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How To Reference A University-Level Research Paper

It is important for you to learn how to reference a university level research paper. You will be writing a lot of these in the course of your studies, and it is important for you to ensure that you know what to do. You need to ensure that you have your hands on some really good information to help you reference your paper properly.

In most cases we see a lot of students who write some really good work, but their failure to reference their work appropriately makes it difficult for them to earn the top marks that they desire. There are some simple instructions that you need to look into and your work will be much easier in the long run. The following are some of such instructions:

  • Important do not do’s

  • Standard citation formats

Important do not do’s

There are some things that you must never do when you are citing a university level research paper. Making these mistakes will lose you marks in the process instead of helping you out.

In particular when trying to portray an element of personal communication, it is important to make sure that you do not make these mistakes.

Never make the mistake of using footnotes in your paper. While this might appear to be a good way of referencing in books and so forth, it is not what you should do in this particular paper, so try and avoid this, unless of course you are mandated to do so.

Direct quotes do not have a place in this paper. This is particularly so when you are quoting from material that has been published. This would be a really easy way to make your paper a target for plagiarism checkers. You should however paraphrase your work in your own words.

Standard citation formats

Typically when you are working on this paper, only the last name of the author is used and the year of publication. In such a case you would have something like (Jones, 2012), for a book that was written by Margaret Jones.

In the event that the book in question was written by two different writers, use both of their last names. You will have something like this (Jones and Schwartz, 2012)

If you cannot find the name of the author for the text you are referencing, you will need to indicate it as an anonymous piece. This will give you (Anon, 2012)