Are you about to write a brief academic essay or complete a larger paper for college or university? Then you will need to put at least a few references into your work. Referencing is one of the many things that make academic writing look scholarly. And your ability to use quotes and give credit to someone else for their ideas boosts your credentials as a writer. At first glance, referencing looks easy—you just place a quote and mention where you found it in a bibliography. However, there is more to it. Your style and number of references depends on the type of paper you are writing, but whatever the case may be, we have a few tips to help elevate your referencing skills to a new high.
1. Comply with the guidelines
For every type of academic paper you are required to write, there are specific instructions. In addition to the teacher’s individual specifications, they include the referencing system used to keep the paper well-organized and make it look scholarly. The most common referencing systems, or formatting styles, are APA, MLA, Harvard, and Chicago. There are more of them out there, but in American academia, at least, we mostly stick to the aforementioned ones.
If you have been working as an academic writer for a while, you already know how important it is to make your paper comply with the required formatting style. In case you are just starting out in this field, keep in mind that you have to take referencing systems seriously. At first you may wonder what’s the use of putting one and the same information in different formats, but following the guidelines exactly is half of the success. The first thing you need to do is check out these writing styles and be ready to use them when requested.
2. Place a good example in front of you
Being an academic writer doesn’t mean that you have to remember every small detail about referencing systems (and there are so many of them!). Still, you need to make sure that all margins, spaces, punctuation, and other characteristics of your paper meet the guidelines. You will need comprehensive style guides (like this one) for every referencing system at hand in order to stick to the instructions as you write your paper. Besides, it will be very useful to have an example of a paper written according to the necessary formatting style.
Practically speaking, you may get 90% of the necessary information about how to format references from a good sample of writing. This way, you can instantly see what punctuation goes where in the bibliography list and how your citation should be referenced in the text. You should also keep some of your previous academic papers as examples or ask fellow writers to provide you with some free samples if possible.
3. Use your referencing system consistently
Speaking of which, academic writing can be quite difficult to complete because of the many rules you have to follow in crafting it. Another important point concerning the form of your paper is that you need to stick to the same referencing system all throughout your writing. It likely won’t be too hard to format the body of your essay, since you just need to set the necessary margins and spacing to your paragraphs. However, inserting references into your text can be more problematic.
Even if you are no longer a beginner in writing, you may still accidentally put the wrong kind of parentheses somewhere in your text, or skip a comma in the bibliography section. These are not critical mistakes, however they will be considered as flaws even if the rest of your paper’s formatting is totally fine. To avoid situations like this, we recommend keeping your style guide or some well-executed samples on hand at every point of writing your essay. It will help you eliminate most if not all inconsistencies that your customer may spot.
4. Put a reference wherever you borrow someone’s ideas
While the form of any kind of academic paper is incredibly important, there’s another crucial thing you have to keep in mind, namely its content. You know that a direct quotation always requires a reference, whether immediately after a quote or later on, in the bibliography section. However, referencing is more than just managing quotes.
Wherever you use someone else’s ideas to make your point or illustrate your case with examples, you should put a reference. Even if it’s just a paraphrase, it would be considerate and fair to mention to whom the idea originally belonged. In such cases, it doesn’t always require a separate entry in your bibliography list. Simply mentioning the author’s name is fine when dealing with a well known concept or phrase, or when the idea being referenced hasn’t been documented in written form. Referencing is a way for us to ensure the integrity of intellectual property, which is why you should leave a reference when using the ideas of others, otherwise it will look like you’re presenting them as your own thoughts.
5. Compose your bibliography in advance
If you are working on a larger paper and genuinely dread the moment when you have to compile several pages of bibliographical information, know that you can always stay prepared for it. Since your list of references won’t write itself, you need to keep track of the sources cited from the very beginning. When starting your paper, decide what sources you are likely to use for it and put them on the list. If you are searching for publications as you progress through your essay, make sure you put them on the list of cited sources that will later turn into your bibliography.
It’s important not to miss any publications you intended to cite, and it’s equally important to mark every section in the text where the reference goes. We recommend that you work on your paper and bibliography at the same time to avoid any inconsistencies or horrors of making an entire list of sources in the last few minutes before the deadline.
6. Use software for managing references
Technology is one of a writer’s best friends, and this is especially the case with references. Many academic writers get exhausted, puzzled, and lost when trying to handle the multiple publications that appear on their reference lists. To avoid this pain, students all over the world have started using digital citation management tools, the most popular of them being RefWorks, Endnote, and Zotero. They export references from online databases and also allow you to upload your own. This way, you can get accurate bibliographic information in seconds without wasting hours in searching for the necessary book. They are mostly available as online tools, and you can get either free access to the database or pay for a subscription.
Online referencing tools are great if you need to get information from a large number of books and do it fast. In addition, you will get the accurate titles of the publications and will have minimal stylistic adjustments to make before putting them on your bibliography list.
7. Make sure your references are precise
Another formatting requirement for all academic papers is that the information on your list of cited sources must be accurate. Sometimes it can be difficult to work with scholarly publications because they might have several editions. Moreover, every edition should be treated as a different book, because they may have revised content, different page numbers, or both. As an academic writer, you should always work with primary sources to ensure the accuracy of your references. It will help you avoid placing irrelevant publications on your list.
If you copy the reference from somewhere on the web, you have to make sure the book in question actually exists and has the cited material on the page given in the reference. This task will be easier if you use one of the reference management tools that provide relevant information from databases. In other cases, just try using credible sources for your citations.
8.Double-check references when editing your paper
If you are writing an essay, it will be quite easy for you to take another look at a few of the citations you used and check whether they match the description on your bibliography list. However, you will need to spend some extra time editing a large research paper or dissertation. Even if you are already sure that your referencing is precise and that the reader can find these citations where you say they are, you still need to double-check the formatting, just in case.
Pay attention to parentheses, numbers, and punctuation in text, as well as in the bibliography. Remember that it will be much easier if you started working on your list of sources early in the process and always had your formatting style templates in front of you. This final editing will help you ensure that there are no little things wrong with the referencing, and that the paper you’re working on will not suffer because of some silly typos.
9. Don’t overuse references
A rule of thumb for any writer is to know where to put and not to put references. As we’ve already said, you must put a reference wherever you insert a citation, and it is wisest to place one when you are referring to someone else’s ideas. However, you must keep in mind that with this paper, you’re supposed to demonstrate your own point of view on the topic. If it is a short essay, there is no need to put more than a few references in it. If you are working on a larger paper, make sure you analyze your sources properly and only insert citations where they are necessary.
A larger paper will of course require more references, especially if it’s a thesis or dissertation. It also depends on how many scholarly books and articles you need to process for your writing. The point is not to stuff the paper with references just because there is nothing else to say. Come up with some ideas and cut the unnecessary references that make it harder for the reader to process your writing.
10. Take your time
As you can see, composing a paper with references won’t be fast. There are so many things about formatting to take into account that you just cannot do it all overnight. As an academic writer, you’re probably used to finishing papers urgently. Perhaps that is something you can still do with essays that don’t need many references. But when dealing with a larger paper, take your time. Put up a schedule and do a bit of work every day. Don’t get lazy, but try not to push it either. If you take more time and pay attention to your references, it will save your nerves at the editing stage. Managing quotes in a large paper can be hard, but it is absolutely doable when you start by managing your time.
