Citing references

Introduction

This section will help you to understand how to cite references when writing-up your research and how to compile the bibliography at the end. Although these might seem quite marginal issues when you start your research, they are key during the writing up. If you know how to do it properly, you will save crucial time and spare your energies for the intellectual endeavour of elaborating on the outcomes of your research.

When you write up your research it is important that you provide a reference any time you quote from or paraphrase another work, and this can be done by using footnotes, endnotes (either at the end of a chapter or of the whole text of the research, before the bibliography), or in-text references.

Writing a title

Before considering the different systems of referencing, remember that when writing the titles of books, journals, newspapers and conferences:

• Titles should be italicised.
• Titles of books in English are normally capitalised.
• Titles of books in other languages are usually written in lower-case letters.
• Titles of journals and newspapers are normally capitalised in all languages.

For example:

Provinces of Early Mexico
Pueblos de indios y educación
Journal of Latin American Studies
Historia Mexicana

There are two basic systems for citing references which are explained on the next page.

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