Referencing:
A Tutorial

Objectives

This tutorial hopefully answers some of your questions about referencing. Through it you will learn:

• What referencing is.
• What plagiarism is.
• Why referencing is necessary.
• Which referencing style to use.
• How to reference.

Introduction

This tutorial provides you with the basics of how to use references in your work. Referencing is acknowledging other people’s work when you refer to it in your own work. There are many styles of referencing, but this tutorial focuses on the preferred University of Tasmania style, which is now APA 7. It has been Harvard (UTAS style) for some time, but UTAS have decided to transition over to APA 7.

What is Referencing?

Referencing is using a standardised formatting of written work so that it clearly indicates the exact source of any material used that is not the work of the writer.

There are quite a few referencing styles (a referencing style is the way references are written). The most common are:

• APA (American Psychological Association)
• Chicago (University of Chicago)
• Harvard (Harvard University)
• MLA (Modern Language Association)

Within each of these styles are many sub-styles. The University of Tasmania has guides for the above styles, and for some more specific ones used for music, medicine, and specified journals. Here is the link for you to bookmark:
Libguides for Referencing

Each style has its own rules for properly citing sources.

APA 7 is the style  that is now being used in the University College. Here is the link to the Library site for your future reference: APA 7

That site will give you examples of how to cite books (with one or more authors), chapters in books, journal articles, blogs, films, and online sites, among many others.

Please now scroll down for the tutorial.

The Whys and Wherefores

Why must I reference?

A. For others

To acknowledge other people’s work.

To avoid plagiarism (also known as academic misconduct) (see below).

To enable the reader to verify your data.

To enable others to find your source.

B. For you

To demonstrate or substantiate your argument.

To show the extent of your reading and research.

To clearly differentiate what you think from what others think – and it is your thoughts that are important for your argument.

To show that you are not an ‘unreliable narrator’ – that your work is trustworthy.

To enable you to find your source again.

What is Plagiarism?

What is the difference between ‘magpieing’ and plagiarism?

• ‘Magpieing’, which you might sometimes hear someone recommend that you do to help with writing skills, is increasing your vocabulary. It is discovering and using a word, or a nicely-written phrase that expresses something in a way you think is very well said. I guess it could be called word adoption – taking a new word, or a well-written phrase, to use for oneself.
• Plagiarism, on the other hand, is taking the work or the idea expressed by that word or phrase, and claiming the work or idea as one’s own.

How do I avoid plagiarism?

• By acknowledging every time you include other people’s work in your own work.
• By giving full references every time.
• By ensuring you put quotation marks at the beginning and end of every direct quote (see below).

When must I reference?

• When directly quoting another person or entity (using their exact words or work).
• When paraphrasing another person or entity (stating their words or theories in your own words).
• When summarising another person’s work (giving a brief account of their idea/s).
• When copying statistics, figures, data, tables, graphs, models, etc.
• When using evidence that is or might be in dispute.
• When using other writers’ interpretation/s of another person’s work.

All the above applies whether you are using hard copy (books for example) or online material, from any source (including anything you might find by searching the Internet).

Referencing: The Hows

How do I get the information for a reference?

It is probably most efficient to do this while you are taking notes (see the tutorial on Reading and Note-taking):

• Make sure you record the full reference first, before you start reading or whatever. There are many ways you can do this: manually, using a photocopier, or with a digital device, for example.
• Get the full title of a book from the inside page, not the cover.
• Why? The cover is the province of the publisher trying to sell the book and may not include all relevant information (including the full title of the text) – but inside the cover all relevant information must appear.

The reference for a book will include (at the least), in this order:

• Author(s) – last name(s) with initials 
• Year of publication.
• Title of the book (in italics).
• Edition (if it’s not the first edition).
• Publisher’s Name.

*If it is a chapter or section in a book, an anthology, or a collection of works by different authors (including introductions, prefaces etc.), as well as noting the author, you will also need to note the editor/s of the book, the title of the story, chapter or section, and the page range of the story/chapter/section. These details will appear in the reference in your Reference List. You will find examples in one of our other modules, called ‘Referencing Examples – APA7’.

Alternatively, you may want to look at the website below, which has excellent examples of APA 7:

Referencing: The Whats

What is a direct quote?

A direct quote is when words and other data from a text are replicated exactly as written in the original.

When using APA 7: Quotes that are 40 words or less, need to be placed within the text and surrounded by double quotation marks and include the author, date, and page number. Quotes that are more than 40 words should start on a new line and be indented from the left margin without quotation marks.

There is also a printable reference guide you can download from the UTAS library that shows you how to reference journal articles, books, and edited book chapters:

This means:

• You will put double inverted commas at the beginning and end of the quote if it is 40 words or less. Or indent the quote from the left margin (0.5 inches) without using quotation marks (and double-spaced).
• You will not change how the quote looks. For example, add or subtract italics, bold, capitals and so forth. That is, you will use plain text where the original is plain text, italics where there are italics, bold where there is bold, capitals where there are capitals, etc.
• Even mistakes are repeated exactly as you find them but you will add the term ‘[sic]’ or ‘(sic)’ to indicate that the text you are citing is how you found it.
• For example, if the original being quoted is ‘adults lern by experience’, you would quote it as ‘adults lern [sic] by experience’. That shows that the error is in the original, and the mistake is not yours.
• If you paraphrase, however, and do not directly quote, you will of course spell everything correctly.
• You will note the page number/s in the in-text citation – see below.

Can I change a direct quote?

Mostly – you can’t. Having said that, there are three main ways that you may do so:

1. You can (sparingly) add italics or bold for emphasis. If you do this, you must acknowledge it in your in-text citation. Example:
   According to Lanyon (2011, p. 21, my italics), ‘If there was one skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity’.
   
2. By adding ellipses (three full stops: separated by a space. . .), when words that do not change the meaning of the text are omitted. Example:
   
   ORIGINAL: “Hesselbein proceeded to rearrange the lunch table, creating a set of concentric circles radiating outward—plates, cups, saucers—connected by knives, forks and spoons” (Collins, 2006, p. 9).
   
   ABBREVIATED: “Hesselbein proceeded to rearrange the lunch table, creating a set of concentric circles radiating outward. . . connected by knives, forks and spoons” (Collins, 2006, p. 9).
   
3. By adding words in to make the meaning clear:
   
   “It [exploratory experiment] is also what the scientist often does when he first encounters and probes a strange substance to see how it will respond” (Schön, 1983 p. 145).

*Note the square brackets around the added words - that is, [exploratory experiment]

You may want to download this – In-Text Citation Checklist (APA 7).

Referencing: The Wheres

Where does referencing go in my work?

There are two places that referencing must go:

1. Within the text of your work (essay, report, whatever) – known as in-text citations.
2. In a separate Reference List at the end of your work.

1. In-text citations – within the text of your work

• These are used within your work, whenever you refer to any other author’s work, whether you direct-quote, paraphrase, or use an idea, graph, model etc.
• They are placed in parentheses (round brackets).
• If the author’s name appears in your sentence, then the in-text citation is inserted directly following that name.
• If the author’s name does not appear in your sentence, then the in-text citation goes at the end of that section of the sentence: before a following semi-colon or full-stop.
• They include the author (unless their name is already appearing within the sentence), and the year of publication. Example:

Sinclair (2007, p. 93) suggests that “power relations are signified in the ways bodies are present”.

Or

It has been suggested that “power relations are signified in the ways bodies are present” (Sinclair, 2007, p. 93).

Note the required punctuation for in-text citations after a quote: 

1. The authors last name and then a comma.
2. The year and then a comma.
3. The abbreviation for page (p) followed by a full-stop.
4. Then a space after the full stop before the actual page number. a full-stop after the abbreviation for page and after the abbreviation for pages, which is pp.; and (c) a space before the number.

For example: A quote that resonated with me when learning about critical thinking, is “if there was one skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity” (Lanyon, 2011, p. 21).

However, if you say the author’s name in the sentence before the quote, it will need to look more like this: According to Lanyon (2011), “if there was one skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity” (p. 21).

If you direct-quote, paraphrase, or reproduce a model etc. you must also show the page number on which it appears in the source.

2. Reference List – commencing on a separate page at the end of your work

• This must start on a separate page at the end of your work.
• It is titled ‘Reference List’.
• It is in author alphabetical order (not in order of appearance in your work).
• It is a list of every work by other people to which you have referred in your work. That is, if you have an in-text citation, then the full reference for that citation must appear in your Reference List.*
• It is a list of works actually used. That is, it is not a bibliography, which is a list of works you may have consulted during the course of your research.

* The same or similar in-text citations may appear more than once in your document, but the reference needs to appear only once in the Reference List.

Confused Authorship

BEWARE!

I’m not sure if this is the correct term, or if I have invented it. It is, however, a common mistake, even in some PhD theses. It can have two forms:

1. A sentence is written and referenced to an author, but some of the sentence is the writer’s thoughts. How to avoid this: break the sentence into two. One sentence will contain your own thoughts. The other one will contain the other author’s thoughts, and be referenced accordingly.
2. A sentence is written giving the writer’s thoughts, then an in-text citation appears with the name of someone whose work supports the writer’s thoughts, or in some way is connected to the writer’s thoughts – but without actually stating that connection. How to avoid this: make sure that you clearly state how the cited author’s work is connected to your own.

For example, you might write:

I will use a learning cycle to demonstrate my claim (Kolb, 1984).

If you think about this sentence objectively, it would seem that Kolb has said that you will be using a learning cycle, which is plainly not correct – it is you who are saying it. Make the connection explicit:

I will use a learning cycle to demonstrate my claim. The cycle used will be that suggested by Kolb (1984), which …

Developed for P&P Program for the Associate Degrees, University College – Dr Christine Angel, 11 September 2017