MNCLHD

MNCLHD

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Referencing – and the referencing perfection complex

As a Librarian I get asked questions about referencing quite frequently and have personal experience of losing valuable marks for putting that one full stop in the incorrect place in a foot-note - never to be done again... The following is a story related to me by a co-worker.

Referencing – and the referencing perfection complex.

There is one thing that I really remember about my first week at university as an undergrad. I sat in lectures, in every single one of my four classes, where the academics up the front tried to scare me blind about the consequences of plagiarism and ‘bad referencing’. Not only could incorrect referencing harm my grades, but sage nods and stern faces accompanied the assurance that if I did not reference correctly it would also harm both my academic reputation and career. Understandably, and very quickly, I developed a reference perfection complex. I bought the referencing handbooks for all of the referencing styles that I ‘might’ ever be asked to use and I struggled to adhere to them with painful detail. I learnt all about commas and semi colons and the correct positioning of initials and titles. I became an expert in italics and positioning brackets in paragraphs. Yet, for all my attempts at gramatic perfection, my natural inclination towards free flowing writing could not be suppressed and what my lecturers had once assured me were ‘career damaging’ errors in citation continued to be found hiding on my pages. No matter how hard I tried, there was always at least one comma that was out of place. While my mind was thriving on the intellectual content of my assignments, my inner child was throwing a temper tantrum over my inability to just get it right.

A few years in to my studies, I was feeling particularly down. I had an assignment to write that was not going well and I just could not find the evidence to prove that what I believed to be correct was true. It was late at night, in the back of the library- just me, the security guard wandering outside and the incessant buzzing of the fluorescent lights. I was reading through the third page of references for a dry, government report when I found it-


In the middle of a government report- published by a well reputed government organisation, there was a glaring error: the author of the report had put their own email address at the end of a completely unrelated reference. Seeing that referencing error in a government report really brought something home for me. I had an ‘ah ha’ moment in the lonely library. When people talk about referencing as being important- it is. But when people talk about referencing as being the ‘be all and end all’ of an academic career- it isn’t. You can still get a job with well-respected government organisations even if you make a tiny referencing mistake- or a massive one! So don’t let your lack of DOI numbers get you down. Never stop learning.

Send us pictures of your biggest referencing fails to share the academic struggle. 

No comments: