A reference is the part of a text that names texts or other types of documents that have been cited. A citation is a fragment of another text that is added to a piece of writing to demonstrate, justify, or support an argument or idea. A bibliography is the part of a text that names texts or other types of documents that were not cited, but that the author consulted in their work.
References, citations, and bibliographies are included in academic texts or books to indicate that concepts and theories belong to other authors.
Reference
References are found after the author’s text and before the bibliography and are used to indicate materials cited in the text. These materials can include books, articles, websites, photos, videos, among others.
References must be included so that the reader can consult the indicated sources and to indicate that a concept belongs to another author.
According to APA standards , references are indicated with the following structure:
- The title “References” must be centered and in bold.
- References are written in list form, double-spaced, with hanging indents, and ordered alphabetically.
- Each reference contains information about the source, which varies depending on the type of source. For books, the format is author’s last name, first initials (year), title of the source, and publisher’s name.
For example:
References
Kohan, M. (2021). The Permanent Vanguard . Paidós.
Piglia, R. (2016). The three vanguards. Saer, Puig, Walsh . Eternal Cadence Editor.
Puig, M. (2010). The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth . Booket.
Viñas, D. (1998). From Sarmiento to God. Argentine Travelers to the USA . Editorial
South American.
Appointment
Quotations are included in a text to mention what another person wrote or said, to mention a precedent, to justify an idea, to give an example, or to analyze or comment on the quotation.
Whenever you use another author’s words, you should include them in your text as a quote to indicate that they belong to someone else and not the author of the text.
Quotations can be direct or indirect. In direct quotations, the text is reproduced exactly as it appears in the original. If they are less than forty words long, they are included after the text and enclosed in quotation marks . At the end of the quotation, information about the source must be included in the following format: (author’s last name, year, page number). For example:
At the beginning of the seminar, it is stated, “In the discussion of contemporary Argentine literature, which will be the focus of this seminar, we will address a series of issues.” (Piglia, 2016, p. 13)
If the quote is longer than forty words, it is written separately, without quotation marks, and indented. For example:
At the beginning of the seminar it is specified:
In the discussion of contemporary Argentine literature, which will be the focus of this seminar, we will address a series of issues. The first concerns the type of debate that exists today in Argentine literature; we will consider how it is framed in terms of narrative poetics. (Piglia, 2016, p. 13)
Indirect quotations, the original idea is paraphrased and not enclosed in quotation marks. Source information is always provided after the quotation in the following format: (author’s last name, year). For example:
At the beginning of the seminar, the author proposes that the central theme will be the current state of Argentine literature, which will be addressed from various perspectives. The first to be considered is narrative poetics. (Piglia, 2016)
Literature
The bibliography is found after the references and includes materials that may include books, articles, films, photos, interviews, among others.
These sources, unlike those listed in the references, have not been cited in the text, but have been used by the author to obtain information on a topic.
In addition, the bibliography may include a brief summary of each named source or recommendations for other texts related to the topic covered in the text.
According to APA standards, the bibliography has the same structure as the references:
- The title “Bibliography” must be centered and in bold.
- Sources are written in list form, double-spaced, with hanging indents, and arranged alphabetically.
- Each source contains certain information, which varies depending on the type of source. For books, the format is author’s last name, first initials (year), title of the source, and publisher’s name.
