The following conventions are recommended in the writing of essays. It is helpful to get used to writing references and bibliography in line with accepted conventions, not least because use of these conventions is convenient and saves you time and effort in the long run. Books and articles and other sources you use should appear in your bibliography/ references at the end of your essay. Don't include material which you feel has vaguely influenced you. Don't put stuff in which you think looks good but you haven't directly quoted or referred to. Only give the references to material you actually refer to!
Refer in the text of your essay to authors thus:
...as Hawthorn (1987) notes, one particular feature which many political theorists of this time shared in common was that...
...Miller (1984, p. 62) writes that:
As an ideal, on the other, hand, the general will provides a standard of
altruistic motives and
shared intentions against which to measure the fallibility of self-interested
men, who are often
unwilling to look beyond their private concerns.
(Note that extended quotations are conventionally indented and omit quotation marks.)
Set out your references/bibliography in the following way:
Evernden, N. (1998), Nature in industrial society, in: R.G. Botzler and S.J.Armstrong (eds), Environmental Ethics (McGraw-Hill)
Hawthorn, G. (1987), Enlightenment and Despair: A History of Social Theory (Cambridge University Press)
Luke, A. (1996), Tackling crime by other means, Journal of Applied Philosophy 13.2, 179 - 188
Note that titles of books or journals are italicised/underlined;
titles of articles or chapters are not. You will often
come across cases which do not fall neatly within these or any other guidelines:
use your own judgement. The Main University Library issues a useful leaflet on
how to set out a bibliography.