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Referencing and Biblio

A short guide on academic citation.

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10 views3 pages

Referencing and Biblio

A short guide on academic citation.

Uploaded by

Charlie
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Referencing & Bibliography for Academic Writing

A Rough Guide

In academic writing, the author must give attribution for any material which is not their own
thought; this includes verbatim quotes, overall arguments or individual ideas. Usually in the
humanities this is done through the use of footnotes, which give attribution at the bottom of the
page.1 The purpose of footnotes is to point the reader to the original source for a claim or argument
the author uses; this enables the reader to check that the source is fairly presented, and avoids
plagiarism.

When reading for research, it is critical to take notes. It can be tempting to come back to a source to
find a quote once you begin writing; the risk is that you will misremember a quote or even
unconsciously adopt an idea as your own and leave it unattributed. When taking notes, make sure
you include the page number of anything you may wish to use in your own writing.

A footnote steers a reader towards your source, but needs not include all information on a work.
This is the purpose of a bibliography; the footnote merely indicates where in a work this specific
claim can be found. Different systems require different formatting conventions, but it is good
practice to format a footnote as follows: the author’s surname, the year of publication (in brackets)
and the page number for this idea.2 It is not sufficient to give a work without a page reference.

A bibliography then allows a reader to locate the referenced work. A bibliography is fuller than a
footnote, and give difference information depending on the format of the work. A bibliography
should be sorted alphabetically by surname, then by year (if an author appears multiple times). A
work should usually appear in a bibliography only if cited in the text.

For a (physical or electronic) book, the entry in the bibliography should include: the author’s
surname and initials, the year of publication, the title of the work, the place of publication and the
publisher.3

For a chapter within an edited volume, the entry should include: the author’s surname and initials,
the year of publication, the title of the chapter, the title of the volume, the editor’s name, the
place of publication, the publisher, and the page numbers of the chapter.4

For an article, the entry should include: the author’s surname and initials, the year of publication,
the title of the article, the title of the journal, the journal’s volume (and issue) number, and the
page numbers of the article.5

For a webpage, the entry should include: the author’s surname and initials, the year of publication,
the title of the webpage, the URL and the date you accessed the webpage.6

1
Arnold (1999) p. 15.
2
Baxter (2003) p. 185.
3
Cassidy (1846) p. 94.
4
Donaldson (2015) p. 66.
5
Egbert (2022) p. 37.
6
Fraenkel (2018).
There are a number of automatic citation tools you can download, but it is often easiest for smaller
works to reference and compile a bibliography manually.

Addendum: Citing Classical Authors & Quoting Latin and Greek

Citation of Classical authors is a little different. Unless you have a point to make about a specific
edition, you don’t need to reference the e.g. Oxford Classical Texts edition you have been working
from. The exception is translations: you should indicate the translation you are using in the
footnotes and bibliography (but page numbers aren’t necessary if you cite the place in the text). It is
usually sufficient to attribute the first inclusion of a translation and state that the rest are by the
same author.

In British academic writing, it is customary to abbreviate classical works in citation, though an author
may choose to write out an author’s name or work title in full in the first citation. These
abbreviations follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary abbreviations, which can be found here:
https://oxfordre.com/classics/page/3993 These abbreviations are usually based on the Latin name
of a work, which may at first be confusing for Greek texts.

The author’s abbreviated name appears in plain text, and the abbreviated work title in italics. For a
verse author, that should be followed by the book number, poem number and line number, where
each of these are applicable. For a prose text, the book number and chapter number are cited, again
where applicable. For instance:

Ar. Nub. 456 Aristophanes, Clouds line 456

Ov. Am. 2.2.5 Ovid, Amores Book 2, Poem 2, Line 5

Tac. Ann. 12.5 Tacitus, Annals Book 12, Chapter 5

Suet. Dom. 8 Suetonius, Life of Domitian Chapter 8

Where an author does not have an abbreviation, writers typically give the full name at the first
citation and use a sensible abbreviation thereafter.

When quoting Latin, the text should appear in italics without speech marks: dulce et decorum est.
Greek should appear in plain text without speech marks: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεά.

Bibliography
Arnold, R. F. (1999) Fantastic Citations and Where to Find Them. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Baxter, Q. L. (2003) Life in Libraries. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Cassidy, B. (1846) An American and Their Books, Illustrated. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.

Donaldson, A. (2015) ‘The Transmission of Knowledge’ in Books: Why? ed. S. Nadler. Princeton:
Princeton University Press. 54-87.

Egbert, X. Y. (2022) ‘Lessons from the Stacks’, Bibliographers’ Quarterly 24, 30-46.
Fraenkel, N. A. (2018) ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Web Publishing’,
www.books.com/2018/fraenkel/beginnersguide.html . Accessed 31 st March 2022.

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