Referencing

As we are Staffordshire University students we have to follow the Harvard Referencing method when referring to sources. Now why we have to follow referencing? in academic writing, it is a must to state the sources of ideas and information. Such 'references’ allow readers to refer back to the sources for themselves so that they can distinguish our idea with others. According to Mr.Rehan there are five main reasons to providing reference;

1. Acknowledging the source, giving courtesy to the author of the source.
2. To avoid plagiarism.
3. If the reader wants to read the original source.
4. If you need to refer it in a later day it will be much easier to retrieve it back
5. It will be easy to prove the fact to the reader with known facts.

We can easily do this using Microsoft office word 2007 onward versions utilising the option Referencing. But first we must get the style installed to the PC. We can get the style from  http://bibword.codeplex.com/ then extract the file files to the local HDD then cop-past “HarvardExeter” .XSL file to the directory “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\Bibliography\Style” (in a 32bit operating system “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\Bibliography\Style”). So using this Utility we can easily cite a reference as well as to prepare the Referencing page.