Referencing

All students should be aware of the need for referencing. It is becoming increasingly important. Some teachers place enormous stress, time and attention on the subject. So should you. It is one of the fundamental disciplines of worthwhile academic study. All academic work should be able to show that it is based on reasonable deduction from legitimate data. One of the disciplines it should encourage is that of careful attention to detail.

For scientists, the data is often from observation or from experiment. For other subjects, the data may well be from books and written sources For worthwhile academic study, you should tell your reader where you got your data. This is partly a question of your professional training in the skills of judgement. Judgement is one of the skills that a University - and any worthwhile school - seeks to develop in all its learners.

There are many fussy details involved. (For a start, every Department has its own rules, and for many Departments these are unique. See referencing system.) But they can all be viewed as boiled down to four Principles of Referencing Other teachers will list a different number of 'principles of referencing', and define them in different ways. Read them: the different views and emphases will help you to learn better what you need to do.