List of References
At the end of every academic work there should be a list of references which allows readers to locate the citations and references in the text if they wish. This list is usually called 'References' or 'List of references'. It is not strictly a bibliography since a bibliography can include books which influenced the writing or are useful for follow-up reading, but which were not specifically mentioned in the text. You will find that encyclopaedias and some books give such references. It is not appropriate to give references for books you have not actually mentioned in the body of your essay at the end of your assignments.
The list of references will include, in alphabetical order of authors' surnames, all works which are referred to in the text.
The following guidelines show you how to reference:
Test your knowledge: Proofreading Bibliography
Books
The author's surname is written first followed by a comma and the initials with full stops after them:
Halliday, M.A.K.
If there is more than one author they are listed thus (notice that the initials of the following authors come before the surnames):
Halliday, M.A.K. and R. Hasan
When there are more than two authors, ALL of them should be named (do not use et al. in the List of References).
Halliday, M.A.K., A. McIntosh and P.Strevens
Edited books have the abbreviation 'ed.' or 'eds.' after the editor's name / editors' names.
Anderman, G. and M. Rogers (eds.)
The name is followed by the year of publication in brackets and the full title of the book in Italic script (or, more unusually, underlined, from days when theses were typewritten - whichever you use be consistent). If the book has a number of editions, state the edition of the book you consulted.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) (2nd edition) An Introduction to Functional Grammar
If you have consulted two or more works published by an author in the same year, they are lettered a), b) and so on:
Halliday, M.A.K. (1967a) Intonation and Grammar in British English
Halliday, M.A.K. (1967b) Grammar, Society and the Noun
After the title comes the place of publication and the name of the publisher. The authors¡¦ surnames should have a hanging indent so that they are clearly visible (i.e the second line should start further to the right than the line with the author's surname - this is hard to show on this web page so the following references do not have hanging indents). A complete reference for a book will look like this:
Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) (2nd edition) An Introduction to Functional Grammar London: Edward Arnold.
Papers or Chapters
If you want to refer to something written as part of an edited collection, start with the name of the author of the paper, article or chapter, the date of publication and the title in single inverted commas. This is followed by the editor(s) of the collection, the title of the book and the place and name of the publishers:
Fraser, J (1999) ¡¥The Translator and the Word: the Pros and Cons of Dictionaries in Translation¡¦, in Anderman, G. and M. Rogers (eds.). Word, Text, Translation: Liber Amicorum for Peter Newmark. Clevedon: Multilingual
Journal articles
References to articles in journals start with the name and date as for books. Then the name of the article is given in single inverted commas followed by the name of the journal in italics or underlined (whichever convention is being used for book titles) followed by the journal volume number, a colon and the page numbers of the article.
Bialystok, E. (1978) ¡¥A theoretical model of second language learning¡¦. Language Learning 28:69 - 83.
Unpublished works
There are various kinds of writing that come under this heading. The principle is, as before, to give enough information so that the original could be tracked down by a reader. Where there is no date use the abbreviation ¡¥nd¡¦ for ¡¥no date¡¦. Examples1 of references to unpublished texts are:
Conley, P. (nd) Experience Curves as a Planning Tool, available from the Boston Consulting Group as a pamphlet
Haendel, D. (1978) International barter and countertrade. Staff Paper No.14. National Center for Export-Import Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
The Financial Times (20 Nov., 1981) The Strategic .Environments Matrix - BCG¡¦s New Tool. London: Financial Times
Electronic sources
Although there are as yet no accepted standards for acknowledging electronic sources, try to keep a consistent style that will make the source easily traceable. In general the reference follows the same format as for books - try to find out WHO wrote the article / web page - this will be the author's name. If no one is named as the author then name the company or organization responsible for the web page. Give the year of publication if you can find it, otherwise put (nd). Give as much of the following information as possible:
- author's name and initials
- year of publication
- title of the document, either the title of the web page or the subject line of the e-mail
- medium, whether CD-ROM, E-mail, online or other
- location, url or ftp address
- date accessed that is, when YOU saw it or printed it out (many electronic publications change frequently so this helps trace the document)
Example: Henriques, J.B. (1991) Left frontal hypoactivation in depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100, 534-543, Retrieved November 16, 2010