IEEE referencing, with examples

IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which publishes many of the main journals in engineering and computing. Its referencing style is used on engineering, computer science and electronics courses. This guide follows the IEEE Reference Guide (version of 29 November 2023). The reference examples are KanBananza’s own output, so you can check yours against them.

IEEE is a numbered style. In your writing, a number in square brackets stands for each source. At the end, a list gives the full details for each number, so a reader can find it. Some universities and departments make small changes, so if your course handbook says something different, follow your handbook.

Numbers in the text

Number your sources in the order you first cite them. The first source you cite is [1], the next new source is [2], and so on. When you cite a source again, use the number it already has. The number does the work of the author and the year, so they don’t go in the brackets.

The numbers match the full reference list further down: Kahneman’s book is [1], Braun and Clarke [2], McLeod [3], Miller [4] and NICE [5]. Source [6] would be the next new one, such as the 2004 article by Kahneman and four others.

Where the number goes

Put the number inside the sentence, straight after the idea or name it supports, with a space before the bracket. It goes before a full stop or comma: “…widely used in psychology [2].” You can also use the number as part of the sentence, as in “as shown in [3]” or “according to [4]”.

Naming authors in your sentence

You don’t have to name the author, but you can. For one or two authors, give their surnames: Braun and Clarke [2]. The IEEE guide uses “et al.”, meaning “and others”, when there are three or more names: Kahneman et al. [6]. An organisation’s name works the same way.

Page numbers

Add a page inside the brackets, after a comma: “p.” for one page and “pp.” for more than one, as in [1, p. 81] or [1, pp. 81–83]. Give a page when you quote, or when you point to one part of a long source like a book. In KanBananza, type the page in the card’s page box and the citation comes out as [1, p. 81].

Two or more sources at once

Give each source its own brackets, with a comma between them: [2], [4]. For a run of three or more numbers, many university guides join the first and last with a dash, as in [1]–[3]. Others list each one. Check your course handbook.

A source you read about in another one

Cite only the source you actually read, and say in your sentence where the idea came from: “Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory, as described in [3], …”. Only the source you read goes in your reference list. If you can, find and read the original instead. Some universities want this set out in a particular way, so check your course handbook.

The reference list

The list at the end of your work is headed References. It gives the full details of every source you cited, and only those.

• Order: number order. [1] is the first source you cited, [2] is the second, and so on. Don’t sort it A to Z.
• Layout: the numbers in square brackets sit in a column of their own on the left, and the reference hangs beside them. KanBananza pastes each reference with a hanging indent, so this survives pasting into Word and Google Docs.
• Authors: initials first, then the surname, with a space between initials: J. D. Watson. Join two authors with “and”. With three or more, put commas between them and “and” before the last.
• How many authors: list them all, up to six. With more than six, give the first author’s name, then et al. KanBananza does this for you.
• Titles in quotation marks: journal articles, chapters, web pages and reports. These titles are in sentence case: a capital for the first word, the first word after a colon, and names.
• Titles in italics: books, journals and newspapers. Book titles have a capital for each main word, as in Thinking, Fast and Slow.
• Journal names: abbreviated, as in Bell Syst. Tech. J. for the Bell System Technical Journal.
• Volume, issue and pages: “vol.”, “no.” and “pp.”, as in vol. 59, no. 236, pp. 433–460. The IEEE guide puts the month, if there is one, before the year: Oct. 1950.
• Books: the edition after the title, as in 2nd ed., then the place, then the publisher and year. The place is the city and the country, with the state for the US: London, U.K., or Cambridge, MA, USA.
• Online sources: “Accessed:” and the date you looked at it, then “[Online]. Available:” and the link. A journal article with a DOI ends with the DOI instead.

KanBananza prints what you type

Titles and places come out the way you type them in a source’s details. A journal’s short name goes in the Journal abbreviation box, like Bell Syst. Tech. J. Type a book’s title with a capital for each main word, and type the place as the city and the country. Article titles stay in sentence case.

Examples for each kind of source

Each card has a pattern to follow, a real example where there’s one, and the citation in the text. Every example is numbered [1] because it’s shown on its own. In your list, each source takes the number of its first citation.

A full reference list

Say you cite Kahneman’s book first, then Braun and Clarke, McLeod, Miller and NICE. This is what KanBananza copies for those five sources: numbered in the order you cited them, with hanging indents and italics that survive pasting into Word or Google Docs.

1. [1] D. Kahneman, Thinking, fast and slow. London: Allen Lane, 2011.
2. [2] V. Braun and V. Clarke, “Using thematic analysis in psychology,” Qual. Res. Psychol., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 77–101, 2006, doi: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.
3. [3] S. McLeod, “Working memory model,” Simply Psychology. Accessed: Oct. 20, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.simplypsychology.org/working-memory.html
4. [4] G. A. Miller, “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information,” Psychol. Rev., vol. 63, no. 2, pp. 81–97, 1956, doi: 10.1037/h0043158.
5. [5] National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, “Hypertension in adults: diagnosis and management,” NICE guideline NG136, 2019. Accessed: Oct. 20, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng136

Some details here were typed the way most other styles want them, so they print that way. For your own IEEE list, type them as IEEE wants: the book’s title as Thinking, Fast and Slow, and its place as London, U.K.

To build your list while you read, not the night before the deadline, see how to reference as you go. In a numbered style the order matters, so it helps to know which sources each part of a report or project uses: see how to track sources in each chapter.

Common mistakes

• Round brackets. IEEE uses square brackets: [1], not (1).
• A new number each time. A source keeps the number it got the first time you cited it.
• The citation after the full stop. The number goes inside the sentence, before the full stop: …in psychology [2].
• Sorting the list A to Z. IEEE lists sources in number order.
• Surname first. In an IEEE reference, it’s A. M. Turing, not Turing, A. M.
• Using “et al.” too soon in the list. Name every author up to six. Only more than six gets et al.
• Full journal names. Use the abbreviation, like Bell Syst. Tech. J.
• No date for a web page. Online sources need “Accessed:” and the date you looked at them.