You can refer to the work of others by paraphrasing or using quotations but you must always include a superscript number and footnote. This applies to all sources – judgments, textbooks, websites, articles etc. If you are quoting or using materials from a particular page, include the number after your reference.
Paraphrasing is incorporating someone else’s ideas into your work but using your own words to express them. When you paraphrase a source you have read, you must make it clear where the ideas have come from and you would usually place your superscript number at the end of the sentence.
When you create a footnote reference for a paraphrase you should look to pinpoint the page number.
Original text:
'The carte-de-visite was a photographic portrait pasted on to a card and circulated as a kind of early social media artefact'.
Paraphrased text:
Photography can be linked back to what could now be termed an early form of social media - the carte-de-visite was a card with a portrait photograph on which could then be given to others.¹
Footnote example:
¹ Peter Smith and Carolyn Lefley, Rethinking Photography : Histories, Theories and Education (2015 Routledge) 11.
Quoting is copying the words of another person into your assignment:
Short quote example:
Hart wrote that the doctrine of precedent is compatible with ‘two types of creative or legislative activity’.²
Footnote example:
² HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd edn, Clarendon Press 1994) 135.
Quoting is copying the words of another person into your assignment:
(see Lord Hoffman example below)
Long quote example:
Lord Hoffmann reasoned as follows:
It seems to me logical to found liability for damages upon the intention of the parties ... It must be in principle wrong to hold someone liable for risks for which people entering into such a contract in their particular market, would not reasonably be considered to have undertaken.³
Footnote example:
³ Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping Inc (The Achilleas) [2008] UKHL 48, [2009] 1 AC 61 [12].