Referencing in your writing

R20–7012 JAPA10030 ASYNC Only Session no. 3

10 min readFeb 10, 2022

[**eLearning — Please create a new folder for this third session — the structure has been set up by Chris M already]

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Introduction

Following on from the previous Library sessions on Finding Information and Preparing and Organising an Essay, this session outlines the basic principles of referencing. We will cover why you need to reference, what plagiarism is and how to avoid it; when to quote, paraphrase, summarise and cite whole works. We will also signpost to in-depth help with reference formatting.

Engaging with this content you will help you:

Use information sources appropriately to support your own arguments
Use correct academic practices in quoting, citing and paraphrasing

What is Referencing?

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Referencing is your way of acknowledging the sources that you have referred to in your work. There are a number of different referencing styles, you will need to check which style you are expected to use on your course. There are two parts to a reference: a citation within your writing, and an entry in your reference list with the full details of the source:

Citation:
A citation should appear in your text whenever you refer to the ideas or work of another author. Exactly how this looks will depend on the referencing style that you use, but it often will be the author’s name and year of publication in brackets at the end of a sentence, for example:

The advent of an international perspective is a significant recent development for the field of higher education. (Liu, 2019)

Reference list:

A reference list is a complete listing of all of the books, journal articles, websites and other sources that you have referred to in a piece of work. As with a citation, exactly how each entry in a reference list is formatted will depend on the style you are using, but they tend to include the same information, for example:

Liu, W. (2019). Higher education leadership development: an international comparative approach. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2019.1623920

Why reference?

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We see referencing in scholarly writing such as journal articles and textbooks and we are asked to reference in our own academic work. Why do we reference? Why is it important to the person reading the work and why is it important to the person writing the work?

Activity: Why Reference?

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Two boxes asking questions about the purpose of referencing for the reader and the writer — What is the purpose of referencing for the reader and the writer

What is the purpose of referencing for the reader?
What is the purpose of referencing for the writer?

Spend a few minutes thinking about these questions and add your responses to the Padlet (column 1 + 2 ) below. (To add a new box for your comments click on the + sign at the bottom of the column)

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Referencing is important as it helps to:

Inform
To tell readers information they don’t know, and to show them where it came from.
Demonstrate
To show the research a writer has done, and to give examples of the effects or implications of the themes being discussed.
Separate
To distinguish between the writer’s own thoughts, and the work done by others before them; to separate facts, opinions, and conflicting points of view.
Acknowledge
To draw the readers’ attention to which elements of the text are reliant on others’ research, or to highlight that certain facts and ideas are accepted within a field, and the author will not contest them.
Reinforce
To provide evidence or back-up for the writer’s own ideas, showing where they came from, how they were formed, and what might demonstrate their plausibility.

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Understanding plagiarism

You will have most likely have heard the word plagiarism being mentioned either by your academic staff or by other students. It can often seem like a scary word and some of you may have an idea of what it means, but others may not. In the activity below we would like you to think about what plagiarism is and what your understanding of plagiarism might be.

Activity: What is plagiarism?

Think about the question above and enter your responses into the Padlet below (column 3) below. (To add a new box for your comments click on the + sign at the bottom of the column)

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Plagiarism can take lots of forms, but fundamentally it means attempting to gain credit for work that is not wholly your own, or trying to gain credit for the same work more than once.

Plagiarism — presenting the ideas, work or words of other people without proper, clear and unambiguous acknowledgement
Self plagiarism — re-submitting your own work when it has already been assessed for a previous assignment

Examples of these include:

Paraphrasing sections from a textbook without referencing them properly.
Copying and pasting a really nicely written paragraph from your second year essay… into your final year dissertation

Plagiarism also includes contract cheating — this means paying someone else to do your work for you. When you see adverts offering to sell you custom-made essays, or offering proofreading and copy-editing services that ‘guarantee’ you a certain mark, this counts as contract cheating. Submitting work that has been created by someone else, on your behalf, including purchasing essays online or submitting work improved or edited by others is classed as plagiarism.

If you ever have a module with group work assignments coming up, have a chat with your tutor about how they want you to handle it — you might be asked to reference other people’s contributions, so it’s always best to check.

Activity: Watch the video below by the Students’ Union on academic malpractice.

[Embed video] <iframe width=”560" height=”315" src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/rqHXNAmJzqQ" frameborder=”0" allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

For further guidance on avoiding plagiarism, complete our My Learning Essentials online resource:

[Embed MLE online resource ‘Avoiding plagiarism’ here: https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/learning-objects/mle/avoiding-plagiarism/story_flash.html]

Understanding referencing

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Understanding why you need to reference and how to reference will help you improve your academic writing as well as help you to avoid plagiarism.

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Neon speech bubble — Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

When to quote, summarise and cite

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When you’re using other people’s work, it’s important to think about how much information you need for your assignment. Generally speaking, you don’t want to use more information than you really need to make your points. Your tutors want to see what you think — your references are there to show why you’ve formed your opinions, not to just to relate other people’s ideas.

Quote

When you quote information, you reproduce it word-for-word, within quotation marks, with a reference at the end of the sentence. If you choose to quote, you’re saying highlighting to the reader the importance of those exact words. Quotes are best used in situations where you believe that changing the exact words would obscure the meaning or point you were trying to get across. This includes things like:

statistics from a study
the exact words someone said in a speech or interview
the phrasing of a poem
a line from a film script

If this isn’t the case, and the wording isn’t important but the information itself is, try to paraphrase or summarise the information instead. Paraphrasing or summarising takes greater skill and understanding and shows you’re confident with the text’s meaning.

Summarise

This is what you’ll do a lot of the time — summarise the most useful parts of a source, and rephrase them for your reader so they get only the bits they need. You might summarise a whole paragraph in just a few words, or a whole chapter in just a sentence; this means you don’t waste words quoting irrelevant information in your assignments. If you can summarise or paraphrase information well, you’re demonstrating to your reader that you understand the material well enough to pick and choose which bits you need to use for your own objectives.

Cite the whole work

Sometimes you’ll need to mention a key critic, researcher or study, because the work is integral to a reader’s understanding of the field. For example, it might be hard to talk about male cross-dressing culture in Japan without mentioning (Sharon) Kinsella’s work, or to write on Japanese new religions without mentioning (Erica) Baffelli’s research. In these cases you might only write a few words about the work itself, but you just want to cite it briefly to show its importance to the field and your own work. This is where your ideas might have originated, and having acknowledged that with a quick citation, you’ll be ready to move on to your discussion.

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Columuns describing when you need to quote, summarise and cite — When to quote, summarise and cite

Activity: dissect this paragraph

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The example below shows these principles in action. Have a look an this excerpt from an essay on the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyo.

Spend a few minutes reading through, then try to identify:

Where has the writer decide to cite a text?
Where do they summarise and paraphrase?
Where do they quote directly? Why do you think this is?

Excerpt from an essay about a new Japanese religion Aum Shinrikyo — Excerpt from an essay

Activity review

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The first sentence, is the writer’s own opinion. It’s followed by a citation, noting that the work of Baffelli and Reader is central to this area, directing a reader to those whole works.
The next sentence summarises and paraphrases a paragraph about the effect media coverage of the group had on the police investigation — here the writer has taken just the main point, rather than all the detail that originally accompanied it, and then added their own conclusion after the reference.
The final sentence starts with paraphrasing and ends with the writer’s own wording, but directly quotes Baffelli and Reader’s phrasing.

Note: there are different ways to attribute the ideas of others in your own writing; varying your practice will keep your style interesting to the reader.

Attribution style when summarising:

Using (author, date) at the end of a sentence
Animation heightens and simplifies reality to create emotional effects (Ebert, 2000).

Using the author’s name in your writing
Ebert (2000) argues that animation heightens and simplifies reality to create emotional effects.

You can find out more about how to attribute sources, format your references and the information needed to reference different kinds of source using the Manchester Harvard Referencing guide.

Using evidence

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As we have seen in the previous activity, you need to balance the ideas of others with your own ideas and opinions in academic writing. You need to use your own words and come to your own conclusions about the evidence you are presenting and referencing. You should not use references in isolation, but add your own analysis.

Activity: Why study Japanese?

Imagine you’ve been asked to write a short blog article addressing the question: ‘Why study Japanese?’ Below are some snippets of information you’ve found during your research. Use the evidence to write a short paper, thinking about which bits you would use, how you would use them and why.

Activity part one:

Use the evidence provided below to write a “short paper” (around two paragraphs) addressing the question Why study Japanese? Include a quotation, and examples of summarising, paraphrasing and citing in your short paper.

Evidence:

The UK has an “alarming shortage” of people able to speak the 10 languages vital to our future prosperity and global standing, warns a report. Schools should teach a wider range of languages, with language skills given the same status as the sciences and maths, argues the British Council. More adults should learn at least one new language, say the authors. Failure to act risks the UK losing out “both economically and culturally”, said John Worne of the British Council. (BBC, 2013)
Japanese Studies average lifetime salary: £36,437 (Telegraph, 2012)
12 UK universities offering single honours courses, 21 UK universities offering combined honours courses (Japan Foundation, 2019)

Activity part 2:

Review your short paper using the steps below, then add it to the discussion board below so that your peers can see what you wrote! Don’t forget to read other people’s short papers! You will notice how different people interpret the evidence and use it differently in their writing. There is no one correct way to write and we can all learn a lot from each other.

Review what you have written and identify where your own voice comes through.
Discuss: Does your paper include analysis? Can you identify your own voice and opinion in your short paper? Do you connect your ideas together and link back to the question?
Revisit your short paper and add in your analysis of the references you have included, and link the references and analysis to the original question you were set e.g.’ Why study Japanese?’

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Reference Management software

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If you’re writing a longer piece of work, referencing software can be a great way to keep track of your sources. It may take some time to set up but learning to use referencing software early on will save you a lot of time over the course of your degree. There are plenty of options available, and we offer support in learning to use them through our Specialist Library Support service. Take a look at our guide to different reference management software.

Further support:

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Referencing in your writing

R20–7012 JAPA10030 ASYNC Only Session no. 3

Introduction

What is Referencing?

Why reference?

Understanding plagiarism

Understanding referencing

Activity: dissect this paragraph

Activity review

Using evidence

Activity: Why study Japanese?

Activity part one:

Activity part 2:

Reference Management software

Further support:

(Generic embed) Help and Support

(Generic embed) Evaluation/Feedback

Written by Library for Educators