How to write a bibliography and accurately reference your writing

In the ACT, the Board of Senior Secondary Studies (BSSS) requires students to use the Harvard referencing style, both inside essays and also in their bibliography.

There are two simple options for students who are putting together their own bibliography.

1) Use a website like citethisforme

Head to http://www.citethisforme.com/.

Here, for each of your sources, you start by selecting the type of source that it is first. There are endless options under the ‘More’ drop-down menu if you need them too.

You can then either manually enter the information of your source, or you can search for it online. If you are referencing a book, for example, you can search for it through citethisforme.

Once you have all of the information entered for your source, click on the ‘Add reference’ button.

 

To obtain your reference, first make sure that you have ‘Harvard’ selected as the Citation Style on the main page of citethisforme:

Then, you can click on the option to ‘Copy and paste bibliography citation’ underneath your source. From there, you can paste your citation straight into your bibliography.

If you’re willing to pay for a Premium account, you can also save your bibliographies online and download them straight to Word files…but most students are happy to cut-and-paste straight from the website.

 

2) Create your own bibliography manually

To learn more about the required referencing style, you can read the BSSS document ‘What’s Plagiarism? How You Can Avoid It‘. 

For instructions on how to reference texts inside your essay, start reading on page 12.

For instructions as to how to structure your bibliography, start reading on page 15.

Note that there are different rules for including texts, including:

a) Books written by a single author

b) Books written by two or more authors

c) Books with no author or editor (like a dictionary or encyclopaedia)

d) Books with one or more editors

e) Poems/stories/chapters in books which are anthologies or collections

f) Periodicals/newspaper articles or articles in books

g) Audio/visual material such as DVDs

h) Internet sites

i) Interviews

All of these are outlined in the above document between pages 15-20.