The citation within the text of your work is a brief acknowledgement to a source you
have used for any of the reasons listed above.
If you are using a direct quotation or are referring to a specific idea or assertion by an
author, you need to let your reader know where you found the information by giving
the author/creator’s surname, the year and the page number, e.g. (Surname, Year,
Page). The page number is important, as one of the prime functions of referencing is
to enable your reader to quickly locate the information you have used and to verify
the conclusions you have drawn. By using the page number, your reader can do this
without having to read the entire work (book, journal article etc.,) to which you are
referring, which could be hundreds of pages long!
If you are not referring to a specific idea or assertion, but are referring to a work by
an author in its entirety or to a more general argument you only need to include the
author/creator’s surname and the year, e.g. (Surname, Year).
If you have named the author in the flow of your text, you only need to provide the
year and page number (if applicable), e.g. (Year, Page).
