This blog will outline the basics of using the OSCOLA referencing system to cite books. The core layout is as follows:
Author, | Title of book | (Edition, | Publisher | Year).
Jill Poole, Textbook on Contract Law (13th edn, OUP 2016).
There should only be two commas. Now we will look at each of these elements in turn.
Author
The author should be in the format of their first name(s) or initial(s) followed by their last name in a footnote citation. In a bibliography, their last name will come first followed by just their initial(s), without any commas between. There should not be a full stop at the end of a bibliography entry.
Poole J, Textbook on Contract Law (13th edn, OUP 2016)
If the author has post-nominals such as QC, these should be omitted, although a judge should have their name written as it is in the work.
If there are two or three authors, they should be given in the order they are stated in the work, linked by commas and the word ‘and’.
Catherine Elliott and Frances Quinn, Criminal Law (11th edn, Pearson 2016).
For more than three authors, the name of the first author should be given, followed by ‘and others’.
If no individual author is given, but the work is owned by an organisation or company, this organisation or company name should be given as the author, as any publication with an ISBN should be treated as a book.
Title of Book
This should be exactly as it appears on the cover of the work, including any capitalisation or regional spellings, but put all of the title into italics. If part of the original title is in italics, this part should appear in normal script. Do not use quotation marks unless they appear in the title, in which case make sure that you have used the correct type (double or single).
Edition
This will often appear on the cover of the book if it is an academic work such as a textbook, but if not it can be found inside the book on the publication page, with copyright information. Ensure that you use a consistent style; edition should be abbreviated as ‘edn’ and followed one of the two commas used!
Publisher
Again, this is usually easy to find on the cover. There may be a fuller version inside on the publication page, but usually the version on the cover will be sufficient. It can even sometimes be abbreviated; for example, I have abbreviated Oxford University Press in the example above to OUP.
Year
This will again be on the publication page inside the book. Make sure it matches the edition you have referenced. If you have used an extract from a book and are unsure of the year (or any other data), it is usually easy to find the information on websites such as Amazon.
Edited Works
A contribution to an edited work should be given in the following format:
Author, | ‘Title of Chapter’ | in Editor (ed), | Title of book | (Edition, | Publisher | Year).
Ralf Michaels, ‘The Functional Method of Comparative Law’ in Mathias Reimann and Reinhard Zimmerman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (Oxford University Press 2006).
(No edition needed as this is the first edition.)
This would appear in the bibliography as:
Michaels R, ‘The Functional Method of Comparative Law’ in Reimann M and Zimmerman R (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (Oxford University Press 2006)
Note that editors’ names change format as well.
If there is no author, but there is an editor or translator, treat them as the author in the citation and just add in brackets after their name ‘(ed)’ or ‘(tr)’, or ‘(eds)’ or ‘(trs)’ if there are multiple editors or translators. Editors’ names should change format here to have just their initial(s) after their last name, as they are used in place of an author.
Pinpointing Part of a Book
If you want to pinpoint the part of the book that a quote has come from, for example, the format is to add the page number to the end of the citation in the style:
Author, | Title of book | (Edition, | Publisher | Year) | X.
Where X is the page number. A range of page numbers is given with a hyphen between; for more information on ranges of numbers, see my blog OSCOLA Referencing Introduction and Quick Summary, which covers many of the more general basics. A complete citation would therefore be:
Jill Poole, Textbook on Contract Law (13th edn, OUP 2016) 6-7.
Page numbers should not appear in the bibliography. If you need to refer to an initial page and an unknown number of following pages (not ideal!), use ‘ff’ directly after the first page number, for example, 6ff.
Extra Information
If there is any additional, relevant information about the book, such as it being a supplement, this can go inside the brackets and before edition, followed by a comma:
Author, | Title of book | (Additional information, | Edition, | Publisher | Year).
Gareth Jones, Goff and Jones: The Law of Restitution (1st supp, 7th edn, Sweet & Maxwell 2009).
If a book has multiple volumes, this should go after the title of book, with a comma before it:
Author, | Title of book, | Volume | (Edition, | Publisher | Year).
Christian von Bar, The Common European Law of Torts, vol 2 (CH Beck 2000).
If the book is read as an ebook, it should still be cited as a hard copy version if it is also available in this format. Older books which are now only available online should still be treated as hard copy books also.
Finally…
Books can be awkward because there are so many variables. Indeed, there’s more information that there isn’t room to cover here! However, the base layout is fairly simple and can easily be adapted as needed.
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