What is it?
Referencing is when you include other people's opinions, ideas or images in your own work.
Why should I bother?
So that you can show evidence of research around the subject and can guide your reader to sources of information you have used. If you use information from other sources like books and webpages without indicating where you got it from, this is known as plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
It is effectively the same as stealing from somebody else. Copying a friend's work is also known as plagiarism and both of you will be penalised. There are heavy penalties for plagiarism, so don't do it!
So how can I make sure I reference correctly?
Download and print off our Referencing Guides 1 & 2 - these will help you reference any print material or web resources correctly.
Tip
Whenever you read something that you might refer to in your work, make a note of the title, author, page number, URL etc so that you can come back to it later. You may wish to keep a Word document open for copying and pasting text and URLs from websites.
Referencing guide - printed resources
Referencing guide - web resources
Higher Education students
For students who are following courses at partner universities, please follow the referencing guide for your institution:
Birmingham City University - How to Write References
De Montfort University - The Harvard System of Referencing
Warwick University - Guide to Bibliographic Citation and Referencing
