Essay References Is the Most Important Part of Your Essay
March 31st, 2009Learn to write them in the better way than the rest of your classmates
Essay references are the most important part of your essay as it explains many things that remain unexplained. It is a tedious and troublesome task if you don’t understand the basics of writing references. Remember to use credible and authenticated references while writing. This is the last section of your essay and also plays a major role in achieving a better essay. These references will help your readers understand your concept better and keep track of your bibliography and give you more credit points for your essay. There are handbooks and websites dedicated to explaining the correct methods of referencing and we will only address the key guidelines you must apply in the process.
There are various types of formats in which a paper could written in like APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, etc. Out of these only the Harvard and MLA formats are often used. Science department will generally use the APA format and the humanities department and other such departments will use the MLA format paper. Essay references are a lengthy process and they are time consuming. The reason why I told about the format styles is because each type has a different positioning for the references sometimes it is in the end and sometimes it is like footnotes or head notes.
The references will be given in two forms, (i) if you are following the Harvard style then the references will be as a list in the end, and (ii) if you are following the oxford style then the references must be stated as a sequence of footnotes. If you are writing your references in the end it can be written in the form of a reference list or a bibliography. A bibliography deals with the details of a particular subject matter. Bibliographies can be compiled as a book itself, whereas a reference list only compiles those data which are mentioned in the text without giving any external references.
Generally, in essay references, reference list means a set of footnotes which will allow the reader to follow up in the same page instead of searching for it in the last page or so. It will comply of all the important details about the particular subject cited from the author’s name to the source of the citation. If you need to use footnotes, information about the Harvard system should be available in the course outline in your subject. The last section outlined how to cite a paper or reference sources within the text. This section shows how to complete the reference section at the end of the essay.
Now that you have learned all that is supposed to be there in the essay references, you need to know a few more things about it. Every thing that can be discussed from journal articles to books and classics follow a different type or style of quoting or listing references. Using the handbooks and several websites will give you a wider scope of looking for references. So remember that the better your references are the more points your teacher will award you.