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Bibliography & footnote referencing system

Your guide to writing clear, organised citations using 'notes' and a bibliography
Guide + examples
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Bibliographies, footnotes and endnotes are vital for your readers to appreciate your research.

In academic writing, each form of citation has a different purpose.

Footnotes and endnotes provide specific citation details within the text, while a bibliography offers a complete overview of all cited and consulted works at the end. Most lecturers require you to have a bibliography for easy verification of your research sources.

What's the difference between footnotes and endnotes?

Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page, offering readers immediate access to check references.

Endnotes are gathered at the end of the document or chapter. This is ideal when the same source is referenced multiple times in sections and can keep longer texts from seeming cluttered.

See also

Present your sources with confidence using our exampled guides below.

What are 'Bibliographical Details'?

Bibliographical details are information that help your readers identify a source. Where applicable, you're usually expected to list the author, publication title, date of publication, publisher, place of publication and any URLs or Digital Object Identifiers (DOI).

Remember to include reference numbers in superscript form even for your bibliography.

Note: A bibliographic entry requires the same information as a footnote entry, but with two key differences:

  1. An author’s surname is placed before their initials, as sources are listed alphabetically.

  2. Certain elements are separated with full stops instead of commas.

How to cite different types of sources in your bibliography (with examples)

  • Include information in the following order:

    1. Author(s) (surname and initials)
    2. Title of book (underlined or italicised)
    3. Publisher
    4. Place of publication
    5. Year of publication
    6. Page number(s).

    Example

    1 M. Henninger, Don't Just Surf: Effective Research Strategies for the Net, ¼ Press, Sydney, 1997, p. 91.

  • Include information in the following order:

    1. Author(s) (surname and initials)
    2. Title of article (between single quotation marks)
    3. Title of book (underlined or italicised)
    4. Editor(s)
    5. Publisher
    6. Place of publication
    7. Year of publication
    8. Page number(s).

    Example

    2 M. Blaxter, 'Social class and health inequalities', in Equalities and Inequalities in Health, C. Carter & J. Peel (eds), Academic Press, London, 1976, pp. 6-7.

  • Include information in the following order:

    1. Author(s) (surname and initials)
    2. Title of article (between single quotation marks)
    3. Title of journal or periodical (underlined or italicised)
    4. Volume number
    5. Issue number
    6. Month of publication (if applicable)
    7. Year of publication
    8. Page number(s).

    Example

    3 M. Doyle, 'Captain Mbaye Diagne'. Granta, vol. 48, August 1994, pp. 99-103.

  • Include information in the following order:

    1. ܳٳǰ()/徱ٴǰ()(surname and initials)
    2. Page title (between single quotation marks)
    3. Website title (underlined or italicised)
    4. Sponsor of site (if available)
    5. Last date site was updated
    6. Date of viewing
    7. URL.

    Example

    4 N. Curthoys, 'Future directions for rhetoric – invention and ethos in public critique', in Australian Humanities Review. March-April 2001, viewed on 11 April 2001, http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-April- 2001/curthoys.html.

  • Include information in the following order:

    1. վٱ(underlined or italicised)
    2. Format
    3. Publisher
    4. Place of recording
    5. Date.

    Example

    5 Strictly Ballroom, DVD, 20th Century Fox, Australia, 1992.

    6 The Nest, television program, SBS Television, Sydney, 15 January 2010.

  • If the details of personal communications are to be provided in footnotes rather than in-text, provide information in the following order:

    1. Contact name (surname and initials)
    2. Type of communication 
    3. Date of communication.

    Example

    7 P. Gregory, interview with the author, 5 July 2011. 

    8 C. Barker, email, 12 January 2012.

  • Format a Chicago style citation for AI in the following order:

    1. Chatbot model
    2. Prompt
    3. Date
    4. Owner of chatbot
    5. URL.

    Example

    9 OpenAI's ChatGPT AI language model, response to “summarise quantum computing”, 7 February, 2023, OpenAI, https://chat.openai.com/chat.

Footnotes

Footnotes, sometimes just referred to as notes, appear at the bottom of the page and are used to reference sources. In a footnote referencing system, references are indicated by:

  • Adding a small number above the line of text directly following the source material. This number is called a note identifier (e.g. It looks like this.¹).
  • Including the same number at the bottom of the page, followed by the citation of your source. Footnotes should be numbered chronologically: the first reference is 1, the second is 2, and so on.

Subsquent footnote formatting

If you are referencing the same source again in your work, you don’t have to repeat all the details. Simply use subsequent footnote formatting to avoid unnecessary repetition.

  • For single-author works, provide full details in the first footnote. Then, for subsequent references, use the author’s surname, year of publication and page number only.

    Example

    1 K Reid, Higher Education or Education for Hire? Language and Values in Australian Universities, CQU Press, Rockhampton, 1996, p. 87.

    2...

    3 Reid, p. 98.

    If you are citing multiple works by the same author, include the title in subsequent footnotes to clarify which work you're referencing.

    Example

    11 E Gaskell, North and South, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970, p. 228.

    12 E Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1975, p. 53.

    13 G, North and South, p. 222.

  • Another way to shorten second or subsequent references is with the Latin abbreviations:

    • ibid. = same as last entry
      • Use ibid. when two adjacent references are from the same source.
    • op. cit. = as previously cited
      • Use op. cit. when a source has already been fully cited in an earlier note. Include the author’s name to clearly identify the source.

    Keep these abbreviations lowercase, even at the start of a note. For more details, see p. 214-5 of the Style Manual.

    Examples

    15 K Reid, Higher Education or Education for Hire? Language and Values in Australian Universities, CQU Press, Rockhampton, 1996, p. 87.

    16 ibid., p. 26.

    17 M Doyle, ‘Captain Mbaye Diagne’, Granta, vol. 48, August 1994, p. 99.

    18 Reid, op. cit., p. 147.

Endnotes

The endnote referencing system, also known as the Citation-Sequence system, uses numbers as note identifiers. Each source receives a number when cited for the first time, which remains the same throughout the document. If the source is mentioned again, the same number is reused.

Example

Modern scientific nomenclature really began with Linnaeus in botany1, but other disciplines2-3 were not many years behind in developing various systems for nomenclature and symbolisation.4-7

Endnotes are collected at the end of the paper (unlike footnotes, which appear at the bottom of each page). While both serve the same purpose and have similar formatting, avoid mixing conventions and stick to one system consistently.

A note on longer works (e.g. theses, books etc.)

In long works with multiple sections or chapters, numbering typically restarts for each new chapter or major section. If your work has chapters, organise your endnotes by chapter for easier navigation.

References

Style Manual for authors, editors and printers. 5th edn, rev. Snooks & Co., John Wiley & Sons, Australia, 2002.

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