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APA Referencing and Plagiarism: Referencing Basics

This Guide will help you to correctly reference your assignments using the APA style.

Why is Referencing Important?

To  acknowledge the contributions of other authors that have you have used in your work, a referencing style must be used correctly.  Each style has its own rules and format.

At Central Regional TAFE, the referencing style used is APA Style.

Referencing is important, because it allows you to use the work of others in your assessments without "stealing" their work.

 

The benefits of referencing include-

  • enabling the reader to validate the sources or material that you have used.
  • allowing you to demonstrate your wider reading and research.
  • illustrating your points and give strength to your arguments.
  • helping you to avoid accidentally plagiarising the work of others. 

Why Reference?

Source: UTS Library. (2016, March 4). Why do we reference? [video]. YouTube.

 

When do I Reference?

  • Reference the work of individuals whose ideas, theories, research have directly influenced your work.  
  • Reference whenever providing evidence/information to support what you are writing about or when providing critical definitions or key background information.
  • In addition, you must reference when providing facts and figures that are not common knowledge. (i.e. statistics)
  • Reference whenever using pictures, or images from other sources

How Do I Do It?

Step 1: When taking notes and gathering information, write down all the relevant bibliographic details of your information sources, such as author, date of publication, title, publisher, URL, etc.

 

Step 2: Insert a brief in-text citation (also known as an in-text reference) at the place within the text of your assignment where this information is used.

 

Step 3: At the end of your assignment, add a reference list containing the full details of all the references cited in your assignment.

 

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