REFERENCING GUIDE

 

Yes, in most social sciences courses you should generally be guided by the current edition of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Publication Manual.  For my class assignments I require  essential modest, differences.  American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, both encourage use of  APA and ASA  format, my requirements are combinations of all of these.  In text referencing is basically the same as APA, but Reference List page requires more information.  Most of you have been taught some version of the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) or Chicago format.  The most significant difference is that MLA calls for the author’s last name, comma, and page on which the information you are referencing is taken.  The APA directs you to cite the author’s last name, comma, year of publication, and then,  in the case of a direct quote, a colon followed by  the page number/s on which the quote is located.  All of this information in included between parentheses followed by the appropriate punctuation mark.  For APA, if information is  paraphrased  or summarized, the page number is not necessary.  For MLA, the year of publication is always unnecessary while the page number is always required.  Note the differences.   

 

1.  Referencing can be included at either the beginning, the middle, or end of a sentence, conclusion, or thought.  In

     paraphrasing or summarizing remember that you are still using someone else’s information.  This information

     can take the form of: data, statistics, conclusions, perspectives, etc.  These are still ideas from someone else

     whom you are RE-interpreting for your own purposes.  You must provide proper citation information to give

     credit where it is due.

 

2.  In most academic writing, paraphrasing/summarizing other’s work is preferable.  An unwise writing strategy is to

     link direct quote after direct quote to form some sort of argument.  Paraphrasing/summarizing demonstrates your

     own critical examination of the topic/issue at hand.  This is not to suggest never using quotes, but they should be

     minimally not extensively used. 

 

     Use these examples of referencing for your own work:

 

     a.  at the beginning of a thought

 

                Bishop (2000) concludes that policies that mandate juvenile transfers to adult court themselves

            have little effect on juvenile crime.

 

     b.  in the middle of a thought

 

                In her examination of juvenile transfers to adult court, Bishop (2000) concludes that juvenile             transfers to adult court have little effect on juvenile crime.

 

     c.  at the end of a thought

 

                The practice of transferring juvenile offenders to adult court has been found to have modest

            deterrent effects (Bishop, 2000).

 

3.  On the other hand, when a quote is necessary, when an original source delivers the message more clearly or

     better than you can, referencing is included similarly to the paraphrasing/summarizing above.  A further direction

     is that if the quote is 3 or more lines long, then it should be offset (“blocked”) by being indented one space and

     single spaced.

 

     a. at the beginning of a quote

 

                Of some surprise, Sorenson and Pilgrim (2000:1256) argue that

 

                                Prison violence is also greatly overestimated by jurors.  The constraints of prison

                        environment reduce violence potential among its charges, with rates of homicide in prison

                        being far lower than rates of homicide in the free community. . . .  Most jurors are

                        unaware that both correctional administrators and inmates agree that murderers are                                    generally among the most docile and trustworthy inmates in the institution.

     b. or at the end of the quote

 

                                ...murders are generally among the most docile and trustworthy inmates in the institution                            (Sorenson and Pilgrim, 2000: 1256)

 

4.  As you might guess, there are rules when using more than one source for the same information.  Be aware that

     you need to be aware of this.

 

5.  Generally, footnotes are unnecessary in these assignments.  Footnotes should only be used when you are adding   

     ancillary or “interesting” information or elucidation that does not need to be included in the text of your

     assignment.  However, if the occasion arises, rather than foot, use endnotes.  They are not citations; moreover, in

     many cases, footnotes also need citations.

 

6.  All citations must be alphabetically compiled and NOT numbered at the end of the writing assignment on a

     separate “Works Cited” or “List of References” page.  DO NOT use the title “Bibliography”. 

 

     a. when listing a book:

 

                Wynn, Jennifer  (2001)  Inside Riker’s Island: Stories from the World’s Largest Penal Colony. 

                    New York: St. Martin’s Press.

 

     Note that the author’s whole name (not first and middle initials) is inverted, year of publications come next in

     parentheses, the complete title of the book is identified (with all proper nouns capitalized), city that publishing

     company is based (if the city is easily recognized there is no need to include the state, however, if the location is

     less well-known, the state should be include.  Examples: Upper Saddle River, NJ; Newbury Park, CA; Long

     Grove, IL), followed by the publisher of the book.

 

     b. when listing a chapter/essay from an edited volume (collection of articles/essays/chapters by different authors)

         remember that you are crediting the author you use, NOT the editor of the volume, unless the editor is the

         author you are citing

 

                Bishop, Donna  (2000)  “Juvenile Offenders in the Adult Criminal Justice System,” in M Tonry (ed)            Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, vol 27.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

     In this case, the author of the essay cited is the author in the alphabetical listing, parenthesized year of  

     publication, quotation mark surrounded complete title of the essay referenced, the editor of the collection so

     identified, complete title of the reference source, location of publisher, publisher.  Note that inclusive pages are

     not necessary.

 

     c. when listing an article from a journal

 

                Sorenson, Jonathan R and Rocky L Pilgrim  (2000)  “An Actuarial Risk Assessment of Violence                          Posed by Capital Murder Defendants”, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 90/4

                    (Summer): 1251-1270.

 

     In the case of two or more authors, only the first (principal) author’s name is inverted, followed by all other      

     authors in normal sequence, year of publication, quotation mark surrounded title of article with all proper nouns

     capitalized, name of the journal from which the article is extracted, the volume number of the         journal, slash,

     issue number of the journal, parenthesized month or season of publication, colon, inclusive pages in which the

     article can be found.

 

    d. when citing the Internet, you must provide the entire url and date of access on the Reference List.  In the text

        only the prefix is necessary, in this case: www.fbi.gov.

 

                                http://www.fbi.gov/mostwatn/topten/tenlist.htm, January 20, 2004.