Referencing

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Referencing

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What is Referencing?
Reasons for Referencing
How to Reference in Your Text
How to Write a Bibliography

Reference Machine: automatically makes references for you.

Referencing is telling your reader where you learned or found the information that you are writing.

It is similar to a hyperlink on a web page - by following the link or the reference the reader can find more information.

You should write references in 2 places, in your text and at the end of the text. In the text write a short reference, with just the author's family name, the date of publication and any page numbers; e.g. 'Smith (2025, p. 10) claims that...'. At the end of the text write a more detailed reference, including the title and publication information; e.g.

Smith, J. (2025). Academic English Coursebook. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Polytechnic University Press.

You may FAIL Hong Kong Polytechnic University courses if you plagiarise, which means if you don't reference the authors and sources where you found the information in your writing.

Other reasons for referencing are:

so that your readers can find useful background information; e.g. by finding the book in the library
to show that you are building on previous research
to show readers that you are well-informed in this area and that therefore your writing is more trustworthy
so that the library has enough information to order the book or journal if they don't have it
so that readers and especially teachers and examiners can check that you haven't failed to understand or mis-represented what the author wrote
so that other writers can find background material to use in their writing
because ideas are the property of the people who thought of them, and using those ideas without saying who thought of them first is stealing
the reputation of teachers and researchers is partly based on their ideas
the APA style used by the ELC is a widely-used and understood system.

How to Reference in Your Text

You can give the source of your ideas in 3 ways, by quoting, summarising and by paraphrasing. All three should contain an in-text reference including the author's family name, the date of publication and the page number(s); e.g. Yule (1996, p. 3). All three should also have a reference in the bibliography. If you are not sure whether to quote, summarise or paraphrase, click here for a page that helps you choose.

Quoting

'Quoting' means using the exact same words as the original author. There are 3 ways you can do this:

Quotation integrated with the text. This is for shorter pieces of text; e.g. from one word up to two sentences.
e.g. 'Pragmatics', says Yule Yule (19961996), 'is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker or writer' (p.3p.3).
Quotation using ellipsis ( ... ) to omit certain words, phrases or sentences from the original. You can do this to miss out any unnecessary information.
e.g. Yule (1996) Yule argues that pragmatics 'requires a consideration how speakers organize what they want to say ... and under what circumstances' (p.3p.3).
Quotation in an indented (narrow margins) paragraph, without quotation marks. This is for longer pieces of text, for example for paragraphs.
e.g. For example, Yule Yule points out:

Thus, pragmatics is appealing because it's about how people make sense of each other linguistically, but it can be a frustrating area of study because it requires us to make sense of people and what they have in mind.
(YuleYule 19961996, p.3p.3)

Phrases that you can use for quoting include, 'As stated by...'(an author or authors), 'As stated in...'(books, articles or papers), 'In the view of....'(an author or authors).
e.g. In the view of Yule (1996) 'pragmatics is appealing because it's about how people make sense of each other linguistically (p.3-4p.3-4).

You can also use introductory verbs such as: he argues, she acknowledges, it claims, we predict, they warn
e.g. Yule (1996) argues that 'pragmatics is appealing because it's about how people make sense of each other linguistically' (p. 3-4).

Try the Reference Machine: it automatically makes quotation references for you.
Click here for examples and an exercise on in-text citation.

Summarising

Summarising is writing a summary of what the author says. Summarising is useful because:

you can miss out unnecessary details, such as examples
you can use less words than the author, and therefore reduce the number of words in your writing

A summary should have about 50% or less words than the words that you are summarising.

A summary should have both an in-text reference and a reference in the bibliography.

Try the Reference Machine: it automatically makes summary references for you.
Click here for examples and an exercise on in-text citation.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing means using the ideas of an author, but not using his or her exact words. However, the meaning should be the same. You can do this, for example, to say that 2 different authors have the same opinion, and give the opinion as a paraphrase. This shows that you can categorise ideas, which is a useful studying skill which can improve your marks in assignments.

e.g. According to Yule (1996, p. 3-4) and Grundy (1995, p. 5), pragmatics is about how people understand each other's meaning from their words.

Other phrases besides 'According to...' that you can use to do this include:

'As stated by...'(an author or authors)
'As stated in...'(books, articles or papers)
'In the view of....(an author or authors).

You can also use introductory verbs such as: argues, acknowledges, claims, predicts, warns
e.g. Yule argues that pragmatics is how people understand each other's meaning from their words (1996, p. 3-4).

To see how this works, use the Reference Machine to automatically make a reference for you.
Click here for examples and an exercise on in-text citation.

How to write a bibliography:

Click any part of the reference to find out what it is: (The underlines are to show you that you can click on the words. Your references should NOT be underlined.) References in a bibliography should be in alphabetical order by the author's family name.

Try the Reference Machine: it automatically makes bibliography references for you.
Click here for an exercise on bibliographical referencing.

Using APA style:

For a book:

Channel, J. (1994). Vague language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

You write (no underlines): Channel, J. (1994). Vague language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

For an article in an edited book:

Halliday, M.A.K. (1993). Quantitative studies and probabilities in grammar. In Hoey, M. (ed.) Data, Description, Discourse. London: HarperCollins, 1-25.

For an edited book:

Hoey, M. (ed.) (1993). Data, description, discourse. London: HarperCollins.

For a book in a series:

Lesser, R. (1979). Linguistic investigations of aphasia. Studies in language disability and remediation 5. London: Edward Arnold.

For an article in a journal:

Partington, A. (1995). English word stress, syllable structure and lexical access. The Hong Kong Polytechnic Working Papers in ELT and Applied Linguistics 1, (1), 119-138.

For an Internet site:
If you know the name of the author:

Johns, T. (1997). Lingua multilingual concordancer. Retrieved April 20, 2025 from http://sun1.bham.ac.uk/johnstf/lingua.htm

If you don't know the name of the author, put the name of the institution or company:

Hong Kong Polytechnic University. (1997). 'Departments and Centres at PolyU'. Retrieved April 20, 2025 from http://www.polyu.edu.hk/cpa/NewHome/Depart.htm

If you don't know the date, use (n.d.). , which stands for 'no date'.

Try the Reference Machine: it automatically makes bibliography references for you:

Referencing Resources on the Internet

Referencing Pages - an overview of using sources and referencing
Reference Machine - a program to help you write references. You fill in the boxes with the author's name etc. and the computer formats the reference for you. You can use one of the following styles:
- APA style: for an in-text citation, a book, an article in a journal, a chapter in an edited volume, a newspaper or magazine article, an Internet reference, an online image, music, or an AI chatbot.
- Harvard style: for an in-text citation, a book, an article in a journal, a chapter in an edited volume, a newspaper or magazine article, or an Internet reference.
- Vancouver style: for a book, an article in a journal, a chapter in an edited volume, a newspaper or magazine article, an Internet reference or an AI chatbot (e.g. ChatGPt).
- IEEE style: for a book, a part or chapter in a book, an article in a journal, an article in an e-journal.
Referencing Exercises: Spot the errors and correct them in in-text references and in bibliographical references.
Choosing whether to use a quotation, summary or paraphrase.
Secondary citation
Example academic essay with the quotations, summaries and paraphrases highlighted. It also contains in-text citations and references. The topic is how to design navigation for Internet pages.
List of referencing-related books in CILL.

Click here for a list of materials in CILL on referencing.

This is the author's family name. It is important because, first, books are usually indexed alphabetically, and second, your bibliography should be in alphabetical order. If you do not know which name is the family name, and which is the other name, use all of them. In general, western names start with the other names, and eastern names start with the family name.