VKnowledge – What are the Most Common Referencing Styles

Referencing is an important part of writing an essay or dissertation, but it can also be a source of significant stress. The following is a list of the most prevalent types of reference.

It is essential to academic writing to incorporate the words or ideas of other people. It suggests that you have a genuine concern with the quality of the evidence you have utilised throughout your essay, and it helps to substantiate your conclusion. Additionally, it demonstrates that you have a genuine concern with the evidence. When you properly cite or reference your sources, you provide the reader the ability to check that you have used those sources appropriately, that the arguments you are taking from the works of others are sound, and that you are doing justice to the ideas and points of view presented by the original author. Citing references also allows anyone who is marking your work to understand that you have not plagiarised or borrowed ideas or words from another author without making this evident. Plagiarism is when someone takes the work of another author and passes it off as their own.

When it comes to citing sources, there are three things that you are required to provide: the date, the author, and the source.

You are required to include an excerpt from the source within the body of the text. This can either be a direct quotation of what they said or a paraphrasing of what they said based on the information that they gave you.

Within the body of the writing, typically following the excerpt from the source, you are required to give some type of a marker that indicates that this material originates from another person; they are not your thoughts or ideas.

And last but not least, you are required to give specifics about the source. This is typically presented in the form of a footnote or in the form of a list of references at the end of the essay.

There are four primary formats for citing sources:

– The author-date style, which is most generally referred to as the Harvard style of reference in the United Kingdom and Australia. If you choose to use this format, the marker that you would place within the body of the text would be the author’s last name followed by the year in which the source was published; for example, Smith (1980) or Smith, 1980 – The Superscript. A raised number, such as, for example, would serve as the marker that you would offer within the text when using this style. After that, you would give the specifics of the source in a footnote at the bottom of each page, using bracketed numbers, which is also referred to as the numbered-note style. The marker that you would provide within the text if you were to use this style would be a number enclosed in brackets, such as (12). If you were to submit multiple citations, the first one would be numbered (1), the second would be numbered (2), and so on and so forth. After that, the information regarding each source would be listed in a list of references located at the end of the essay in a format known as Vancouver numeric. The marker that you would provide within the text when using this style is the same as the marker that you would provide when using the bracketed number style, which is a number that is enclosed in brackets. On the other hand, in contrast to the style of numbers enclosed in brackets, the same number may be used more than once inside the essay or dissertation. You begin the essay with (1), then (2), and so on throughout the entire essay; however, when you refer to a source that you have already referred to, you enter its original number. This is done in the same way as with the bracketed number style. Therefore, the insert (5) would appear seven times in your essay or dissertation if, for example, you referred to source number 5 seven times throughout the course of your writing.

The Harvard reference style is the one that is most generally used by universities in the United Kingdom; however, some universities will allow you to choose the style of referring that you want to use. It is always advisable to speak with each of your professors or instructors and ask them for specific rules on the reference style they would want you to use. In other words, it is always great to speak with each of your lecturers or teachers.