Ensure that all in-text references are included in the reference list. Each reference must be complete – including the author, year of publication (but see guidance on unpublished references in Author–date in-text citations) and title of the publication – and accurate. The reference list must be internally consistent.

All reference examples in this section:

  • omit punctuation between author names, except for a separating comma when there are 3 or more authors
  • use an ampersand before the last author, editor or publisher
  • enclose the year of publication in parentheses
  • use sentence case for the titles of articles, books and reports; apart from the first word of the title, capitals should only be used for proper nouns
  • have page numbers in full (see Cross-references).

The reference examples indicate the additional information required and the style conventions to follow, depending on the publication.

Remember. Even if a document title is published in title case, it is presented in sentence case in the reference list and in an in-text citation; the case used when a work is published is a design choice.

Sentence case or minimal capitalisation means that only the first word and proper nouns start with a capital letter.

Title case means that each word, except prepositions and articles, starts with a capital letter.

This section describes how to present the following types of references in Biotext referencing style:

Remember. Check for consistent use of punctuation in references. In particular, check that each reference ends with a full stop.