3. Referencing your Thesis

 

You're approaching the final hurdle: pulling together a bibliography, often known as a list of references or works cited. Use these tips to make the process less painful.

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Your bibliography isn't just as an optional extra. It's an integral part of your thesis.

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Again, this is where your planning comes into play.

 

Record-keeping the right way 

 

When you're working your way through your secondary research material, make sure you've made a note of: 

 

• Author name(s) 

• Title

• Page numbers for essays in collections

• Publisher and its location 

• Year of publication. 

 

That way you'll avoid having to trek back to those shelves again to fill in any gaps when time is of the essence.

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Technology is also your best friend when it comes to bibliographic record-keeping. Powerful tools like Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote plug into Word on your laptop and take an enormous amount of work out of the equation altogether. They're often available free to students through your university, too.

 

While you're at it, see if your faculty has any how-to courses on offer, and you'll save yourself a whole world of time and effort figuring it all out solo.

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Using Google Scholar for article research? Click the quotation mark below a search result and you'll get a bibliographic reference formatted in your choice of academic style, including Chicago, APA and MLA.

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As a general rule, if the text was published on its own (book, play, etc.), italicise its title. If it was published alongside other works in the same book (articles, poems, etc.), put the title in quotation marks. (One important exception to this rule is for complete works produced within an anthology: if citing Hamlet from the Riverside Shakespeare, for example, italicise both.)

 

If you’re using more than one source by the same author, arrange them alphabetically by title. Cite the author’s name for the first source, and then use a dash instead of that name for each subsequent entry.

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For more specific guides to building a reference list in your required academic style, go to Chicago, MLA or APA.

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Need a hand pulling it all together?