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2021 Quoting Citing and Referencin Guide

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8 views2 pages

2021 Quoting Citing and Referencin Guide

Uploaded by

nellyshoba11
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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REFERENCING AND CITING – A GUIDE


Contents
Defining our terms................................................................................................................. 1
Citing .................................................................................................................................... 1
Referencing – the Harvard System ....................................................................................... 2
What sources to use? ........................................................................................................... 2

Defining our terms

You will hear us use the words ‘to quote’, ‘to paraphrase’, ‘to cite’, and ‘to reference’.
What do they mean? They all refer to using somebody else’s work to support your claim
(the ‘because’ in “I say… because”). When you do this, you need to say whose work you
are using. If you do not, in the academic world it is called plagiarism and is considered as
bad as stealing in the general society (or even worse!).

Quoting means using the text of the other author exactly as is, for example: “The concept
of race has historically signified the division of humanity into a small number of
groups based upon five criteria”. When you do this, you put “ “ (quotation) marks around
the whole phrase that you are quoting.

Paraphrasing means using the thought of the other author but presenting it in your own
words, for example: In the past, race meant separating people on the basis of certain
criteria.

Citing means telling the reader whose thought you are using, whether by quoting or
paraphrasing, for example: “The concept of race has historically signified the division of
humanity into a small number of groups based upon five criteria” (James, 2017) or: In the
past, race meant separating people on the basis of certain criteria (James, 2017).

Referencing means making a list of all the sources which you have cited in your essay at
the end of it, e.g.:

James, M. 2017. Race. In: Zalta, E.N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Available from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/race/ [Accessed 13 March
2019].

Citing

UNIZULU recommends using the Harvard system of citing and referencing. It is relatively
simple and flexible. It belongs to the group of the so-called author-date-page systems – if
you look above, you may guess why. When we cite, we use the surname of the author and
the date of publication. If the document has page numbers, we also add the page from
which the quotation comes or the paraphrase is taken of. For example: “The major thing to
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note about our songs is that they never were songs for individuals” (Biko 1978: 43). This is a
direct quotation but you do not use the author’s name in the sentence. If you use the
author’s name in the sentence, you cite like this: Biko states that “[t]the major thing to note
about our songs is that they never were songs for individuals” (Biko 1978: 43).
We showed you how to cite. But how do you make your list of references? Simple. It has
to be in alphabetical order by the author’s surname. You do not number the items. Just
follow the examples below.

Referencing – the Harvard System

A book:
Biko, S.B. 1978. I write what I like. Oxford: Heinemann Press.

A chapter in a book:
Blunden, A. 2013. Contradiction, consciousness and generativity: Hegel’s roots in Freire’s
work. In: R. Lake and T. Kress (eds.). Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Towards historicity in
praxis. London: Bloomsbury

An academic journal:
Posel, D. 2001. Race as common sense: Racial classification in twentieth-century South
Africa. African Studies Review. Vol. 44, No 2, pp. 87-113.

An academic paper online:


James, M. 2017. Race. In: Zalta, E.N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Available from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/race/ [Accessed 13 March
2019].

What sources to use?

You may safely use the sources which we have put on Moodle for you. These are works of
an acceptable academic standard. With time and experience, you will learn to distinguish
such sources from ones less legitimate for academic purposes.

A legitimate source should have an author. In general, anonymous work is not accepted in
academic world. Thus, we would NOT recommend using Wikipedia as a source. Do not get
us wrong – it is a good starting point for a search as it gives you a general idea about the
topic which you are researching but it contains unverified material. The same goes for
blogs, even if they have authors. Unless you are doing research ON them, we would
rather that you do not use them. Online sources which we can recommend are, for
example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Most philosophy books and articles in journals are OK.

If you are in doubt whether the source which you intend to use is OK by academic
standards, drop me a line on my university email, [email protected]

Good luck. The Philosophy Team (…)

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