Referencing Styles

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

What you need to include, and types of books

Book references include:

  • Author(s) / Editor(s)
  • Year of Publication
  • Title
  • Edition Statement
  • Place of Publication
  • Publisher

 

E-book references include:

  • Author(s) / Editor(s)
  • Year of Publication
  • Title (italicised)
  • Edition Statement
  • Retrieved from URL
  • Date Accessed / Downloaded

 

Fields marked in blue are only included where the source contains that information.

Where the reference takes up multiple lines, indent the reference from the second line, see examples in the tabs above

The Basic In-Text citation format is:

(Author Surname, Year)

The Basic Reference format is:

Author, A.A. (Year) Title of book. Edition. Place: Publisher.

In-text citation:

(Esgate, Groome and Baker, 2005)

Reference list entry:

Esgate, A., Groome, D., and Baker, K. (2005) An introduction to applied cognitive psychology. Hove: Psychology Press.

 - Where an ebook is identical to the print book you reference in the same way as you would be print book: 

In-text citation:

(Psaltis, Gillespie and Perret-Clermont, 2015)

Reference List entry

Psaltis, C., Gillespie, A. and Perret-Clermont, A-N. (eds.) (2015)  Social relations in human and societal development. Basingstoke: Palgrave-MacMillan.

 - Where an ebook has been downloaded to a device where pagination is not given (e.g. on a kindle device or e-reader) in place of the publisher information you should give the URL for the service you downloaded it from and the date you downloaded or accessed the book.  e.g.

In-text citation:

(Psaltis, Gillespie and Perret-Clermont, 2015)

Reference List entry:

Psaltis, C., Gillespie, A. and Perret-Clermont, A-N. (eds.) (2015) Social relations in human and societal development. Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-ebooks (Downloaded: 22 June 2016).

  • In-text citations are within parenthesis, and contain the author(s) surname(s) and year of publication, page number is given if you are referring to a specific page/section;  if you refer to the authors within your text only the date is needed in your in-text citation, if you refer to the year in your text, only the author(s) is required in your in-text citation.
  • Ensure you include all the punctuation required in your reference.
  • For multiple authors follow the advice in the Author Rules tab, paying attention to the use of commas, ampersand, and ellipses.
  • (Date) is always within parenthesis, and followed with a "."
  • Title is always italicised, and followed with a "."
  • Location is always followed with a ":"
  • For E-books where the format is the same as the print version, reference as a print book
  • For E-books where the format is distinct from the print book, replace the publisher information with "Available at: URL" and (Downloaded : Date)