Referencing is the ethical practice of citing your sources, to let your readers know where you found information or ideas, so they can distinguish it from your own thinking.
Creating a list of all the information sources used in a research project is the most basic form of referencing. Such an alphabetical list is called a bibliography or works cited page.
In the body of your writing, you may also be expected to include citations, showing which source in your bibliography the specific information you're using in the sentence or paragraph came from. Two common forms of citations are:
MLA (short for the Modern Language Association) is the default formatting style for referencing at our school, up through Grade 10. (IB Diploma students may be told to use other styles, depending on the subject -- check here).
MLA requires inline citations, NOT footnotes. (Note that footnotes may be used in MLA if you are providing extra or explanatory information, not citations.)
For more information on MLA, click here.
See also our UWCSEA Research Help guide.
The writing excerpt below uses inline citations to point to information sources taken from the bibliography beneath.
