Referencing Scarborough: Home

What is Referencing?

Referencing is a way of providing evidence to support what you say in your assignments. Including lots of high-quality references makes your work stronger and will get you better marks. Referencing tells the reader that you have used someone else's work to support your arguments.

Click the 'Referencing Guides' on the side to find out how to reference in your style.  

Signal Phrases for Referencing

Use signal phrases to introduce sources in your text.

Referencing the Basics

In-text Citations

In-text citations acknowledge that a source has been referred to within the assignment. In-text citations provide the reader with the information to locate the source from the reference list. The standard information provided for an in-text citation includes: (Author last name, year of publication, page no.). 

You must give an in-text citation whenever you include information in your work that you have taken from somewhere else. This might be a quote, a paraphrase, summary, data, image, etc. 

Quoting a source

A source can be included within your text in the form of a quote. This is a direct word-for-word copy of what the original text says. 

Quotes require quotation marks "" on either side of the text, this will be followed by a small citation. 

Example:

It has been argued that "crime is the outcome of an interaction between criminal dispositions and situational temptations and opportunities" (Clarke & Bowers, 2017, p. 28).

Paraphrasing a source

Paraphrasing is taking an idea, either written or spoken, and summarising it into your own words whilst keeping the original meaning. The paraphrase does not need quotation marks or a page number in the citation. 

Example Original Text:

At the time of Jean Piaget’s investigations into children’s learning in the 1900s it was generally believed that learning was either intrinsic (coming from the child) or extrinsic (imposed by the environment or adults); Piaget felt that neither position explained learning by itself; rather it was the child’s interactions with his environment and with adults that create learning.

Example of the Paraphrased Text:

Traditionally it was believed that children learn through extrinsic or intrinsic factors; whereas Piaget asserted that children learn through interacting with their environments and adults (Williamson-Siegfredson, 2017, p.34).

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The Reference List

The Reference List appears as a separate page at the end of your assignment. It is a detailed list of all the sources that have been cited within the assignment. 

The standard reference list components include: 

Author's last name, Author's initial. (Year of publication). Title of Work. Publisher.

The Reference List must be:

• Organised in alphabetical order.

• Each entry should have a hanging indent.

• Be aware of the punctuation and information needed for each entry, they will vary via the source.

Quoting and Paraphrasing