I have a scientific background, a world where you published your work via papers in journals and referencing was both essential and easy. Essential because an initial way of building your own reputation was by quoting the works of other, more established, researchers in the same field. Then, in your next paper, you could also quote your first paper as a reference.
Easy, because nearly everyone used numerical references which increased sequentially through the paper; in the text these appeared as superscripts.
There was usually a list of references at the end of the paper, however some journals preferred to print them as footnotes on the page in which they were referred to. Both methods had their advantages, although the latter method could be felt to interrupt reading the content (though it did keep typographers busy).
In some ways, that was no bad thing since "It is a fundamental principle of scientific writing that the unimportant be stated just as often as the important, namely once and is assumed to be evermore engraved on the mind of the reader ... This also assumes the work a certain permanence, because it will be years before it is fully understood." (TBA, An Introduction to Game Theory, pTBA, TBA, 1960).
At the end of the last paragraph is yet another method of giving references; however that's cumbersome and does interrupt the flow. Since I can't use superscripts here, the method I'll adopt here is "It ... understood." (TBA {1}).
In my opinion, whenever you quote from someone else's work (fact or fiction) it is imperative that you give your reader enough information for them to verify that reference for themselves. A typical Reference Line might read: Author's Name, Book Title, Character (if the book is a novel), Page, Publisher, Year of publication (plus any previous publisher and year of first edition if appropriate).
Quotes fascinate most folks, this has already been discussed in an Intel called Why Quote? (Law {3}).
Sometimes the List of References is just in alphabetical order of author surname. This was so for a recent thesis which I proofread, with just the surname and year in the text; it was OK, but there was uncertainty if the quoted author was prolific. If the work you're quoting from is a book then this method is somewhat unkind to the reader unless the page numbers are given.
Scientific papers are usually written in a fairly logical order, and so are apt for pure numerical referencing; they also are unlikely to give verbatim quotes from their references.
On the other hand, over the past few years, I have personally been faced with a far more complex problem. I had collected a wealth of source material (from which verbatim quotes would be taken), and was writing whole chapters in random order - these were then being revised and even replaced by other chapters. Many (well over 100) quotes from many books by many authors had to be incorporated into the main manuscript; needless to say I had many false starts.
The method I finally adopted was to defer the actual numbering of the references, and to run two subsidiary documents in addition to my main manuscript.
1. Source Quotes (Word) (each with their own complete Reference Line) arranged by Page within Book Title within Author Surname.
2. Draft References (Excel) which starts off as an exact copy of all the Reference Lines in the Source Quotes, and in precisely the same order. Two additional columns are essential: Keyphrase (short, 35 characters) and Cited (chapter number in main manuscript).
As each quote is entered in the main manuscript, the font Strikethrough is applied to the original quote in the Source Quotes document. This method, although initially a tad cumbersome, does guard against duplication and also ensures that you have used all your source quotes.
Since spreadsheets can easily be sorted on the Cited column, you can readily check which references have been used in which chapter (I do recommend using a separate worksheet for this!).
You can also review those Source Quotes which have not been entered in the main manuscript.
In retrospect, why didn't I just use the spreadsheet with another column for the text of the quote? The main answer is readability; it's a question of scale - I use an 8px font in the Draft References (to get an overall view) and a 12px font in the Source Quotes.
Finally, from the original spreadsheet,
a assign references both in the spreadsheet and repeat those in the appropriate place in the main manuscript;
b the 'submission copy' of the List of References can easily be printed.
To allow for expansion during revision, I used references of the format Xnn (where X is the first letter of the author's surname, and nn a sequential number starting at 01 for each letter of the alphabet).
Even if you don't adopt my exact method, this discussion should have alerted your mind to the fact that there's more than one way of referencing. You must, of course, always follow the 'house style' and conventions of where you are submitting your work for publication.
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Contributor's Note
List of References 1. TBA TBA, An Introduction to Game Theory, pTBA, TBA, 1960
2. Anon, TBA, TBA. pTBA, "Always verify your quotes"
3. Roy Law, [t]Why Quote?[/t], Qondio Intel, 2010 The missing details will be replaced as soon as I can find the information!
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