Referencing
Reference and Citation
Referencing is a way of acknowledging every source used in research or in the completion of an assignment. The details you provide for a source are normally its author, title, date, and place of publication and the name of its publisher. You may have to provide additional details, depending on what form the source takes, such as a volume number or a web link. These individual references are then collected into what’s called a bibliography.
Citing is a way of briefly referencing a source within the text of your assignment, linking it to the more detailed reference in the bibliography. This is usually done when you paraphrase someone else’s ideas or directly quote them. Information, facts, and dates that are considered common knowledge are not required to be referenced e.g. Dublin is the capital city of Ireland.
Harvard Style Formatting Guidelines
Accurate referencing doesn’t only help protect your work from plagiarism – presenting your source material in a consistent and clear way also enhances the readability of your work. Closely follow the NCAD formatting rules on font type, font size, text alignment and line spacing to ensure that your work is easily legible. Before submitting your work check that you have formatted your whole paper – including your reference list – according to the style’s formatting guidelines.
How to format your essays or research projects:
- Essays should be printed on one side only on A4 paper.
- Typing should be double-spaced and in font size 12, except for indented long quotations where single spacing is used.
- The title page should follow the template provided by the School (available for download from the NCAD website) and include your initials in the three boxes to confirm that the work is your own and that text and images are appropriately credited. Illustrations should be included, but only where discussed in the essay.
- Number each illustration and give a caption underneath, listing the artist/designer, title, date, and current location of the work.
- Always refer to illustrations in the text by their number (in parentheses).
- Always include a full bibliography of the sources cited in your essay on a separate sheet at the end of the essay.
(School of Visual Culture)