Referencing for Dummies
If you've not learnt a referencing system already, the easiest to start with
is the author-date system, which uses no footnotes or endnotes at all. Recall
that every assertion you make in a essay (apart from things that are Common
Knowledge) has to be substantiated with a reference to an authority. Thus the
following sentence in an essay needs a reference:
The parliament closed the theatres in 1642.
Your assertion might involve quotation of someone, in which case you
undoubtedly need a reference:
Kastan showed that it is a mistake to think that "ever-growing Puritan
hostility to the theater resulted in the prohibition of playing".
In the author-date system, your reference consists of an author's last name
and the year of publication of the work and, if a particular page is being
referenced, the page number. Thus the first sentence (the authority for which is
a whole chapter in Kastan's book) would be cited thus:
The parliament closed the theatres in 1642 (Kastan 1999, 201-20).
The second sentence, which quotes from a particular page, would be supported
thus:
Kastan showed that it is a mistake to think that "ever-growing Puritan
hostility to the theater resulted in the prohibition of playing" (Kastan
1999, 203).
These in-text citations refer the reader to a single list of 'Works Cited'
(much like a bibliography) at the end of your essay, in which the combination of
author and date identifies a single work. A 3-item list of works cited might
look like this:
Works Cited
Gurr, Andrew The Shakespearian Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999)
Harbage, Alfred Shakespeare's Audience (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1941)
Kastan, David Scott Shakespeare After Theory (New York: Routledge,
1999)
What matters most is that you name the author, title, city of publication
(NOT the country or county), the publisher, and the year. If you have all these
things, no-one's going to mind too much how you style them (whether separated by
commas, periods, brackets, etc). There's no need to reproduce the words 'Ltd' or
'& Co' or 'PLC' in a publisher's name, just the name will do. The title of
the book must be italicized or underlined.
The in-text citation of author and date is sufficient to identify the unique
work in the list of works cited, even if a single author has multiple works in
there (since the year will disambiguate them). If, by chance, there are two
works by the same author in the same year, you disambiguate them by adding 'a',
'b', 'c', etc to the year thus:
The parliament closed the theatres in 1642 (Kastan 1999a, 201-20). But play
publishing continued (Kastan 1999b, 22).
In the list of works cited, the items would appear as:
Works Cited
Kastan, David Scott Shakespeare After Theory (New York: Routledge,
1999a)
Kastan, David Scott Yet Another Book by Me (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999b)
If a book has two authors, both names appear in the in-text citation, thus
"(Kastan & Wells 2003, 21)"
What if the item is an article in a journal? The same rules apply to the
in-text citation--eg "(Gurr 1988, 58)"--but in the list of works cited
you give slightly different information: the author, the title of the article
(in inverted commas), the name of the journal it appeared in (in italics or
underlined), the volume of the journal it appeared in (that is, a volume
number), the year of publication, and the span of pages that the article
occupies. Thus:
Gurr, Andrew "The bare island" Shakespeare Quarterly 44
(1988) 55-70
What if the item is an essay in a collection of essays forming a book? The
same rules apply to the in-text citation--eg "(Holderness 1990,
20)"--but in the list of works cited you give slightly different
information: the author, the title of the article (in inverted commas), the
title of the book of essays, the name of the editor of the book of essays, the
year of publication, and the span of pages that the essay occupies. Thus:
Holderness, Graham "More to say on the Henriads" Shakespeare's
History Plays Bryan Loughrey (editor) (1995) 5-49
Some stylists require that you put different bits of typographical furniture
around the elements in the record--some want commas, some want periods, some
want colons--but no-one's going to punish you in respect of such detail so long
as you are consistent in your own styling. Spaces (as I've used) are quite
acceptable so long as the record is unambiguous. The important thing is that you
include the information that's wanted, don't include what isn't wanted, and that
you correctly identify this as an essay by Holderness in a book of essays put
together by Loughrey. (Don't make the mistake of entering the whole book in your
list of works cited.)
Do the above and you need never again fight with Microsoft Word's execrable
'footnote/endnote' function and need never lose marks for poor referencing. If
you have a lot of references to cope with (say, in your dissertation) use a
'personal bibliographical database' that manages your records and writes the
list of works cited for you. (I know--sounds impossible, but it's quite true.)
The RefWorks package is provided to you for free by the university for this
purpose.
Gabriel
Egan . com
