On-line sources
Last updated
Last updated
All on-line sources must be properly referenced. It is, however, not sufficient to simply supply a URL. A properly referenced on-line source requires inclusion of the following information:
author’s last name(s) + COMMA + SPACE
capital initial of author’s first name + FULL STOP + SPACE
year of publication + FULL STOP + SPACE [NB: If no publication date is provided on the URL, you must insert ‘ND’ (for ‘no date’) in place of the year of publication.]
OPENING SINGLE QUOTATION MARK + title of article (all lower case) + CLOSING SINGLE QUOTATION MARK + FULL STOP
‘Last accessed’ + SPACE + the date on which you last accessed the URL + COMMA
‘from’ + COLON + URL + FULL STOP.
Accordingly, when an on-line resource is referred to in an in-text reference, the author and publication must be referenced (e.g., Hudson (2010) argues that ...). If the author is not identified (e.g. with on-line corpora), you should use the title of the site to order the item in your alphabetical list, and refer to the title in the in-text-reference.
Note that you only need to give the URL for materials that are only available on the web. You can often access articles or whole books through websites or electronic archives which are also available in print form, but in those cases you treat them as printed items, using the normal formats, and you don’t need to give the URL. This is because they are not web materials as such, but simply scanned electronic copies from printed volumes.