Secondary referencing
Secondary referencing occurs when you are reading an author who refers to another author’s work and you want to use this information to support an argument in your assignment. Ideally, you should try to locate the original work so that you can cite directly from it. However, it may not be possible to access the original work or it may not be appropriate (eg when referring to well-established theories). When citing a secondary reference we recommend that both the author of the original source and the author of the work it was cited in should be used:
Ellis, cited by Cox, discusses [...].13
The footnote and bibliography entries will then provide details of the book you actually read – for the example above, this would be Cox, not Ellis. In your footnotes and bibliography you should only reference the work you have actually read and cited in your assignment. Therefore, if you haven’t read and cited from the original work, you shouldn’t reference it.
Your MHRA referencing guide
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