 Writing an academic assignment is hard work, and it can be tempting to postpone the reference work or leave the reference list out altogether. However, you should pay as much attention to this as to the rest of your work. The reference list in an assignment is important because it tells us about the quality of the work. We know what to expect, what the sources are, and whether the student is on the right track or not. It also tells us quite a bit about what they have not included in their study, and we would be very surprised to find it in the text. When you are getting started with your reference work before you start writing your assignment, it is important to choose a reference style and to use this consistently. The library can help you find good resources on how to do this. Using this website, you can click on your subject and find the most commonly used reference style for your subject. In research, data should be verifiable, and that's the basics of all research. That whoever comes after you can check you and see that you have been an honest researcher, that you have not been cheating, taking people's work from articles, not referring to them because there's a whole world out there of people who are honest workers. So if you steal their work by not referencing it, you are being doubly dishonest in a way. You're both cheating on them and you're cheating on yourself. Style guides will provide you with the answers to most of the questions you have about referencing. Learning how to do this will save you a lot of time and hard work in the long run. It will also give a good impression of your academic work.