Writing an essay and not familiar with its challenges? If yes, you will encounter many problems while writing it. In such a scenario, you can seek college essay writing help if you are facing difficulties in essay writing. Several professional writers are associated with these online websites to assist students. If you get stuck at preparing a proposal, writing statements for a dissertation, conducting research, or even referencing, they will help you at every stage. Referencing is one of the difficult tasks for students to mention in the essay or any academic documents. Students sometimes end up copying the link of websites or writing as it is in the book. But this is not the right way to include references in an essay.
You will get to know the right way of referencing and its types in the upcoming paragraphs. First of all, you can read about the importance of referencing to get the pertinent knowledge of the difference between APA, MLA, and Harvard style.
What Is a Reference Page and its Importance
When a writer completes its document, he presents some research sources’ names on the last page of the document. This page is called a reference page.
Let’s understand its importance one by one.
- It serves as an accuracy check. The professor can use it for verification of facts written in the essay.
- If you know that you have to provide a reference for the sources you used, you will do research properly.
- If the reader wants to learn more about the topic you wrote the essay on, he can use the reference page.
- The writer can tackle plagiarism issues through referencing.
There are different styles of referencing. Students can use any one of them in their essays. You should have knowledge about more than one style because the teacher can tell you to use any referencing style in your essay.
APA Style: This is called “Author date” style referencing. Citation of text consists of author and year of publication in parentheses. In APA style Author’s surname is used. You can check the below-given diagram for more understanding.
MLA Style: If you are using this style, then the author’s last name and the page number where the paraphrase is taken from must be written. The page number should always appear in parentheses. You can write the name of the author in a sentence also.
Check the example below.
Eliot started exploring the creative sphere(263)
Harvard Style: It includes the author’s last name, first initial, year of publication, title, the city published, publisher, and pages used. You can better understand through the example shown below.
Desikan, S. (2010). Software testing. New York: Scribner, p. 256
Summary: This article presents the APA, MLA, and Harvard styles of referencing for students. You can use them in essay writing.