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This guide presents an introduction to the Footnote/ Bibliography system, also known as the Oxford system or the Documentary/ Note system. Many schools at The University of New South Wales have style guides indicating how referencing for assignments should be done. The Learning Centre strongly suggests that you check with each school about which method to use.
Referencing is a system that allows you to acknowledge the contributions of others in your writing. Whenever you use ANY words, ideas or information from ANY source in your assignments, you must reference those sources. This means that if you use the exact words of an author, if you paraphrase their words or if you summarise their ideas, you must provide a reference. Not referencing your sources means you may be charged with plagiarism and your work could be failed.
The Footnote/ Bibliography method requires you to include:
Footnotes (sometimes just called ‘notes’) are what they sound like—a note (or a reference to a source of information) which appears at the foot (bottom) of a page. In a footnote referencing system, you indicate a reference by:
1. putting a small number above the line of type directly following the source material. This number is called a note identifier. It sits slightly above the line of text.
It looks like this.1
2. putting the same number, followed by a citation of your source, at the bottom of the page. Footnoting should be numerical and chronological: the first reference is 1, the second is 2, and so on. The advantage of footnoting is that the reader can simply cast their eyes down the page to discover the source of a reference which interests them.