Avoid plagiarism, i.e. using other authors words or ideas without indicating the source. Even if you paraphrase or summarise other authors ideas, always indicate the source!
Give bibliographical references in short form at relevant points in the text. A short reference consists of the surname of the author followed by the date of publication in parentheses, for example, Jones (1999).
Provide page references when reference is made to a specific passage in a book or article. These appear after the date of publication and are preceded by a colon and a single space: Jones (1996: 296299) or Jackson (1999: 79).
| one author | (Cameron 2000: 5) |
| two authors | (Norton and Green 1991: 202) |
| for more than two authors use et al. | (Robson et al. 1988: 48) |
| for different works by the same author of the same year | (Asher 1966a: 51) (Asher 1966b: 14) |
| no author | the examples are borrowed from Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics (1997) |
When several short references occur within parentheses, use commas to separate different dates of publication and colons to separate different authors: (Brown 1965, 1967; Smith 1968). Multiple references must be listed in alphabetical order (for several names) and in chronological order (for several publications).
For repeated citations use Latin abbreviations:
| ibid. (in the same place) | relates to the same work, cited immediately before: it can refer to the same page; it can also refer to a different page. | (ibid: 35) |
Use direct quotations when the exact words of the source are important for your purpose.
Quote accurately. Be careful to avoid mistakes of any kind. After copying a passage proofread your version comparing it with the original.
Avoid using too long quotations (over 4 lines).
Supply quotations by your commentary and account for the use of a quotation in the context.
Start and end a quotation with quotation marks. Use single inverted commas unless a quoted extract includes another quotation within it; in this case the first quotation shall be included in double quotation marks and the second in single quotation marks.
Do not use to mark quotations.
If a quotation contains punctuation marks (full stop, semi-colon, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, etc.) and the corresponding passage ends with the same punctuation mark, place the quotation mark after the punctuation mark.
If use a direct quotation as a part of your sentence, integrate it in the following way:
Parents should make the language they speak with a bilingual child clear for him/her, as Arnberg (1991) puts it, in order for children to make use of adult input in their own construction of language, this input must match the childs level of development (1991: 110).
If a work is by more than one author, use plural verb with the reference:
Quirk et al. (1985: 1045) point out that
If a quotation is not a part of your sentence and is longer than about 30 words long, it must be 12 point text size, set out separately, single-spaced, indented about 1cm from the left and the right hand margins. Do not use quotation marks. For example:
There is vague agreement among linguists regarding the term phraseological loan which includes all types of idiom loans.
A phraseological loan is an idiom that has arisen through a full or part is borrowing of foreign prototype. It can be built upon the native language material on the basis of the motivation or model of a foreign language, which has become a new structurally semantic entity (Veisbergs 1999: 16).
If some part of the quotation is not relevant for your paper, you may omit it. Indicate the omission by three ellipsis dots, e.g. [] language contacts for Latvian have been primarily one-sided, i.e., Latvian has borrowed from other languages but others have not borrowed from Latvian [] (Veisbergs 1999: 16).
