Citing or referencing is a way of acknowledging the sources of information and ideas that you have used in an assignment. This is important because of the academic tradition of respecting ownership of ideas. Citing is achieved by listing various citation elements, such as author, date, title, publisher, page numbers and so on, both in the text of your paper, and in a reference list at the end of the paper. Plagiarism occurs when sources of information and ideas are not acknowledged.
Deliberate plagiarism is regarded as a serious act of academic misconduct.
Academic Misconduct including plagiarism is covered in the University of South Australia's Assessment Policy and Procedures Manual . Other authors have produced electronic style guides based on various style principles, but there is quite a lot of variation between these guides. The 'Harvard' or author-date style does not have an organisation responsible for it, so again different authors are producing different electronic style guides. Electronic information can be ephemeral. Information which is available on a World Wide Web page at the time you are writing your assignment, may not be there next time you look.