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How to Reference your Essays

Rules for referencing and citation

You can find the University of York's rules for referencing and citation assessed work in the Department's Guide to Assessment.

Why reference essays?

Referencing your work properly is one of the most important ways that you can establish the authority of your ideas, and allows you to situate your own ideas and arguments in relation to those of other scholars.

Referencing is also an important way of acknowledging your debts to other scholars. Properly referencing your work is one of the best ways of avoiding plagiarism.

You can find out more about referencing by browsing the university's academic integrity pages

How to reference essays

The English department requires that you reference your essays in accordance with either the Chicago Manual of Style or the MLA Style guide.

The university produces handy guides to these referencing systems, which you should consult:

• Chicago style referencing
• MLA style referencing

For instructions how to reference a wide variety of different sources, consult the examples collected in the university's academic integrity site:

• Chicago
• MLA

This article is available to download for free as a PDF for use as a personal learning tool or for use in the classroom as a teaching resource.

Download How to Reference your Essays (PDF , 728kb)