Page Numbers etc.

Table of Contents

  1. Always be as precise as possible
  2. What if my academic source does not include page numbers?
    1. Check if this is really the case
    2. Check if you can reference paragraph numbers instead
    3. When no page or paragraph numbers exist
    4. When citing non-academic source materials
  3. References

Always be as precise as possible

As we discussed when we talked about when and how to quote and when and how to paraphrase, page numbers (and other locators) form an integral part of our citation practices. They are absolutely crucial when we quote a source, and it is considered best practice to use them when we paraphrase wherever possible and relevant. Doing so increases the accountability of our work, and helps us to attain the overall goal of good academic writing to limit ambiguous language, and be as precise as we can in our academic analyses and formulations. But not all source materials have page numbers, and paraphrased arguments cannot always be pinned down to a single sentence. This page offers some tips on how to deal with those issues.

What if my academic source does not include page numbers?

In an increasingly digital academic publication landscape, the papers etc. we are referencing do not always come with page numbers. Some publication venues (like: academic journals) will only provide web-versions of their published peer-reviewed articles, for instnce; and web pages typically do not have page numbers.

Check if this is really the case

If you believe this applies to your case, the first thing to do is to double-check if there really is no page-numbered available. In many cases, venues will publish both a web-version and a PDF version. Journals like Information Research, for example, will let you choose which version you would like to read, right from the table of contents.1 Other journals, like Emperical Software Engineering will show you the web version of their articles by default, but include a button that allows you to download the PDF.2 In both cases, the availability of the PDF version means that there is no reason not to include a page number in your parenthetical in-text reference.

Check if you can reference paragraph numbers instead

Especially when journals only provide web versions to their publications, they will often offer alternative locators for citing or paraphrasing their contents, like paragraph numbers. A good example here is Variants, which marks paragraph numbers to the left of each paragraph in the web version of its papers.3

When paragraph numbers are available, they can be referenced in the parenthetical in-text reference, as long as it is made clear that the numbers in question reference paragraphs rather than pages. You can do this by preceding the paragraph number by the abbreviation ‘para.’, or by using the paragraph symbol (). For example:

✨ Best Practice: abbreviation

In his recent contribution to Variants, Van Hulle argues that the author’s unused reading notes can be as relevant to our analysis of their writing process as the used ones (Van Hulle 2025, para. 17).

Or, alternatively:

✨ Best Practice: symbol

In his recent contribution to Variants, Van Hulle argues that the author’s unused reading notes can be as relevant to our analysis of their writing process as the used ones (Van Hulle 2025, ¶17).

Note that Variants offers its readers both a web version with paragraph numbers, and a PDF version with page numbers.4 If that is the case, you are free to choose whichever version you think to be more appropriate, depending on which version you actually read yourself, and/or might be more relevant to your reader. As such, the above paraphrase could also be referenced as follows:

✨ Best Practice: page number

In his recent contribution to Variants, Van Hulle argues that the author’s unused reading notes can be as relevant to our analysis of their writing process as the used ones (Van Hulle 2025, 75).

When no page or paragraph numbers exist

In rare cases where the academic source you want to reference has no page numbers, nor paragraph numbers, some alternative methods may be available.

When a paper includes numbered sections, it is possible to reference those in the same way we reference paragraph numbers, either by preceding the number with ‘section’, or the section symbol (§). For example:5

✨ Best Practice: section number

In her hermeneutical approach to authorial and editorial integrity, Levina concludes that there is “a demand for a more assertive acknowledgment of the authorial dimension of editorial decisions and procedures” (Levina 2025, §5).

In the same vein, it would also be possible to reference chapters (using the abbreviation ‘Ch.’).

If none of these apply to your case, it is always possible to count the source’s paragraphs yourself. As a last resort, it is also possible indicate that your source does not include a suitable locator, but using the abbreviation ’n.p.’ (for: ‘no pages’) instead of a page number in your in-text reference. This at least indicates to the reader that you are aware of the fact that the reference should have included a page number, but that after doing your due diligence, no such number was found in the source.

When citing non-academic source materials

Non-academic web-only source materials (e.g., policy pages, regular web pages, Wikipedia entries, etc.) include relevant locators less frequently than academic materials do. Before citing such sources, read our tips regarding what to cite, to make sure the document you are referencing belongs in your paper, and what kind of context you would need to preface it with. When you do decide to incorporate your non-academic source in your text, check to see if any of the above mentioned methods are available to you, and apply them where relevant. When they are not, you can also use ’n.p’ to indicate having performed your due diligence.

References

Levina, J. (2025). A Hermeneutics of Authorial and Editorial Integrities in The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot. Variants. The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, (19), 121–138. https://doi.org/10.4000/15do7

Van Hulle, D. (2025). The Author as Reader: Modernist Marginalia and Authors’ Libraries between Exogenesis and Intertextuality. Variants. The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, (19), 69–89. https://doi.org/10.4000/15do4

  1. See, for example, here: https://publicera.kb.se/ir. ↩

  2. See, for example, here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10486-0 ↩

  3. See, for example, here: https://journals.openedition.org/variants/1969. ↩

  4. In this case, you can download the PDF version by clicking on the facsimile button located right above the paper’s first paragraph, which also indicates the download’s file format (PDF) and file size (318 kilobytes). ↩

  5. Of course, as a publication in Variants, the example paper has both page and paragraph numbers available, which should be preferred over referencing section numbers. The example only serves to illustrate the practice. ↩