Amidst the celebrity gossip and angry opinion pieces, newspapers sometimes report on genuinely important things. Things one might write an academic paper about, for example. But how do you cite newspaper articles in Oxford referencing? In this post, we take a look at the basics.
Citing a Newspaper Article in Footnotes
The rules for citing newspaper articles may vary between universities, so it’s crucial to check your style guide. However, most versions of Oxford referencing use a format like this:
n. Initial(s). Surname, ‘Title of article’, Title of Newspaper, Section of Newspaper (if applicable), date of publication, page number(s).
The first footnote citation of a newspaper article would thus look like this:
1. C. Cummins, ‘Lecturer fires up on LinkedIn after being faced with empty classroom’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 2017, p. 42.
If you have accessed a newspaper article online, you should give a URL and date of access instead of a page number. For instance:
2. P. Hawker, ‘Teen movies: familiar tropes of school, detention, love and growing up’, The Australian, 8 July 2017, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/teen-movies-familiar-tropes-of-school-detention-love-and-growing-up/news-story/23ad53ec8d84b34de4d1d46c5af232f9>, accessed 3 August 2017.
And as with any source in Oxford referencing, you can use a shortened footnote format for subsequent citations of the same article to prevent repetition (usually, this is just the author’s surname and a page number).
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Newspaper Articles in the Reference List
Newspaper articles should also be added to the bibliography at the end of your document. The format here is similar to the first footnote. However, you should give the author’s surname before their initial, along with a full page range for print articles:
Surname, Initial(s)., ‘Title of article’, Title of Newspaper, Section of Newspaper (if applicable), date of publication, page range.
For online articles, give a URL and date of access instead of a page range.
In practice, then, you would list the articles above as follows:
Cummins, C., ‘Lecturer fires up on LinkedIn after being faced with empty classroom’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 2017, pp. 42-43.
Hawker, P., ‘Teen movies: familiar tropes of school, detention, love and growing up’, The Australian, 8 July 2017, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/teen-movies-familiar-tropes-of-school-detention-love-and-growing-up/news-story/23ad53ec8d84b34de4d1d46c5af232f9>, accessed 3 August 2017.
If you find an article without a named author, you can often use the title in the first position in footnotes and the bibliography instead. And if you’d like an expert to check the referencing in your work, we’re here to help.