The full reference list

The reference list at the end of the essay or dissertation is where the full bibliographic information for a source is presented. Each source that is cited in the body of your work, whether to elaborate on a point you have made, or reinforce an argument, must also have an entry in the end reference list, unless it is an irretrievable source like a personal communication.

A reference list is not to be confused with a bibliography, which tutors may alternately ask you to produce to accompany a piece of written work. The distinction between the two is that the reference list is sources that you have actually used in your essay or dissertation, through direct quotation and paraphrasing, whereas a bibliography features all the sources that you have read as part of your research for an essay or dissertation, a kind of reading list. If you are in any doubt as to what is required for a bibliography, you should speak to your tutor for clarification as there are differences compared with a reference list.

In a full reference list, individual sources are listed in alphabetical order according to the author or contributor’s surname. You do not need to use headings to group sources by the type of format because they are listed all together. The top of the page can either be headed ‘Reference List’, or simply ‘References’.

If you are referencing a number of sources by the same author, list them chronologically by the year of publication with the earliest work first. When an author has written more than one work published in the same year, as seen in section 1.11, then list each individual reference in order of the lower case letter after the year of publication e.g. (2007a), (2007b).

	Check with your departmental guidelines whether you are meant to write a reference list or bibliography, and for the latter, if you need to give references only (making it more of a reference list), or a full list of the sources that you have consulted.
	For longer references that exceed one line of text, some departments may indent the text on the lines underneath the first line of text (the indentation is usually fixed at 5 spaces in from the first line of text). Look at longer reference examples in your departmental handbook, to see whether you need to indent text within the reference list.

The second section of this manual will show you how to construct a reference as part of the full reference list for the types of source materials covered in section one. The individual units which make up a reference are given, followed by an example to illustrate how this would look with all of the information pieced together.