OSCOLA Referencing Guide: Citing Books, Summaries of Law

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Referencing using

OSCOLA

Section 3: Books

Updated January 2021

• Who wrote the book
• What it is called
• When it was published (including which edition)
• Who the publisher was

What is the reference telling the

reader?

• Give the names as they appear in the publication.
• If there is no individual author, but an institution or organisation is identified, give that as the author.

Authors’ names

• Author’s name, then a comma, then title of the book in italics.
• Follow this with publication information in brackets: the edition (if it’s not the first edition), publisher and year of publication.
• You do not need to give the place of publication.

What information do you need to

include?

Putting it into practice

Title

Publisher

Author

Edition

Date of publication

• The author is given with first name or initial first, then surname, in the form in which it appears in the publication. If initials are used, they are not followed by full stops or spaces between the initials.
• The author’s name is followed by a comma
• So in this case, it will be:
• Penelope Kent,

Presenting this correctly

Now the title

• The next piece of information you need is the title of the book
• In this case it is Law of the European Union
• Looking back at the formula we see that this is the next piece of information you need. The title should be given in italics (N.B. no quotation marks)
• So in this case, it will be:
• Law of the European Union

• Penelope Kent, Law of the European

Union

• This is the basic information about who

wrote the book, and its title. There are

some more important elements to a

complete reference – which would enable

the reader to find your original source.

Putting these two pieces of

information together:

• Inside the brackets:
• Give the edition first, then a comma, then the publisher.
• Make sure you punctuate in exactly the form given in the formula
• Edition is abbreviated as edn and is followed by a comma
• So in this case, we’ll have (4th edn, Pearson Longman)

Presenting this information

• The date of publication, which we’ve already found on the next page.
• Adding this final piece of information, we have the full reference:
• Penelope Kent, Law of the European Union (4th^ edn, Pearson Longman 2008).

Just one thing missing!

• Give the author of the contribution, followed by a comma.
• Then the title of the chapter in single quotation marks, then the details of the book in the normal format

Chapters in edited books

• V Easy, ‘All you need to know about referencing’ in Joe Bloggs (ed), OSCOLA for Everyone (9th^ edn, Sanity Press 2010).

Example