‘Ah, Well! They may write such things in a book,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone.
That is a quotation. However, there are some problems with it. First, it is not clearly identified as a quotation. Second it not obvious who wrote it and where they wrote it. And I have given no indication of how you might find a copy if you wanted to read the original text. I have not cited it properly.
In fact the quotation comes from ‘Through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll. This was originally published in 1872, but I am using the Puffin version, which is printed together with ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.’ The quotation comes from page 270 of that edition. To complicate matters, Lewis Carroll is a pseudonym: Carroll’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
I can make it clear that the words are a quotation by using a set of quotation marks. Better still, I can indent the whole paragraph. But there is too much information to put all the details with the quotation, especially as I might quote the same book again. Instead, I can put just the author’s name, the date of publication and the page number.
‘“Ah, Well! They may write such things in a book,” Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone.’ Carroll (1962) p. 270
Now I need to make sure that you can find the source. So I spell it out in detail:
L. Carroll (1962) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Puffin Books, London, 1962. Reprinted from Through the Looking Glass, 1872.
Notice that I have deliberately emphasised certain parts of this reference. I am following certain conventions so that you will realise quickly that this is from a book, rather than, say, a journal, even though I have not explicitly said it is from a book.
I put this information at the end of the document in the List of References. That way, it will be easy to find. And if I quote from it again (which I do), I will not need to repeat the same information. Since this is a particularly difficult reference to get right I have checked with British Standards (1989) for the conventions on which name I should use (Carroll or Dodgson) and which book I should quote (the original or the Puffin version). Following their advice, I have decided to used the better-known name and the more readily available book. This makes it more likely that you could find the original quote if you need it.
I have just shown an example of how to use referencing. But why use it at all? I could have written this document without the quotation.
The short answer is because you have to demonstrate the skills of citing, referencing and being able to find referenced work as part of your degree programme.
The long answer is that to carry out academic research, you have to base your arguments on evidence. Some of that evidence may come from primary data collection, but some will undoubtably come from the research of others. In any case you need to show what research has been carried out before and to do that you will need to reference the work of others. If you fail to do so, you may be open to accusations of plagiarism or failure to understand the process of research. Either way, if you fail to reference properly, you are likely to be asked to resubmit a dissertation or to have a fail grade awarded.
This document is specifically about the Harvard system of referencing. There are several other systems and all systems have minor variations, often to suit the needs of particular journals or particular disciplines; so you may not follow this document precisely. However, all good referencing systems have a number of elements in common: they give a uniform style and format for citation and a method of listing the references that makes them clear, unambiguous and easy to trace.
When you write your dissertation, you must comply with the rules set out for your module or degree programme. It is your responsibility to write references in the form prescribed.
‘“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”’ Carroll (1962) p. 274
A reference is a short description of a piece of work that can be used by someone else to locate that piece of work should they want to. There are several different systems of referencing, but the good ones all obey the following rules.
A citation is a mention of another piece of work in yours. Quotation is a special form of citation in which you repeat verbatim part of the cited work. More commonly a citation simply refers to the other work.
There is no one right way to cite. For example, the following are all acceptable.
Howard and Sharp (1983) describe how to choose a project topic.
Other web programming languages are decribed in Deitel and Deitel (1999) and Converse and Park (2000).
Chapter 3 describes a methodology based on Rosenhead (1978).
One study ( Davies et al. 2000) modelled health care provision options for patients with diabetes.
The possible ways of citing depend on the referencing system. An attractive feature of the Harvard system is that it avoids many problems about whether or not you should write the author’s name in the text.
Use quotation when you need to cite verbatim part of another work. There are two ways to use quotation. If you have a longer quotation, put it in an indented paragraph with quotation marks around it like so.
‘Few tricks of the unsophisticated intellect are more curious than the naive psychology of the business man, who ascribes his achievements to his own unaided efforts, in bland unconsciousness of a social order without whose continuous support and vigilant protection he would be as a lamb bleating in the desert.’ Tawney (1938) p. 264
It is common nowadays to use single quotes wherever practical.
Short quotations may be made within the main text and are cited in a similar style. An example is the definition of a dictionary as a ‘word not included in this dictionary in order to avoid certain paradoxes’ Borowski and Borwein (1989) p. 157. Typically, short quotes are used for definitions or phrases that do not compose a whole sentence.
A bibliography is a list of books that may or may not be referenced in the work it is attached to. Bibliographies are used when you want to suggest background or wider reading, for example, at the end of a chapter in an academic textbook. As such they are not appropriate in student dissertations. Avoid them. Label your references simply as ‘List of References’.
A list of references looks just like a bibliography. The difference is that you may not put a book in a list of references unless you have cited it somewhere in your work. The list of references is normally arranged in alphabetical order of surnames of authors.
This section describes some of the problems of using various referencing systems other than the Harvard system. If you have been asked to use Harvard you should not use these other systems. If you have been asked to use another system, you probably shouldn’t be reading this.
These systems include the author and date in each citation. The most common is the Harvard system. It is particularly easy to insert new references if you use this system because inserting a new reference probably will not change the way old references are cited.
Sometimes known as the ‘Vancouver system’, these use a number for each citation, either in square brackets or as a superscript. They have the disadvantage that the numbers may have to be changed when you insert a new reference. The author–number system is a variant in which the author name appears in each citation.
These are best handled by special referencing software packages such as Endnote or BiBTeX, which can renumber references automatically.
This system uses a full reference at the first citation and an abbreviated reference subsequently. It is very difficult to follow when there are more than a few references. Avoid it.
In this system references appear as footnotes, making them very hard to use. This system is pretty much guaranteed to irritate at least one of your examiners and is almost certainly forbidden in your dissertation regulations. Use it only if you want to fail.
Some older works use words and phrases like op. cit., ibid., loc. cit., idem, eadem and art. cit. You should avoid them unless you speak classical Latin as a first language and expect your examiners to do the same.