Citations are brief and go in the text of your work. References contain more information and go in a list at the end of your work.
Citations (sometimes called in-text citations) are included within the text of your work, at points where you have used someone else's information. This could be a quote, a paraphrase or a summary of this source of information. Your citation always includes the author's surname and year of the source. Where a source has four or more authors, use the first author name, then et al. (see example below).
Citations include page numbers where you are using direct quotes and information from specific pages (Pears and Shields, 2022, pp. 20-21). This may not be possible for some sources from the internet that do not display page numbers.
Whatever source you are using, your citation should contain author and year. Where a source from the Internet does not have a named author, you should use the name of the organisation that owns the website in place of the author surname, see the Diabetes UK example below.
Where a corporate organisation is the 'author' of the source you are citing, use the name of the organisation as the author information. If the organisation is well known then you may use their initials, as long as you are sure that the person reading your assignment will recognise them (e.g. you may wish to use SGUL in place of St. George's, University of London).
Cite them Right has information on Setting out Citations. From the homepage, select 'choose your referencing style' then select the Harvard option and you will see 'setting out citations' listed on the right hand side. This gives comprehensive guidance on how to cite one, two, three and 'four or more' authors. You will need to log in with your SGUL network login to see it.
Examples
“There are many ways of citing sources” (Cottrell, 2019, p. 250).
Exercise timing can be a predictor of impaired sleep (Glavin et al., 2021, p. 2645).
Include page numbers where you are using direct quotes and information from specific pages. (Pears and Shields, 2022, pp. 20-21).
Pears and Shields (2022) is a very useful guide to referencing.
Exercise could help prevent some cases of Type 2 diabetes (Diabetes UK, 2018).
You can find information about 2021's National Student Money Week on the St. George's website (SGUL, 2021).
References provide your reader with full details for each of the sources you have cited in your text. References are listed at the end of your assignment, in alphabetical order. Note that the references in the examples below match up to the citation examples above.
Cottrell, S. (2019) The study skills handbook. 5th edn. London: Red Globe Press..
Diabetes UK (2018) Preventing Type 2 diabetes. Available at: https://www.diabetes.org.uk/preventing-type-2-diabetes/ (Accessed: 20 September 2018).
Glavin, E.E., Ceneus, M., Chanowitz, M., Kantillerakis, J., Mendelow, E., Mosquera, J. and Spaeth, A.M. (2021) 'Relationships between sleep, exercise timing, and chronograph in young adults', Journal of Health Psychology, 26(13), pp. 2636-2647.
Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2022) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 12th edn. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
SGUL (2021) National student money week 2021. Available at: https://www.sgul.ac.uk/news/national-student-money-week-2021/ (Accessed: 11 February 2021).
In your reference list, you only need to include page numbers for chapters in edited books and journal/magazine/newspaper articles.
Cite them Right has a Basics of Referencing section, which you can access from the menu at the top of the homepage after you log in with your SGUL username and password. This provides lots of useful information about citing and referencing. To see what your referencing should look like, go to the Harvard box and browse the information it contains.
It's very important to be thorough and methodical in recording the bibliographic details of the sources you are using in your work. Whether its in a notebook, a tool like OneNote or Evernote or a Word document on your device, keeping track of these important details will help you produce more accurate citations and references.