10 things to know about referencing at Cranfield (APA7) – a taster

Need to gen up on your referencing? Then read on. The following are some of the most important things to know about referencing in the APA7 style at Cranfield.

1. If you do not reference correctly (knowingly or unknowingly), you will commit plagiarism.
To avoid plagiarism, you have to do two things: reference the source you are using and paraphrase the information (mostly unless it is the odd necessary quotation).

2. Referencing the source itself consists of two parts: the first part is the citation and the second part is the reference list entry.
Every source referred to in your work needs to be acknowledged twice. The first time as a citation, which is an in-text reference containing brief details of the source (these details will be mentioned later on). Each of these citations will need a corresponding reference list entry, which is an end of text reference. At the end of your text, after your conclusion, you will need a reference list containing all the relevant reference details of the sources used in your work.

3. How does referencing look in your writing?
Can you identify the reference in the sample paragraph below?

The use of drugs such as Ritalin on children with behavioural problems is controversial. For many, they arguably cause more problems than they solve, and in the long term, could even cause organ damage.  Researchers from the National Institute of Pharmacology in Hungary found one in every twenty children treated with the drug for more than five years, experienced genetic abnormalities in the liver or kidneys later on in life (Mathieson et al., 2011).  Whilst not conclusive, this does suggest parents and educationalists should consider other, non-medical approaches to addressing behaviour.

(Adapted from York St John University, 2013).

The reference (citation) in this example is (Mathieson et al., 2011).

4. There are two types of citations that you can use in your writing: parenthetical and narrative.
A parenthetical citation is where the author’s name is in brackets and a narrative citation is where the name is written as part of your sentence.

Parenthetical:

• There are two types of citations (Nolan & Smith, 1984).

Narrative:

• According to Nolan and Smith (1984) there are two types of citations.

So, when would you use one over the other? Generally, it is good practice to use a mixture of both types to add variety to your writing and as a result make your writing more engaging and less repetitive. However, there is a subtle difference in terms of what the focus is on. If you want to place the focus on the author (due to their importance or significance in the field or topic, or maybe to distance yourself from the claim), you would use a narrative citation. If you want to place the focus on the information itself, you’d use a parenthetical citation.

Here we can touch upon the positioning of citations and how to precisely place them in your writing. Citations can be found at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence. If it is at the end of sentence and it is a parenthetical citation, you should know that it most accurately covers the information found in the sentence it is attached to and it does not cover multiple sentences. If you want to cover multiple sentences with one citation, best practice is to start the section with a narrative citation and then in the subsequent sentences add reference reminders or make the connection clear linguistically.

5. The default components of a citation or in-text reference are two: surname of the author and the year the source was published in (e.g. Smith, 2020).
Beyond that, exceptions and additions do exist e.g. if it’s a quotation you must add a page number if it is available (e.g. Smith, 2020, p.2); if you cannot locate the name or date of the source, you mention the name of the organisation along with the letters n.d. (e.g. BBC, n.d.); if there are 3 or more authors you add et al. (e.g. Smith et al., 2020).

So these are our top five. Want to know more?
We run regular sessions on citing and referencing. Check out what’s running soon and sign up here. If you’d like to book for an online session but cannot make the date and time advertised, just book on anyway and we’ll send you a recording afterwards.

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