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OSCOLA referencing

Mae'r dudalen hon hefyd ar gael yn a Gymraeg

Including sources in your work

There are several ways of including sources in your work. You can summarise, paraphrase or directly quote the information. Whichever you use, you let your reader know by setting out the referencing details in a subtly different way as below.

  • Summarising is briefly stating in your own words the main points of a longer text, often to give an overview of a topic. At the end of your sentence put a footnote marker and include details of the original source in the footnotes and in your Tables or Bibliography
  • Paraphrasing is re-writing the statements of others in your own words often to clarify a point, rather than quoting their words
    exactly. At the end of your sentence put a footnote marker an  include details of the original source in the footnotes and in
    your Tables or Bibliography.
  • Direct quotation is copying a short or long section of text, word for word, directly from a source into your work

Direct quotations

 

Incorporate quotations of up to three lines into the text, within single quotation marks. Quotations within short quotations take double quotation marks:

Example
The government included a high maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment for breaching an anti-social behaviour order in the bill 'because the offender should be sentenced for his "pattern of behaviour", including the conduct giving rise to the making of the anti-social behaviour order.'2 
_____
2 A Ashworth, 'Social Control and "Anti-Social behaviour": The Subversion of Human Rights' (2004) 120 LQR 263, 278.

 

 

Present quotations longer than three lines in an indented paragraph. Leave a line space either side of the indented paragraph. You do not need to use quotation marks.

 

Example
Sir John Smith argues that:
        In ordinary business matters … such an intention is presumed. The ordinary shopper in
        the high street does not have a conscious intention to create legal relations as he makes
        his various purchases, but he is undoubtedly entering into a series of contracts for the
        sale of goods.2
______
2 J Smith, The Law of Contract (4th rev edn, Sweet & Maxwell 2002) 117.

What is secondary referencing?

 A secondary reference is when you read a text in which the author refers to the work of another and you wish to refer to that work in your assignment. This practice is discouraged as you should always attempt to find the original source which you can analyse and evaluate on its own terms. 

If it is not possible to find the original source, reference the source that you have not personally read first by adding a "Quoted in" at the beginning; then in brackets put ‘as cited in’ and cite the secondary source that you have read including the page number.

Example
4 Quoted in WL Clay, The Prison Chaplain, A Memoir of the Reverend John Clay (London 1861) 554 (as cited in M Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal Culture, Law and Policy in England 1830-1914 (CUP 1990) 79).