Whenever you refer to another person's work in your own essay, dissertation or article you must acknowledge them and give full details of your source. You risk being accused of plagiarism if you fail to do so.
Different departments at the University of Reading favour different referencing styles. UoR Institute of Education specifies APA 7th edition. Find out how this works through the resources below, contacting your Academic Liaison Librarians if you need further individual help.
There are Things you can do to avoid plagiarism, as listed in the Library's general guide to Citing references with different citation systems.
Study Advice provide various guides to improving your writing style when supporting arguments with references. See Referencing and Academic Integrity, especially: Avoiding unintentional plagiarism, Quotes and paraphrases, Writing a precis or summary and Getting the most out of Turnitin. See also Using Turnitin as a feedback tool. You can make an appointment with a Study Adviser if you need further individual help.
University of Reading Institute of Education uses APA 7th edition referencing (published 2020).
Things to note about APA: 'inconsistencies' such as using pp. before book chapter page numbers but nothing before journal page numbers. Only US legislation is mentioned in the print APA manual, so students need to extrapolate what to do when referring to other legal systems. Keep checking and practicing!
APA 6th edition
An internet search can retrieve a wide range of different publication types. It is important that you know how to recognise these to help you judge their reliability and suitability for use in your assignments, and to know how to reference them.
Watch this short video from our Academic Liaison Team which will help you become a digital detective and use clues to help you recognise different sources in your results.
When you do your dissertation you could consider using EndNote to manage your references. This bibliographic management package can be used to store references, and then insert the citation in your Word document, automatically building the bibliography for you in the correct style.
Find out more on our EndNote webpages:
For information on other options for electronic management of your references see our guide to Managing references: