General Rules of Referencing

• Quotations
• Page numbers in the textual reference
• Date variations
• Rules about authors

Quotations

Quotations shorter than 30 words can be integrated into the text of your essay but must be placed within single quotation marks.

Quotations that are more than 30 words are not enclosed within quotation marks. They must be set apart in the text in the following way:

• decrease the font size of the quote by one size;
• leave a one line space above and below the quote; and
• indent the entire quote on the left hand side (one centimetre, as a rough guide).

Always introduce a long quotation by a colon, as in the following example:

Nursing cannot require of individual nurses that they wholeheartedly sacrifice personal for professional integrity, since this would lead to the depersonalization of the individual and to individuals becoming the tools of the group. This, it might be said, was what happened to prison camp guards in Nazi Germany, where integrity might have been construed purely as loyalty to the regime and obedience to authority, thereby, many would say, undermining its very nature.

This argument may be especially pertinent where nurses are employed by the state.

According to Boyd (1998, p. 1003), 'through social support a person ... feels helped, valued, and in personal control ...'

Here the first set of dots replace the word also. The dots at the end of the quote indicate that only part of the original sentence was used.

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Page numbers in the textual reference

Always give the relevant page number(s) in the textual reference whenever you quote or paraphrase information found in a print source(e.g. journal article, book, government publication, conference proceedings). This makes it easier for someone to trace the relevant passage within the publication. Page numbers are not required if you are only referring to a particular work.

Do not include page number information in the textual reference when referencing an electronic source, unless this source is an Adobe Acrobat document. (See Electronic Sources for further information.)

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Date variations

Occasionally a publication will not have a clear-cut publication date for you to use in your reference. You need to communicate this to your reader by using one of the following conventions. Remember that whatever you use in the textual reference you must also use in the reference list.

• No date on publication-use the abbreviation n.d. for no date
• Date only approximate-precede the approximate date with a lowercase c for circa
• Dubious date-precede a questionable date with a question mark (e.g. Jones ?1899)
• An unpublished work-give the abbreviation unpub. in place of a date if a work is unpublished. (This does not apply to personal communications. See section Personal communications for further information.)

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Rules about authors

Works may bear the name of one author or several authors. An author's name can be a personal name (such as J Taylor) or the name of an organisation, institution or corporation (e.g. Flinders University, School of Nursing and Midwifery).

Sometimes a work will bear the name of a sponsoring organisation in addition to the names of individual authors. In this case, treat the organisation as the author of the work, structuring your reference according to the rule in the section on The Reference List

You can use a well-known shortened form of an organisation's name (e.g. RDNS or WHO) in both the textual reference (for the sake of space) and the reference list provided you include an alphabetical list of all abbreviated names used. Place this before the reference list. Remember that the name you use in the textual reference must match the name you use in the reference list.

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