Referencing Styles

A guide to the reference styles used at the University of St Andrews

What you need to include:

The Chicago Manual of Style recommends that you approach webpages in the same way as you would any print resources.  For online books and journal articles see the Referencing a Book or Referencing a Journal Article pages.

The general principle of providing the information someone would need to find the resource should be applied.  This would include Author, Title of the specific page, a description if the title is vague, and the URL. 

A date of publication should be used: look for date published or updated.  Where no publication date is available, but you still want to cite the source, the date of access should be included with the details of "accessed on" before the date. However, you include this information after the title, rather than where the date of publication would appear.

The in-text citation format is:

(Surname / Organisation Year)

The reference list entry format is:

Author/Organisation. Date updated, amended, published in the format Month Day, Year. "Title of specific webpage".  URL

For a page where no date of publication is available and you are using the accessed date:

The in-text citation format is:

(Surname / Organisation "Title of page")

The reference list entry format is:

Author/Organisation. "Title of specific webpage". Accessed on Day Month Year. URL

In-text citation:

(Google "Algorythms")

Reference list entry:

Google  "Algorythms". Google Inside Search.  Accessed on 23 May 2016. https://www.google.co.uk/insidesearch/howsearchworks/algorithms.html

Screenshot of example Google search

Note that the example webpage doesn't have a date published or updated. In this case, the title of the webpage is given instead of the date.

Ensure you include all the punctuation required in your reference.

In-text citation

  • Includes Author Surname(s)/Organisation - for multiple authors follow the advice on the Author Rules tab 
  • Includes the year of publication or the year updated
  • Where you can't find a year of publication or year updated, include the "Title of the webpage" enclosed in quotation marks (and not italicised) within your citation.

Reference List:

  • If you can identify the author, include this
  • For multiple authors follow the advice in the Author Rules tab
  • The webpage title is not italicised, but is enclosed within quotation marks.
  • If a publication's amended or updated date is available, include this in the format of Month, Day, Year, e.g. November 21, 2014.
  • Where no publication date is available, include the accessed date after the title of the webpage
  • Provide the URL for the specific page you are referencing.