Typography and graphic communication: Citing references

In the main text you need to add a footnote number for every reference. This should be a superscript number, which usually comes at the end of the sentence, where it should be positioned after the punctuation. Footnotes should be sequential, and the numbers should never be repeated.

Guidance on how to insert footnotes in Word

The first time you refer to a source in a footnote you should include exactly the same information, in the same order, as your bibliography entry, but with the addition of the specific page number(s) that you are referring to.¹ Subsequent references to the same source should use a short version, which gives just the name, date, main title, and page number(s).² Don’t use Latin abbreviations like ibid – most readers don’t know what these mean!

At the end of your piece of work you need a Bibliography (a list of all the sources you referred to in researching your assignment,) - see the Bibliography box for more detail

¹ Ing, J. (1988), Johann Gutenberg and his Bible, New York: The Typophiles, pp.10–14
² Ing, J. (1988), Johann Gutenberg and his Bible, pp.12–16

For this kind of referencing you need to put the author’s name, date, and page number(s) in the main text at the appropriate point (Ing, 1998: 10–14). If you are referring to a particular idea or quoting directly you must give the relevant page number(s). Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to include the author’s name, because you have used it elsewhere in the sentence, e.g.

If you are discussing an author’s work in a particular text more generally you may not need to give the specific page number:

At the end of your piece of work you need a Bibliography (a list of all the sources you referred to in researching your assignment,) - see the Bibliography box for more detail

List both authors separated by 'and' 

Author, A.N. and Other, A.N. (date), Title of publication: subtitle, City of publication: Name of publisher

List only the first author, followed by 'et al'

Author, A.N, et al (date), Title of publication: subtitle, City of publication: Name of publisher

If you are referencing a book with chapters by different authors you need to name them and the editors and give the title of the chapter. Structure is similar to entries for periodicals (see below):

Author, A.N. (date), ‘Title of chapter’, in Editor, A.N., and Editor, A.N., eds, Title of publication: subtitle, City of publication: Name of publisher, pp.xx–xx.

For websites you should add some additional information the URL (the address of the web page, omitting http://www.) and the date when the website was accessed (i.e. when you looked at it). Often there will be no publisher or city of publication – just leave these out. Where there is no year use ‘n.d.’ for ‘no date’. If there is no author then use the name of whoever is responsible for the website (i.e. the company or organisation). The basic structure should be as follows:

Author, A.N. (date), Title in italic: subtitle, also in italic, City of publication: Name of publisher; website.addre.ss (accessed day Month year)

For social media posts you should add additional information about the platform and the day/month posted. If there is no author then use the name of whoever is responsible for the account. The basic structure should be as follows:

Author, A.N (year), ‘Title in single quotes’, Name of platform, day Month posted; website.addre.ss (accessed day Month year)

These are publications such as journals, magazines, and newspapers which are published repeatedly, i.e. daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. For these you should not include the city of publication and name of publisher but will need to add

• The title of the article
• Volume and/or issue number
• The full page range for the article

Entries should be structured as follows:

Author, A.N. (date), ‘Title of article’, Title of journal, XX, pp.xx–xx

For these you should name the creator(s), naming their specific roles if relevant and using a company name if there are no individual names. Then give the year of publication and the title of the work in italic followed by the medium/format in square brackets. Include other information if available (e.g. city of publication, name of publisher, web address and date accessed). For episodic sources give the episode name in italic and the programme/series name in roman.

In essays and other written work submitted in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication we expect that you will include images. You need to include a reference in the text, so that the reader knows when to refer to these. You can either include this in a sentence: e.g. Figure 1 shows … or you can put a reference in parentheses (round brackets) at the relevant point (fig.1).

Captions

Your caption should include as much information as possible about the image (what is it, who made it, when, what size is it?). At the end of the caption you should include a citation, in the same format as your footnotes (but preceded by ‘From’) or as your in-text references. For example:

1. Afrikan Alphabets book title page, Saki Mafundikwa, 2004.   209 x 209 mm. From Sales, K. (2004), Centered: People and ideas diversifying design, San Fransisco: Chronicle Books, p.63.	1. Afrikan Alphabets book title page, Saki Mafundikwa, 2004.  209 x 209 mm. (Sales, 2023: 63).