In all of your assignments you are expected to integrate academic sources into your work to support your arguments. Referencing is when you acknowledge the ideas you've read in other sources to show how they've influenced your thinking.

Accurate referencing helps you to avoid plagiarism and shows the academic quality of your work.

Referencing is essentially a set of rules to follow. Explore this page to understand the rules and to try out some exercises to develop your referencing skills.

Referencing consists of two key components:

• In-text citations appear in the main part of your assignment whenever you use information or words from source materials. They provide brief details of the source, which point to the reference list.
• A reference list (sometimes referred to as a bibliography) appears at the end of your work and includes full details of all the items you have included as in-text citations in your writing.

Read the section on 'How to reference' to learn more about how the format of your citations and reference list.

An effective list of references shows your awareness and understanding of the topic, demonstrates your reading and highlights your use of authoritative evidence. It also gives credit to the work of the authors you have cited and allows someone else to find the same items.

Importantly, you'll often have marks attributed for your referencing or for the quality of sources which you choose to include, so there's a real difference to be made to your success in a given assignment.

We said earlier that referencing is essentially a set of rules to follow, but what are they? One is the connection between the in-text citations and reference list, which we looked at above.

Another rule is that you include specific information in a given reference to identify the type of source as quickly and clearly as possible. The person reading the reference should know what you've cited (a book, article etc) from the information provided in the reference and without needing to find the item themselves. A referencing style tells you which bits of information you need for each type of source material and in which order they should appear. Identify your department's chosen style using the tabs at the top of this guide.

Whilst it's important to follow the specific rules and formatting of your reference style, don't lose sight of what you're referencing. There's no point writing a perfectly formatted reference for a source of dubious quality!

A good quality reference list will contain authoritative, trustworthy academic sources, blending a mix of appropriate source types which can be easily and immediately identified from the information provided. All references will be consistently referenced in the correct style for your department.

Depending on the requirements from your department you might have a single list of references including all source types, or potentially separate lists for different materials (for example primary or secondary sources). The page on this guide for your department's chosen style will help, but check requirements with the department if you're unsure.

Some common referencing errors include:

• Being inconsistent in your formatting. For example you might have cited three books, but used three completely different formats for a book reference. This suggests a lack of attention to detail in your referencing and makes it hard to identify the types of source you've used.
• Missing out information from the reference. Try to include all of the elements needed to reference the type of source, as this makes it easily identifiable and enabled someone else to locate the same material.
• Using incorrect punctuation and text formatting. For example forgetting to use italics for a book title or not including a full stop where needed. These might seem like trivial issues, but remember that consistency is important in referencing.
• Forgetting to include a reference for a source you have cited in text. Everything you have directly cited in text must be included in your reference list (and vice versa). It is not normally acceptable to include sources which you have read but not cited.

Reference generators can be used to write a reference for you; you'd complete some boxes with the information you need for the reference, choose the style you need, and out pops the reference! But that sounds almost too good to be true...

You need to be careful when using a reference generator that it creates a correctly formatted reference; don't just paste whatever it creates into your work, as you might be copying an inaccurate reference. We recommend spending some time doing your referencing by hand initially, then using reference generators and other tools when you feel more confident to check what they've produced. For University of York Harvard, note that this specific version of the style won't be available within most reference generators.

For a trustworthy reference generator, try the 'Citation' option in YorSearch. Find the item you want to reference, select the three dots on the right of the results list, then choose 'Citation'. You'll see options for each of the referencing styles used at the University and a button to copy the text of the reference.

Another option is BibGuru, a reference generator from the same people who designed the Paperpile reference management system. This has University of York Harvard included. Remember, as with all reference generators, to check the format of the references before you include them in your work.

In this section we've provided some general guidance about how to approach referencing. Be sure also to check the specific advice for your department's chosen referencing style.

Depending on the referencing style you need to use, your in-text citations will follow one of two methods: the author-date approach or a footnoted approach.

For author-date styles (such as Harvard or APA), your citation would include the surname(s) of the author(s) of the source and the publication year. You might also need to include the page number(s), for example if you have directly quoted a section of text. Below is an example of an author-date citation in APA style, where Smith is the author's surname and 2025 is the year of publication.

(Smith, 2025)

Your citations can either appear directly after the information you've cited or integrated within the sentence. Either approach is acceptable and you may find it helpful to vary your writing style between them.

Accurate referencing can make a positive difference to your academic writing (Smith 2025).

Smith (2025) found that accurate referencing can make a positive difference to your academic writing.

For footnoted styles (such as Chicago or MHRA) the citation simply requires a reference number in superscript e.g.¹ after the information or at the end of the sentence. The reference numbers increase in sequence throughout the assignment (or chapter of a long piece of work). Fuller information follows in the reference list and/or at the bottom of the page in a footnote.

Accurate referencing can make a positive difference to your academic writing.¹

Your reference list will provide full details of all the items you have included in your in-text citations. You would usually be expected to include only items which you have directly cited in your work rather than wider reading, but expectations on this will vary by department.

As with in-text citations, the format of your reference list will vary depending on the method used in your department's referencing style. For author-date styles you would usually have a single list of references, ordered alphabetically by the first author's surname. For footnoted styles your reference list will use the same numbering which you followed in your in-text citations.

In order to write your references correctly, you'll need to identify what information to include. This will vary depending on the type of item and the requirements of your referencing style, but we've included a couple of example below to get you started.

What information will you need?

To reference a book you will usually need to know the author(s) surname and initials, the year of publication, the full book title (including any sub-title), the edition of the book (unless it's the first edition), the place of publication and the publisher. You'll usually find that information in the book itself or you could check the details on YorSearch or another library catalogue.

Here are some examples of a book reference in different styles. This is an entirely fictional but very exciting book! We've included the formatted reference as well as an explanation of the different elements of the reference.

What information will you need?

To reference a journal article you will usually need to know the author(s) surname and initials, the year of publication, the article title (including any sub-title), the name, volume and issue of the journal and the page numbers covered by the article. You may also need a DOI, which is a unique reference code for that article. The information about the article from the publisher should confirm these details.

Here are some examples of a journal article reference in different styles. As with our book examples we've included the formatted reference as well as an explanation of the different elements of the reference.

Referencing styles and reference management software can be inaccessible if you're reliant on a screen reader to access and work with texts. Footnoted styles in particular tend to be be more difficult for screen reader users.

If you are a screen reader user and you receive texts through the Library's alternative format service, speak to Disability Services about having potential referencing issues added to your Student Support Plan (SSP). You may also wish to discuss with your tutors any issues you have found with referencing whilst using assistive software.