Managing Citation and Referencing in Assignments and

Dissertations

Bibliographical references
Citing references and quotations
Citing words and meanings
Diagrams and tables

1. Bibliographical references, placed at the end of the assignment

If you borrow material or ideas from other authors, it is vital that you tell your readers this, and show
clearly what the source was. This process is called citation. If you fail to do this, you will be guilty of
the serious offence of plagiarism. You must therefore always provide a complete list of books,
papers and Web pages which you refer to and from which you have made direct quotations in your
assignments. You should list all and only the works you specifically mention, and arrange them in
alphabetical order according to the author’s surname. The list should be given the heading:
References. Do not provide a general bibliography of works you might have consulted.

There are slightly different ways of setting out the required information, depending on the discipline
and the publisher. However, the basic information required is the same in every case, namely:

For books: Author (surname and initial(s)), date of publication, title, place of publication, publisher.
Edition number, if the book has been revised.

For articles: Author (surname and initial(s)), date, title of paper, name of journal, volume number,
issue number, page numbers.

Examples:
nd
Hudson, R. A. (1996). Sociolinguistics (2 edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frederiksen, J. R. and Collins, A. (1989). A systems approach to educational testing. Educational
Researcher 18(9): 27–32.
Milroy, L. (1997). The social categories of race and class: language ideology and sociolinguistics. In
Coupland, N, Sarangi, S. and Candlin, C. (eds.) Sociolinguistics and social theory. London:
Longman, pp. 235–60.
Ricks, D. M. (1972). The beginning of vocal communication in infants and autistic children.
Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London.

Note on formatting: In the above example, we have used indentation of second and subsequent lines
to set references apart from each other. An alternative is to use blank lines between each entry.

Referencing the Internet:

References to articles and other material accessible on-line must specify the pathway for access and
the date on which the information was accessed. Examples:

Where the author(s) can be identified:

Scott, J. (1996). Class, status, and command: towards a theoretical framework. Paper delivered at
Hitotsubashi University, November 1996. http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~scottj/socscot4.htm,
accessed 7/8/06.

Where the author(s) cannot be identified:

Office for National Statistics. The National Statistics socio-economic classification.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/ns_sec/, accessed 7/8/06.

Note: References to the internet should be included in the same list as references to books and
articles, in alphabetical order according to source.
2. Citing references and quotations in your text

You must acknowledge anyone whose ideas or writings you use, even if you do not quote them
directly. One of the following styles of acknowledgement shown below will be appropriate, depending
on the circumstances.

All direct quotations must either be enclosed in single inverted commas, unless they are three
or more lines long, in which case they should be set off by the use of an indented margin.

Note: References like these, which form part of the text, are only useful if the full reference is included
in the bibliography, so make sure you check that each reference has a corresponding entry in your list
of references at the end. This applies also when your source for a reference is another source (see
below).

(a) Where you give a shortish quote (between inverted commas):

According to Smith (1973:13), ‘Where conflict between data between modalities occurs, interpretation
in terms of one of the modalities may dominate’.

You can also do this:

According to Smith (1973), ‘Where conflict between data between modalities occurs, interpretation in
terms of one of the modalities may dominate’ (p.13).

(b) Where you give a longish quote (indented margin):

Hudson’s view is quite different:

One of the most solid achievements of linguistics in the twentieth century has been to eliminate
the idea (at least among professional linguists) that some languages or dialects are inherently
‘better’ than others. (1996:203)

(c) Where there is no direct quotation (summary of views):

Hudson (1996:203) points out that one of the most important recent achievements of linguistics is to
do away with the idea that some languages or dialects are better than others.

Spatial imagery cannot develop without sight (Serden 1932:17).

Note that the writing of summaries (or précis) is a highly skilled activity, and is not to be confused with
minor paraphrasing, where slight adjustments to the original wording are made. It is advised to avoid
the latter. It is not acceptable to change one or two words of someone else’s text and present the
slightly changed text as your own.

(d) Secondary sources:

Where you have not actually read the original of a book or article but have read about it elsewhere, for
example in a textbook, you should always make this clear. This can be done as follows:

As reported in Fromkin and Rodman (1983:342), Chomsky (1965:17) claimed that children are ‘pre-
wired’ to learn language.

or:

Jefferson (1984, cited by Atkinson 1986:46) argues that …

In the list of references, you should always provide the full bibliographical reference for the work or
publication the quote is taken from (the primary source). Thus, in the above examples, Fromkin and
Rodman, Chomsky, Jefferson and Atkinson would all be fully referenced in the References list.
(e) Internet references:

Note that it is neither necessary nor possible to include a page reference in these cases. Often it will
also not be possible to identify the date of publication or posting on the Internet.
Where the author(s) can be identified:
As Scott (1996) states, ‘Class is one of the central concepts in sociological analysis’.
Where the author(s) cannot be identified:
Britain has a new official social class classification: ‘From 2001 the National Statistics Socio-economic
Classification (NS-SEC) will be used for all official statistics and surveys’ (Office for National
Statistics).

(f) Citing a personal communication:

William Labov (2006, personal communication) now believes that …

3. Citing words and meanings

The following sentence is almost impossible to understand:

Many people write those but when speaking say them.

The problem is that two of the words in the above sentence are being cited rather than used as
words, but we cannot tell which two. Once this is shown in the text, all becomes clear:

Many people write those but when speaking say them.

By convention, cited words or phrases like kick the bucket are shown in italics or underlined, while
meanings are shown between inverted commas. Example:

Endure has among its meanings ‘to remain firm, to last’ (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary) and
‘to last or continue to exist’ (Collins Concise English Dictionary).

Note: Italic print (available on a word processor) is just an alternative to underlining when using a
typewriter or handwriting.

4. Diagrams and tables

You are encouraged to use diagrams and tables where these are clearer than long explanations in
words. However, remember that unless tables, illustrations etc. are self-explanatory – which usually
they are not – you must provide your readers with an explanation of what they are looking at. Tables
should have a heading (placed above them) and diagrams or pictures should have a caption (placed
below them) to explain their relationship with and relevance to the text.

Provide keys for tables and figures if abbreviations or special symbols are used. Make sure you
explain the meaning of arrows, brackets etc where this is not obvious (and don’t assume that very
much is obvious to the reader!).

If you use tables or figures from other sources, or put these together using information published
elsewhere, remember to acknowledge your sources and include them in the bibliography.