Chapter 1: What Is Referencing and Why Do We Need It?

When we join the academic setting as students, we adopt the language and expectations of behavior in a learning and researching community. As we learn how to write formal papers in university writing classes, we rely on some traditions of studying rhetoric and how to write original texts, as well as a body of published knowledge. Much of what we discuss or write about in the academic or literary community is shared public information. As students rely on their powers to think, reason, and articulate their learning through their academic experiences, they become scholars who realize the importance of knowing and acknowledging what other informed thinkers have said about topics in all fields of study. Whether students are writing papers about their various interests in mathematics or science, literary topics, the arts, engineering, medicine, law, political and social sciences, or fields of business, economy, and finance, they will come to understand the importance of seeking, reading, and knowing about what other informed thinkers have researched about a multitude of fields of study.