Referencing & Citation

What is Referencing?

Referencing is a standard way of acknowledging the printed or electronic sources of information and ideas used in your essay or assignment, in a way that uniquely identifies their source (Cleary, 2014). The information you would have used may be some facts, figures, ideas or words.

Why is referencing important?

Referencing is important in that:

1. It shows respect of intellectual property;
2. It helps you (and the reader as well) to make a follow up on the source you would have consulted;
3. Where the reader refutes or doubts your facts, he or she can ascertain that with the original source of information;
4. It adds authority to what you are presenting. In other words, referencing makes your writing more persuasive; and,
5. It is an academic practice of showing gratitude to the author.

According to Cleary (2014) a reference list/references at the end of your essay or assignment includes all the information necessary to identify and retrieve each work that you have referred to in your text. Saunders (2003) stressed the importance of citing particularly the fact that it gives credit to authors. He also added that the citation must be consistent and complete for readers to easily follow up on cited information sources. A bibliography includes all the reference list and others that may have also influenced your way of thinking.

How to cite other people's works

As a student or researcher your research is going to be influenced by the other researchers before you, or other works in your field or other fields. The way you show these works in your own is called citation. In order to cite other people's works you pick what is called a citation style and use it throughout that particular piece. You can check with your faculty or department which citation style they use or recommend. They are a lot of citation styles in use but we will only highlight a few that are relevant to BUSE. In this module we are going to concentrate on the APA and Harvard styles. You may contact the Library if you need support for other styles not listed here.

In-text referencing

As you write, you may quote some authors. You can quote directly or paraphrase. We are going to have some example of direct quotations and paraphrasing done using some of the most commonly used styles of referencing which are the The American Psychological Association (APA) style and Harvard style. When acknowledging an information source(s) within the text, you should include the following:

1. Name of author;
2. Date of publication; and,
3. Page number(s).

The above details would be presented as follows:
Where Sithole is the author, 2017 is the year of publication and p.56 (Harvard) or 56 (APA) denotes the page 56 in the publication.

• Sithole (2017, p.56) Harvard style
• Sithole (2017: 56) for APA style.

The following paragraphs will provide examples of the two citation styles in most of the cases that the researcher will come across. Click on the heading to open the information.