underline, italicise or embolden the title, but ensure your chosen style is consistent throughout your work.
• There are different methods for referencing dependent upon the type of work you are citing from.
• If a source has more than one author list them in the order they appear on the text, and if it has more than three authors type, for example, Moss, K. et al (1988).