AWARE Writing Centre: Citation/ Referencing
Correct citation allows you to give credit to other scholars and avoid plagiarism while allowing readers to easily locate your sources. One of the biggest problems that students have is citing and referencing correctly and consistently. It is essential that you know how to cite correctly using the chosen referencing style of your department/ discipline. Should you use footnotes or in-text (author-date) citations? At the end of your paper, do you need a bibliography or a works cited page(s)? How should end of text references be presented? All of these questions will be answered by the style guide you are using.
Organizations which publish citation style guides update them every so often. This is why APA, for example, is currently in its seventh edition, and why you should not necessarily trust any quick guide that you find on the internet (it might refer to an older version of the style). If in any doubt, consult the citation style manual that is published by the organization and/ or go to their official website. It is also wise to manually check in-text citations and reference lists that have been created using referencing management software (see below). For further information on citation systems, go to the 'AWARE Handouts and Slides' menu.