One of the key elements that make a UK essay different from other types of essays is that it is very academic. It cannot stand with mere opinion alone and every statement that students write as their position must be supported with data. Proper referencing is strictly followed in writing UK essays since they are research-based. Without proper referencing, the professors will either give their students a low grade for not doing enough research on the essay topic, or worse, for plagiarism.

Whenever students used other sources to support their essays, they must always cite it with the proper reference style. Even if the additional source is being summarised or paraphrased, it is imperative that any source included in the UK essay is credited properly.

What is the importance of referencing in a UK essay?

• The student is giving credit where credit is due.
• The student helps other readers search for these useful sources.
• The student has demonstrated that there is prior research done before the actual essay writing task.
• The student is not cheating—plagiarism.

In UK essays, the reference will both include an in-text citation and a bibliographic entry. It is the professors who will usually require what reference format the students should use. It is an advantage, then, that students should already know what the different reference formats are so they have a clearer idea of what reference format to use in a certain subject. They will also spend less time researching about referencing rules for each system and focus more on their essay writing task instead.

Here are some of the widely used referencing formats in UK essays:

• Oxford referencing format. Also called as the OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for Citation Of Legal Authorities) or the documentary-note format. This referencing system is mostly used in history and philosophy subjects. It uses footnotes. A reference list for every footnote entry is provided in every page so the readers can easily list down the source of that citation if they find the material useful. A bibliographic entry will be found at the end of the UK essay.
• Harvard referencing format. Also known as the author-date reference format. This is mostly used by students who are writing UK essays about education and other social sciences. Each citation will contain the author and date of publication, which is found at the end of the passage and enclosed with parentheses. A bibliography is included at the end of the UK essay.  
• MLA (Modern Language Association of America) referencing format. This reference format is predominantly used in UK essays of Humanities subjects. It is also one of the formats that do not require the page numbers of the source being credited. When using this referencing format, students credit data by providing in-text citations with their sources enclosed in parentheses. For its bibliographic entry, it uses the words “Print” or “web” to indicate where the source collected is found.
• BMJ (British Medical Journal) referencing format. This format, as the name suggests, is more widely used for those professions related to the medical field. It is similar to other referencing systems as it also includes superscript numbers for in-text citations. The superscript numbers, however, must be placed before colons and semi-colons or after commas and periods so the flow of the reading of the UK essay will not be interrupted.