How to Reference Internet Sources

If you use another person’s work, it is important to reference that work both within your text and in a bibliography.  Failure to properly reference can lead to an accusation of plagiarism and affect the credibility of your work.

 

Including properly referenced work from a range of sources shows that you have thoroughly researched the topic. Selecting appropriate quotes and snippets of information also shows that you have used other works to form your own conclusions. 

There is a wealth of information on the internet and it may be that you wish to use a quotation or section of text from  a website. These should be properly referenced using the format requested by your school, university or publisher.

All pages on this site have Harvard referencing information at the bottom of the page but there are also other referencing styles.

Harvard Referencing Style

To reference in this style you should include the author surname and date of the work in brackets in your text. The bibliography should then include

Author. (Date Published) Title of web page, Available: full website address. Date Accessed.

For this page the bibliography would show:

Heather Y Wheeler. (2020). How to Reference Internet Sources. Available: https://www.historykeyskills.com/how-to-reference-internet-sources/. Last accessed September 3rd, 2020

APA (American Psychological Association) Referencing Style

To reference in this style you should include the author surname, initials and date of publication in the text. The bibliography should then include:

Author Surname, initials. (Year, month, day published). Page Title. Website Title. Retrieved from url

For this page the bibliography would show:

Wheeler, H.Y. (2020, September 3rd). How to Reference Internet Sources. History Key Skills. Retrieved from https://www.historykeyskills.com/how-to-reference-internet-sources/

MLA (Modern Language Association) Referencing Style

To reference in this style you should include the author surname, initials and date of publication in the text. The bibliography should then include:

Last name, first name. “Page Title”. Site Title. Publication day month year, URL.

For this page the bibliography would show:

Wheeler, Heather. How to Reference Internet Sources. History Key Skills. 3rd September 2020, https://www.historykeyskills.com/how-to-reference-internet-sources/