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Leeds Harvard: Command paper

Reference examples

Government department/committee/organisation. Year. Title. (Command no.). Place of publication: Publisher.

Command papers are published by The Stationery Office whose headquarters are based in London. Before 1963 the Stationery Office was referred to as HMSO. 

Example:

Home Office. 2003. Identity cards: the next steps. (Cm.6020). London: The Stationery Office.

Make use you use the correct abbreviation of command, as this varies for different historical periods.

Online command paper

If you are referencing a command paper you found online, this should be indicated in the reference.

Government department/committee/organisation. Year. Title. (Command no.). [Online]. Place of publication: Publisher. [Date accessed]. Available from: URL

Example:

Department for Education. 2017. Unlocking talent, fulfilling potential: a plan for improving social mobility through education. (Cm.9541). [Online]. London: The Stationery Office. [Accessed 14 May 2018]. Available from: https://0-www-publicinformationonline-com.wam.leeds.ac.uk/ 

Citation examples

Command paper or House of Commons/Lords paper

In the citation, always use the name of the Government organisation/department/comittee in place of that of an individual author. When the organisation name is not mentioned in the text, the ciation consists of the organisation's name and the year of publication in brackets.

Example:

According to a recent report, flu jabs are as important as travel vaccines (Department of Health, 2017).

If you have already named the organisation in the text, only the publication year needs to be mentioned in brackets.

Example:

A recent report by the Department of Health (2017) emphasised that flu jabs are as important as travel vaccines.

 

When to include page numbers

You should include page numbers in your citation if you quote directly from the text, paraphrase specific ideas or explanations, or use an image, diagram, table, etc. from a source.

Example:

"It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent" (Jones, 2017, p.24).

When referencing a single page, you should use p. For a range of pages, use pp.

Example:

p.7 or pp.20-29.

If the page numbers are in Roman numerals, do not include p. before them.

Example:

(Amis, 1958, iv)

Common issues

When you're referencing with Leeds Harvard you may come across issues with missing details, multiple authors, edited books, references to another author's work or online items, to name a few. Here are some tips on how to deal with some common issues when using Leeds Harvard.

Skip straight to the issue that affects you: