Referencing is an essential part of academic writing. Its an ethical practice that fulfils the standards of academic conduct that members of a research or scholarly community are expected to uphold. Its purpose is to acknowledge the original source of ideas and work that is not the author's own, to point the reader to the original documents so that they can determine independently whether the attributed sources support the author’s argument as written, and to help identify the author's own ideas and arguments from that of their sources.
Referencing generally has two key elements;
The manner in which you are required to write the in-text citation and the reference list is determined by the reference system and citation style.
There are two common systems for referencing;
These involve the use of sequential numbers as in-text markers that refer to either footnotes or endnotes.
Common note systems include Chicago 17th A and Vancouver.
Also known as Author-date or Harvard referencing, parenthetical referencing involves the use of a partial reference contained within parenthesis as in-text markers (such as the author and date). The complete reference is then included in a list on the last page of the document.
Common parenthetical systems include APA, Harvard, and MLA.
A reference entry generally has four main elements each of which answers a key question about a work which helps to uniquely identify it.
Using these elements together allows us to build a reference even when there is no specific example for it in a style manual.