Oxford

La Trobe University Library La Trobe Library

Oxford

Academic Referencing Tool
La Trobe University Library La Trobe Library

Oxford

Academic Referencing Tool
La Trobe University Library La Trobe Library

Oxford

Academic Referencing Tool

Style notes

 

Notes   

Footnotes

  • Within an essay you must acknowledge where information has come from through the use of footnotes.
  • All footnotes should be numbered.
  • All footnote references should be listed in the order they appear in the essay.
  • To reference more than one item in a footnote, order them alphabetically by author and separate the citation with a semi-colon. E.g. Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2011), 102; Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson, Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle “Little Children are Sacred”: Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse 2007 (2007), <http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf>, 107, accessed 10 Dec. 2012.
  • Footnotes are normally set in a smaller font size than that used in the body of the essay. The actual footnote number appearing at the bottom of the page is not superscripted.
  • Spelling – always spell author names and titles of sources as they appear on the source, even if the spelling seems incorrect or is not proper English grammar (i.e. American spelling of words without the ‘u’, etc.).
  • Punctuation – when there is a line break between a main title and any subtitles, use a colon to separate them in a citation, i.e. Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 (4th edn., Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 34.
  • Exact page numbers should be given if the reference is a direct quote, a paraphrase, an idea, or is otherwise directly drawn from the source.
  • Capitalization (1) – Capitalize the first word in titles and then all nouns, strong or main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, leaving as lower-case any conjunctions, prepositions, and articles not starting the title; pronouns are capitalized according to their importance. Subtitles follow the same formula.
  • Capitalization (2) – The Oxford Style Manual prefers names to be fully capitalized in a bibliography, but most Oxford published journals and books do not actually capitalize the whole name. The La Trobe University Library has interpreted this to mean that it is not mandatory to capitalize all the letters in author names. Students wishing to capitalize author names should not be penalised for incorrectly formatted citations.
  • If you choose to capitalize author names, be consistent and capitalize ALL AUTHOR NAMES, not just some of them.
  • Always provide a full URL for web-based resources that are not from a library database. Double-check the link works.
  • If your source is from a library database, you do not need to provide a URL as access to the resource needs a university login and will not link directly.
  • If only one work is cited in an essay, the title can be omitted from the second and subsequent footnotes. (Section 15.18 Oxford Style Manual) For example, if you are writing an essay on Homer’s Odyssey and are not referring to any secondary sources, use the full citation for the first footnote, then ibid and the page number for all subsequent footnotes, i.e.:

First footnote: Homer, Odyssey, tr. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1997).

Subsequent footnotes: Ibid. 355, Ibid. 248, Ibid. 19

 

 

Notes    

Bibliography

  • The bibliography is listed at the end of the essay and is a complete list of all the resources you have used while researching your essay. It should include the references you have cited as well as other sources you may have read but did not quote from.
  • If your lecturer asks for a reference list rather than a bibliography, only list the resources you actually refer to in your essay (the ones in your footnotes). A reference list should not have additional resources listed that were not cited in the essay.
  • An annotated bibliography is when you need to include a short description of each resource you have included in the bibliography. You need only write a sentence or two about the value of the resource to your research/essay topic.

Formatting

  • Arrange items in the bibliography alphabetically by author surname.
  • Do not number the references in a bibliography.
  • Do not include page numbers for books.
  • Entries being to the full left, with second and subsequent lines indented one-em, and end in a full point. To indent using Microsoft Word, hold down <Ctrl> and press the <Tab> key once, e.g.:

Stephen Daisley, ‘New Sheriffs of the Old West: How Superhero Gunslingers Tell the Story of America’, Commentary, 134/2 (2012), para. 5, in Expanded Academic ASAP [online database], accessed 28 Nov. 2012

  • Do not subdivide a bibliography into categories. Exception: lecturers may ask you to divide references into Primary and Secondary sources.

Spelling

  • Always spell author names and titles of sources as they appear on the source, even if the spelling seems incorrect or is not proper English grammar (i.e. American spelling of words without the ‘u’, etc.).

Capitalization

  • Capitalization (1) – Capitalize the first word in titles and then all nouns, strong or main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, leaving as lower-case any conjunctions, prepositions, and articles not starting the title; pronouns are capitalized according to their importance. Subtitles follow the same formula.
  • Capitalization (2) – The Oxford Style Manual prefers names to be fully capitalized in a bibliography, but most Oxford published journals and books do not actually capitalize the whole name. The La Trobe University Library has interpreted this to mean that it is not mandatory to capitalize all the letters in author names. Students wishing to capitalize author names should not be penalised for incorrectly formatted citations.
  • If you choose to capitalize author names, be consistent and capitalize ALL AUTHOR NAMES, not just some of them.

URL

  • Always provide a full URL for web-based resources that are not from a library database. Double-check the link works.
  • If your source is from a library database, you do not need to provide a URL as access to the resource needs a university login and will not link directly.

Abbreviations

Some of the more often used examples are listed here:

ed.  - editor
eds.  - editors
edn.  - edition
n.d.  - for no date.
et al.  - and other authors
rev.  - revised
trans. or tr.  - translator or translated by
vol.  - volume
Ibid  - From the Latin 'ibidem' meaning 'in the same place'

 

Notes   

Authors

Footnotes

  • The author/s name/s should be written as first name last name
  • The author’s name should be cited as it appears on the resource. If the author’s first name is printed, use it. If an author goes by first initials, use those instead, i.e. J.K. Rowling instead of Joanne Kathleen Rowling.
  • When citing an edited version of an original work, list the entry in the bibliography under the original author’s name and write ed. before the name/s of the editor/s. Do not put this ed. in brackets. If there is more than one editor, still write ed., not eds. In the example below Marcus Weigelt is the editor and translator of this edition of a very old text, but Immanuel Kant is the original author, so the book is listed in the bibliography under Kant’s name:

Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], ed., tr. Marcus Weigelt (London: Penguin, 2007).

  • As with editors, translators and revisers are named after the title with tr. or rev. where the ed. is written in the Kant example above
  • Some journals only use author initials; just use the initials if that is all the information available.
  • For more than three authors, only list first author followed by et al

Bibliography

  • Arrange works by the same author first by the author’s name and then by the year of publication with the earliest year first. Only write the author’s name on the first entry; for subsequent items. remove the name and replace it with an em-dash to indicate that it is the same author as the book above. E.g. the second title below is also by Richard Broome:

Broome, Richard, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005).
Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788, (4th edn., Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010).

  • Create an em-dash using Office Word by holding down <Ctrl> <Alt> <hyphen on keypad> (PC) or <Shift> <Option> <minus key> (Mac)
  • If you use more than one reference by the same author (or the same group of authors listed in the same order) published in the same year, organise them first by the author’s name, then alphabetically by the title of the book, article, etc. E.g. the following books by Philip Roth were both published in 2008; the book Indignation would be listed before Novels and Other Narratives in the bibliography.

Roth, Philip, Indignation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).
— Novels and Other Narratives, 1986-1991 (New York: Library of America, 2008).

  • The author’s name should be cited as it appears on the resource. If the author’s first name is printed, use it. If an author goes by first initials, use those instead, i.e. J.K. Rowling instead of Joanne Kathleen Rowling.
  • Some journals only use author initials; just use the initials if that is all the information available.
  • For more than three authors, only list first author followed by et al
  • If an author has numerous entries, including their own works, as an editor and as an author of a multi-authored work, list all single authored titles first, alphabetically by title, followed by the author’s works as an editor. The multi-authored works should be listed last, alphabetically by title. See rule 18.1.3 New Oxford Style Manual (Oxford: OUP, 2012).
  • When referencing materials by First Nations creators, it is important to note the Nation or Country and/or language group of the person or community who created them.

 

Notes     

Titles

  • Article titles should be enclosed in ‘single quotation marks’
  • Capitalization – Capitalize the first word in titles and then all nouns, strong or main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, leaving as lower-case any conjunctions, prepositions, and articles not starting the title; pronouns are capitalized according to their importance. Subtitles follow the same formula.
  • Use italics for the titles of books, journals and newspapers
  • Book titles that appear within source titles are ‘placed in quotation marks’, e.g.:

Stoneman, Patsy, Bronte Transformations: the Cultural Dissemination of ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ (London: Prentice Hall, 1996).

  • Titles in a foreign language can be translated into English [in square brackets after the foreign title] and without quotation marks. Only translate the title for a book that is wholly in another language, e.g.:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada [Chronicle of a Death Foretold] (4th end., Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2009), 97.

  • Quotation marks within chapter titles become double quotation marks
  • If an introduction or foreword has a specific title it can be styled as a chapter in a book; otherwise use introduction or foreword as a descriptor, without quotation marks, e.g. the footnote entry would appear as:

William Shakespeare, introduction in The Tempest, ed. Martin Butler (London: Penguin, 2007), xxi-xxv.

The entry in the bibliography would appear as:

Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, ed. Martin Butler (London: Penguin, 2007)

  • If citing a book which has had a change of title, see rule 18.2.13 in the New Oxford Style Manual (2nd edn., Oxford: OUP, 2012).
  • Editions – second and subsequent editions should be cited after the title, e.g.:

Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 (4th edn., Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 34.

  • Second and further editions are always placed in (parentheses, before the City of Publication). If you are citing a new or revised edition, write this after the title, but before the parentheses, e.g:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la Raison Dialectique [Critique of Pure Reason], new edn. (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 34.

  • If an edition is a revision or a reprint of an early edition, but does not have a new editor, include (rev., City of Publication: Publisher, year) or (repr., City of Publication: Publisher, year).

 

Notes

Publishing information

  • Only cite the first city listed in the publication details
  • If the city of publication is not a major, well known city or could be confused for a different city of the same name, note the state after it, i.e. Crows Nest, NSW or Hoboken, NJ (for the city in New Jersey) or Cambridge, MA (for the city in Massachusetts, USA).
  • Country and state capitals shouldn’t need a state abbreviation.
  • You do not need to refer to the country of publication.
  • A city should be referred to by its modern name, i.e. St. Petersburg rather than Leningrad; and using the English form when there is a difference in the publishing details, i.e. Prague rather than Praha; Rome rather than Roma; Brussels rather than Bruxelles.
  • If there is no city of publication, write n.p. (for ‘no place’)
  • For a published item the date goes in parentheses; for an unpublished work, do not place the date in parentheses
  • If no date can be found use n.d. (for ‘no date’)
  • In citations months should be abbreviated to the three or four letter form, i.e. Feb, Sept.
  • In the text of the essay, do not abbreviated months or days of the week
  • In both citations and in the text, century can be abbreviated to cent. or c., i.e. 19th cent. or 19th c.

 

Notes     

Quotations and paraphrasing

Footnoting – changes to this Referencing ToolThe Oxford Style Manual recommends that direct quotes be enclosed within single quotation marks. However, if you submit your essay through Turnitin, all direct quotes need to be enclosed within double quotation marks. In this Referencing Tool we have tried to be consistent with the correct Oxford style and have presented all direct quote examples within single quotation marks.

Short Quotations

  • Remember to always record a quotation exactly as given by its author.
  • Use single quotation marks for short quotations inserted in the text. Add a superscript in-text number either immediately after the quote or at the end of the sentence. A footnote should be included at the end of the page to indicate the source of the quote.

Example:

Text
Hirst claimed that ‘the worst sectarian violence in our history occurred in Melbourne in 1846 when Catholic and Protestant mobs fired on each other on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne’.2

Footnote:
2. John Hirst, Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2006), 176.

Long Quotations

  • For quotations of three lines or longer, indent each line by five spaces and use single spacing between each line. Do not use any quotation marks. At the end of the quotation cite the source in a footnote.
  • The exception to this format is when quoting poetry or plays. See the Style Notes on Poetry & Plays for further information.

Example:

Text
Historians of the post-war period have noted the rapid expansion of government-funded education, particularly of university education, and the social changes that sprang from this:

Ironically, Menzies’s commitment to education had produced a large population of university students, often schooled in the critique of the new social sciences and whose affluence and idealism made them ready and eager to overthrow the old order associated with Menzies and Calwell. Across the country the old concern to preserve the status quo, to converse uniformity, to safeguard the Australian way of life and the family home from subversion was giving way to demands for change.3

Footnote:
3. Patricia Grimshaw et al., Creating a Nation (Ringwood, VIC: McPhee Gribble, 1994), 300.

Omissions from Quotations

  • To indicate an omission from a quotation, use an ellipsis (three full stops with spaces before the first and after the third). This can be used in the middle of a quotation or at either end.

Example:

Text
In the 1980’s there was a growing demand for RF (Islamic) banking in the West.

The effort to provide RF financial services was pioneered by Al Barak Bank in London in 1988, when it tried to come up with a home financing contract that would fit the requirements of the banking law in the West … This resulted in the birth of a new “Islamic” financing model based on the lease-to purchase model (Al Ijara Wal Tamaluk or Ijarah Wal Iqtina – these Arabic terms both mean lease to own).5

Footnote
Yahia Abdul-Rahman, The Art of Islamic Banking and Finance: Tools and Techniques for Community-based Banking (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 206.

Paraphrasing

Example:

Original text:
The Revolution of 1688-89 was … of great importance for the history of liberty, in England and elsewhere. Later generations saw it as the cornerstone of their liberties – an MP referred to the Bill of Rights as “our national contract” as early as 1690 (Grey 1769, pp.75-76) – and used it to validate their claims for greater liberty.

Paraphrased as:

Text
The idea that the Bill of Rights guaranteed liberty can be traced back to debate in the House of Commons in 1690.12

Footnote
12. J. Miller, ‘Crown, Parliament and People’, in J.R. Jones (ed.), Liberty Secured? Britain Before and After 1688 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 86.

 

Notes      

First, second and subsequent references

  • The first time a source is mentioned in the footnotes it is necessary to include the full reference.
  • If you cite the same work again in the footnote immediately following the first mention you can use the abbreviation ‘ibid’ (from the Latin term ‘ibidem’, meaning ‘in the same place’). See footnote numbers 6 and 8 in the examples below.
  • If you refer to the same work again in the footnotes, but not immediately after, use a short, abbreviated title and the page number/s. Do not include any other publication details. See the Robert Broome example below.

1. Robert Broome, Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 (4th edn., Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 34.
2. Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 1997), 17.
3. Robert Broome, Aboriginal Australians, 35.
4. John Danalis, Riding the Black Cockatoo (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2009), 53.
5. Robert Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 120.
6. Ibid. 122.
7. Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism, 176.
8. Ibid. 180.

 

Notes       

Edited book

  • When citing an edited version of an original work, list the entry in the bibliography under the original author’s name and write ed. before the name/s of the editor/s. Do not put this ed. in brackets. If there is more than one editor, still write ed., not eds. In the example below Marcus Weigelt is the editor and translator of this edition of a very old text, but Immanuel Kant is the original author, so the book is listed in the bibliography under Kant’s name:

Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], ed., tr. Marcus Weigelt (London: Penguin, 2007).

  • As with editors, translators and revisers are named after the title with tr. or rev. where the ed. is written in the Kant example above.

 

Notes

Note identifiers

  • If you quote, paraphrase or summarise information from another source, you must include a note identifier and accompanying footnote in the body of your assignment.
  • The note identifiers should appear after any quotes, paraphrased sections, copied tables, graphs etc.
  • The note identifier must be written in superscript i.e. 4 Superscript is where the numbers are slightly raised above the level of the text. The note identifier should appear before any punctuation marks e.g. commas, colons, etc. except for when it appears at the end of the sentence, in which case it should follow the full stop.
  • If you use a long quotation (more than three lines of text), the note identifier should be placed at the end of the quotation.

 

Notes     

Plays and poetry

General Poetry

  • When discussing a reference in your essay, the format is ‘Act, Scene, line’. Act and Scene are always capitalised; line is always lower-case.
  • You do not need to include a footnote if you cite the quote in full in the body of the essay. For example, if quoting a stanza or a larger unit from a poem in your essay, it would look similar to this:

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
Add day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
                                                 (Sylvia Plath, ‘Elm’, Ariel)

  • With the example above, writing (Sylvia Plath, ‘Elm’, Ariel) is a sufficient in-text reference. A footnote is not required because all of the information is cited in-text. The full citation for the book is still included in the bibliography.
  • For general poetry without line references, when including a block of quote, as above, it should be cited as (Author, ‘Poem title’, Book title if relevant)
  • If quoting a poem from course material, it should be cited in the footnote as (Author, ‘Poem title’); in the bibliography as (Author, ‘Poem title’ in ‘Subject Code Course Reader’, compiled by Lecturer Name, La Trobe University, 2013).

Shakespeare

  • When referencing Shakespeare, if you include all of the relevant details in (parentheses) after a quote, you do not need to repeat those details in a footnote. The example below cites the (Abbreviated title, Act. Scene. line/s) within the sentence:

Hermione responds to Polixenes’ description of their childhood with, “By this we gather / You have tripped since” (WT, I. ii. 76-6), which continues the theme of a fall.

  • The formatting style quoted above is the Oxford Style Manual standard for Shakespearean references.
  • The bibliography entry should still appear like a normal book, with the standard format of Author, Title, ed. Name if relevant (City of Publication: Publisher, year). For example:

Shakespeare, William, The Winter’s Tale, ed. Ernest Schanzer (London: Penguin, 2005).

  • An indented block of a play should be cited as (Play Title or Abbreviation, Act. Scene. line/s). In the example below, WT stands for The Winter’s Tale. The full title is acceptable, but can be tiring to write all the time. If you use the abbreviation, use it consistently.

As thou lov’st me, Camillo, wipe not out the
Rest of thy services by leaving me now. The need I have
Of thee thine own goodness hath made. Better not to
Have had thee than thus to want thee. (WT, IV. ii. 10-13)

  • If you are only writing about one text you can leave out the title when quoting in text and just refer to the Act, Scene and line numbers immediately after the quote, i.e. instead of (Othello, I. iii. 247), just write (I. iii. 247) as all the references will be to Othello and it doesn’t need restating with every reference.
  • When discussing multiple Shakespeare titles, use the same format but include the abbreviated title of the play, e.g. (Oth., I. iii. 247) for a reference to Othello or (Tmp., V. i. 30-5) for a reference to The Tempest.
  • R.M. Ritter, Oxford Style Manual (Oxford: OUP, 2003) recommends the following abbreviations for Shakespeare titles (for the comprehensive list see section 13.6.6):

Ham. (Hamlet)
WT (The Winter’s Tale)
MND (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Tmp. (The Tempest)
AWW (All’s Well That Ends Well)
AYL (As You Like It)
TN (Twelfth Night)
Lr. (King Lear)
R3 (Richard III)
JC (Julius Cesar)
Rom. (Romeo and Juliet)
Mac. (Macbeth)
MM (Measure for Measure)
Oth. (Othello)

 


If you come across any inconsistencies with the referencing examples in ART, send your feedback to libreftool@latrobe.edu.au.

Important note: These guidelines have been designed to be used in university coursework, e.g. essays, reports, presentations. For work that is required to be published, or communicated to an audience wider than the University, please consult the appropriate publication manual, your publisher, the University Copyright Officer, and / or your research supervisor for guidance.

La Trobe University Library    |     Contacts    |    Accessibility   |    Privacy   |    Copyright and Disclaimer   |    Aboriginal acknowledgment