Podcast: Top Tips on Referencing
Transcribed referencing podcast
Jx: Hello this is Jia Xuen from the Library Student Team, I am here with my colleague Lili. So today we will be having a conversation on referencing tips as well as how we use some of them in our work. I believe a lot of you might have questions on citation style because there are so many different types of citation style out there. So Lili, how do you deal with different citation styles?
Lili: So, what I do is I use the student handbook or the course handbook that I got at the start of the year and for my course which is Politics in the course handbook it says that we can either use Harvard or Chicago style referencing, so that really narrows it down for me to just two styles. I personally prefer the Harvard one and I make sure that I stick to that one which helps me make sure that I am only using one style in a piece of work because if you ever combine two styles in one piece of work then it will cost you marks so it is really important that you’re consistent with the style that you use and that it’s the right one for your course.
Jx: Yeah I do agree with that, I would imagine professors being quite confused when he or she sees that there are different styles used in your work.
Lili: Yeah, if you’re not sure whether to give a list of references or a bibliography the information can be again found out in your course handbook. For example for Politics, we have been told to just give a list of references so not to include sources that we have only read but haven’t cited and only to reference the ones that we have cited.
Jx: So for me I always make sure that my list of references only contain all the sources that I have cited in my writing while for bibliography I include all the sources that I have consulted. So, do you have any tips that you use in practice that helps you in easing citation works?
Lili: Yeah, so what I do is, when I am doing my research i always make a note of the page numbers, so just in the margins next to my notes I will always just write down the page numbers, which is really helpful because that means that i don’t have to then go back every time i want to reference something in my work. It’s really difficult I think when you haven’t got the page numbers and it is like a really specific idea and you have to like search through a whole book or a journal article to find that idea. I think that can be quite tricky so it really saves you a lot of time. Another thing I do is I always make sure that as a minimum I’ve made a note of the year, the author and if it’s an online source also the link because this really helps me to make sure that I am referencing the correct source so for example I am not referencing another source by the same author but from a different year.
Jx: Yeah that’s a very good point, so I do it in a slightly different way, while I’m writing my essay draft I often highlight the source of information and I put the link inside of my work as I’m very used to doing the referencing in one go, so it usually depends on how you prefer to do your referencing work, but definitely write down the information while you can so you don’t need to spend time looking for it. Besides, I also refer to the webpage by the library on referencing using the Manchester Harvard method which is the one used by my school, the business school. So they have listed down different situations that you might face in referencing as an example, multiple authors and it is so easy to find the one that you are looking for. So, they also have different citation styles such as APA and I believe that you can also find the one you are looking for.
Lili: That sounds really good I need to find this website, because I often encounter similar problems and I use a lot of primary sources for my course such as Government communications and public sector reports and they seem to be harder to reference because there is often missing information for example there’s no author or there’s no date so I always need to make sure that I know what the rules are for my referencing style in each situation because you can’t just like make up what you think is the right way to present that information, there’s strict rules about how to report things in each situation.
Jx: Yeah, that’s a very important point. So, I often have a look at how I am meant to do it because peer review journals as an example, they have great examples of referencing lists, bibliographies, and citations, and also proofreading isn’t just for the body of your essay so always check your reference before submitting your work because trivial errors cost marks.
Lili: Yeah, definitely and in the course handbook you can find out what you can actually lose marks for in terms of your referencing and when it comes to your referencing i think it is really important to understand that if you’re really like missing a lot of references and stuff like that, that can actually be classes as plagiarism because you’re not giving credit to the people who came up with those ideas, so that can actually cost you a lot of marks
Jx: Yeah, I do agree with you, so for citation tools wise I generally use management software which is cite this for me online, and the manchester provide them. But I do know the Library also supplies management software which is Endnote and Mendeley, so I still find a disparity between the actual product of the management software and also the required format by the university so it is always important to double check the work and compare it with the Library’s webpage on referencing.
Lili: Yeah, those are some really good tips, throughout my undergraduate degree I have always done my referencing manually, so I haven’t really used any citation tools but at the moment I’m in the process of starting to write my Masters dissertation and so for this project I am trying to use Mendeley, but either way whether you’re using referencing tools or doing it manually it is really important to make sure that you kind of check it, again the Library or Google Scholar, or even your reading list if you have like a reading list from your lecturer, then that’s a really good place to check referencing to make sure that you’re doing it right, but you have to make sure obviously that it’s the same style that you’re using it’s still the same style that the lecturer is using as well
Jx: Yeah, that’s a very good point, and thank you so much for sharing your different ideas and tips with everyone, and I hope that everyone listening from this enjoyed the conversation and got something out of it.
