Guide to essay writing is short document is designed to help you get started writing essays. It won’t answer all your questions, but it will point you in the right direction and give you some guidelines. As you go farther along in your work, you’ll surely have questions that aren’t covered here, so feel free to ask your lecturer, tutor, or friends when you have questions. e good news is that the more you read and the more you write, the more all of the things explained here will seem like second nature to you. e document below is in four main sections, which cover formatting, writing, citing your sources, and the final steps before submission. e section on citation is primarily for reference, giving you examples of the correct forms to follow.

. Formatting Before you begin thinking about what you’re going to write, you should get into the habit of creating a folder on your computer to hold all your documents for the essay. It’s amazing how quickly notes, Web addresses, and downloaded articles can get lost, so start by creating a folder. e first thing that should go into the folder is a word-processing file with the correct settings. Do this first and you won’t have to think about it again. Here are some standards: Font: -point serif font such as Times New Roman (PC) or Times (Mac).1 Paragraph: Double-spaced, le-aligned with tabs every . cm. Document: . cm (-inch) margin on top, bottom, le, and right. Header and footer . cm (½-inch) from the edge. Page numbers: Insert either at the bottom of the page, center-alignment or at the top of the page, right-alignment. Uncheck the box that says ‘show number on first page’. In a longer essay, you may also want to use subheadings to indicate the sections of your argument. ese should be set in a -point bold sanserif font like Arial or Gill Sans. You might also want to create a style for long quotations, which should be single-spaced and indented le and right by . cm. (the same format as the four paragraphs above). A good rule of thumb is to indent quotations that take five lines or more of normal text. ese are the default Unicode fonts for their respective systems. Unicode fonts contain larger numbers of characters than other fonts and are useful if you need to use the Greek alphabet or other special characters in your paper. You might also want to switch to Peter Baker’s Junicode font, available free for both PCs and Macs, which has almost every character you’re likely to need, including common manuscript abbreviations such as Ꝝ as well as Greek and Old English characters. 1

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. Writing e first thing to do is to be sure you know exactly what the assignment is asking. Pay special attention to the verb in the assignment: is it asking you to compare, to explain, to contrast, etc.? If you’re given a choice of essays, oen one will appeal immediately to you, and usually that’s a good indication of which one you should write. At times, however, even though you’re interested in the subject of the essay, what you’re asked to do with the subject may be too difficult, in which case one of the other options might be better. Usually you won’t know that the interesting topic is too hard until you’ve started work on the question, which is another argument for starting early! Once you’re sure about the question, think about how you’re going to address it. Let’s say, for example, that you’re asked to compare the structure of the Roman army before and aer Septimius Severus. You know that your essay will be organized by theme (pay, nationality, etc.) and in each of these themes you’ll show differences and similarities before and aer Severus. In other words, you should try to sketch out on paper the broad structure of the essay before you begin. is can be difficult until you’ve done it a few times, but it’s worth thinking about at this point so that you have a better idea of where you’re going. Doing this will also help your research. In the example above, for instance, you’d begin by looking at the army before Severus and taking notes on its important features. Once that’s done, you’d look at the army aer Severus and take notes on the most important things you see there, keeping in mind your previous notes. en by finding important themes in the two lists, you can write your essay, cutting and pasting from your notes as you go. You can see that this process usually involves re-reading texts with new questions in mind. Now that you understand what the question is asking, have figured out the basic structure of the essay, and have done more research, it’s time to begin the final phase of writing. Most essays will have three parts and the part you’ve already sketched will go in the middle. Your essay should begin with an introduction that lays out the problem and explains how it’s going to be addressed. e second part of the essay then contains your analysis, showing how the evidence supports your argument. Finally, there’s usually a conclusion to summarize the argument. e important thing to realize is that essays are almost never written in this order. You’ll almost always begin with the body of the essay and work on getting the argument there clear. Once that’s settled, you can work on the introduction and conclusion to tie everything together. When you’re working on the middle part of the essay, you may notice that your argument changes: as you write the ideas down, you may notice that they’re not quite right or that you can’t write as much about them as you thought. is happens to everyone! It’s very important

3 to see this as a good thing since it teaches you the truth of the adage, ‘writing is thinking, rewriting is writing.’ In other words, when you begin writing the body of the essay, you’re really starting to think about the ideas seriously. It’s important, then, that you use this process to clarify your thoughts and see how they look on paper, since ideas you have in your head oen look very different once they’re written down. Work with the ideas until you’re happy with the way they look on paper, asking yourself such questions as whether the ideas flow clearly and logically, as well as whether they are consistent with each other. Once you’re satisfied that the body of the essay holds together and addresses the question, it’s time to work on the introduction and conclusion. Usually, the introduction will lay out the question and how you’ve chosen to address it as well as giving the reader any background information necessary such as a summary of previous scholarship on the subject. e conclusion, then, will draw together the ideas you’ve just discussed, show how they all work together to address the question and then point out how this may be different than previous approaches. If you’re ambitious, you might also point out how further work could be done. Notice that writing the essay grows out of the writing you’ve done in your research—it’s all part of the same process. at process aims at a gradual refinement of your thoughts on the essay topic and should culminate in a thoughtful, well researched response to the assignment. Of course it doesn’t always work out that way. Parties, clubs, and friends oen intervene, meaning that many people become experts in filling out the word-count with random thoughts and disconnected bits of reading put together the night before. Some people who work this way even have the illusion that what they’ve cobbled together has a certain freshness that comes with last-minute inspiration. But these essays are no fun for anyone: they’re stressful to write and painful to read. What’s more, working this way will always limit the quality of what you’re able to write—there’s only so much a case of Red Bull and  hours’ work can do. One final plea about the apostrophe, a much-abused punctuation mark. e apostrophe is used to indicate missing letters (they’re for they are) and possession (Anne’s to show something belonging to Anne)2 —they’re never used to form plurals, so you’d never, ever write something like book’s for sale. Please be careful using apostrophes! If you have any questions, take a look at the Apostrophe Protection Society’s Website at http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/

e apostrophe is still indicating a missing letter, but it’s from the genitive case, which disappeared from English several centuries ago. 2

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. Acknowledging your sources Your essay should contain ideas that you have assembled in a new way. You will always find some of these ideas (as opposed to their arrangement) in the work of previous scholars and in primary sources. When that is the case—that is, when you have incorporated ideas or information from other sources—intellectual honesty and scholarly convention require that you tell the reader this with a citation of the source. Since the reader will assume that sentences without citation are your own, the failure to cite information from other sources is plagiarism, i.e., claiming others’ work as your own.3 Some facts, such as the Battle of Pharsalus taking place in  BC or Charlemagne being crowned in Rome on Christmas Day in AD , are so well known that they do not require a note to acknowledge where you read them. How do you know when a fact is so well known that you don’t have to cite it? is is a matter of judgment, and as you do more reading and writing it will become much clearer. To get a feel for when and what to cite you should also pay attention to how the books and article you read use citations. e rest of this section is more for reference, explaining in detail the mechanics of citing different kinds of sources. A. How to cite sources You should use the author-date system of citation (also called the Harvard System). In this the author’s surname and year of publication are cited in the text, along with a page reference, e.g. (Bond, , p. ), and a reference list (of these citations) is included at the end of the assignment, in alphabetical order by author. e reference list also includes additional details such as the title and publisher. A bibliography lists relevant items that you have used in the preparation of the assignment but not cited in your text. A bibliography should also be in the Harvard style and the inclusion of such a list shows that you have read widely beyond the items you have cited.4 B. Citing references in the text using the Harvard System References to sources may be cited in the text in different ways depending on the nature of the sentence/paragraph that is being written.

e university’s policies for dealing with plagiarism are found on this Web page: http://www.nuigalway.ie/plagiarism/ 4 is explanation is taken from the Anglia Ruskin University Library’s pamphlet available at http://libweb.anglia,ac.uk/referencing/harvard.html [accessed  Oct ]. 3

5 Author’s name cited in the text When making reference to an author’s work in your text their name is followed by the year of publication of their work, and page reference, in brackets (parentheses) and forms part of the sentence. Cormack (, p. –) states that ‘when writing for a professional readership, writers invariably make reference to already published works’. In general, when writing for a professional publication, it is good practice to make reference to other relevant published work. is view has been supported in the work of Cormack (, p. –). Author’s name not cited directly in the text If you make reference to a work or piece of research without mentioning the author in the text then both the author’s name and publication year are placed at the end of the sentence in brackets: Making reference to published work appears to be characteristic of writing for a professional audience (Cormack , p. ). More than one author cited in the text Where reference is made to more than one author in a sentence, and they are referred to directly, they are both cited: Jones (, p. ) and Smith (, p. ) have both shown… More than one author not cited directly in the text List these at the end of the sentence, putting the author’s name, followed by the date of publication and separated by a semi-colon and within brackets: (Jones ; Smith ) Two authors for the same work When there are two authors for a work they should both be noted in the text: White and Brown (, p. ) in their recent research paper found… with regard to PREP and the role of libraries, Crane and Urquhart (, pp. –) suggest… or indirectly, using an ampersand: (Slater & Jones , p. ) (White & Brown , p. ) More than two authors for a work Where there are several authors (more than two), only the first author should be used, followed by ‘et al’ meaning ‘and others’: Green et al (, p. ) found that the majority … or indirectly:

6 Recent research has found that the majority of…(Green et al , p. ) No author If the author cannot be identified use ‘Anonymous’ or ‘Anon’ and the title of the work and date of publication. e title should be written in italics. Every effort should be made to establish the authorship if you intend to use this work as supporting evidence in an academic submission: Marketing strategy (Anon , p. ) No date e abbreviation n.d. is used to denote this: Smith (n.d., p. ) has written and demonstrated… or indirectly: (Smith n.d., pp. –) Page numbers Including the page numbers of a reference will help readers trace your sources. is is particularly important for quotations and for paraphrasing specific paragraphs in the texts. Lawrence (, p.) or indirectly: (Lawrence , p.) Several works by one author in different years If more than one publication from an author illustrates the same point and the works are published in different years, then the references should be cited in chronological order with the earliest first: as suggested by Bloggs (, p. ; , pp. –) or indirectly: (Bloggs , p. ; , pp. –)… Several works by one author in the same year If you are quoting several works published by the same author in the same year, they should be differentiated by adding a lower case letter aer the year for each item: Earlier research by Smith (a, p. ) found that …but later research suggested again by Smith (b, p. ) that… If several works published in the same year are referred to on a single occasion—or an author has made the same point in several publications they can all be referred to by using lower case letters (as above): Bloggs (a, b) has stated on more than one occasion that…

7 Quoting portions of published text If you want to include a statement from a published work in your essay then the passage must be included within quotation marks, and may be introduced by such phrases as: the author states that ‘… …’ or …the author writes that ‘… …’ In order for a reader to trace the quoted section it is good practice to give the number of the page where the quotation was found. e quotation should also be emphasized (especially if it runs to several lines) by indenting it and using quotation marks. is clearly identifies it as the work of someone else: On the topic of professional writing and referencing Cormac (, p. – ) states: ‘When writing for a professional readership, writers invariably make reference to already published works…’ Chapter authors in edited works References to the work of an author that appears as a chapter, or part of a larger work, that is edited by someone else, should be cited within your text using the name of the contributory author and not the editor of the whole volume. In his work on health information Smith (, p. ) states… In the reference list details of both the part and the entire document should be given. Secondary sources (second-hand references) If you are unable to consult an original work (primary source) but have read about it in a work by another author then you must acknowledge it as such. is becomes a secondary source and should be cited if you are unable to read the original work being referred to either indirectly (Brown  cited in Bassett ) or directly Research recently carried out by Brown ( cited in Bassett ) found that White, as cited by Black (), suggests that… In this last example White is the primary source and therefore the original. Black is the secondary source and may have taken White’s ideas forward and altered the meaning slightly rather than using a direct quote. It may therefore be prudent to access White’s work and read the original, which could then be cited directly as a primary source. e reference list should only contain works that you have read, i.e. for this the secondary source, Black ().

8 C. Compiling the reference list and bibliography General guidelines, layout and punctuation e purpose of a reference list is to enable sources to be easily traced by another reader. Different types of publication require different amounts of information but there are certain common elements such as author, year of publication and title. e Harvard System lays down standards for the order and content of information in the reference. Books For books the required elements for a references are: Author, Initials., Year. Title of book. Edition. Place: Publisher. Redman, P., . Good essay writing: a social sciences guide. rd ed. London: Open University in assoc. with Sage. Extras to note Author: Surname with capital first letter and followed by a comma. Initials: In capitals with full-stop aer each and comma aer full-stop of last initial. Year: Publication year (not printing or impression) followed by full-stop. Title: Full title of book/thesis/dissertation in italics with capitalization of first word and proper nouns only. Followed by full-stop unless there is a sub-title. Sub-title: Follows a colon at end of full title, no capitalization unless proper nouns. Follow by full-stop. Edition: Only include this if not first edition use number followed by abbreviation ed. Include full-stop. Place of publication: Town or city and country if there may be confusion with Ireland or the UK place names. Follow by colon. Publisher: Company name followed by full-stop. Books with two, three or four authors For books with two, three or four authors of equal status the names should all be included in the order they appear in the document. Use an ampersand, not ‘and’ to link the last two multiple authors. e required elements for a reference are: Authors, Initials., Year. Title of book. Edition. (only include this if not the first edition) Place: Publisher Kirk, J. & Munday, R.J., . Narrative analysis. rd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Books with more than four authors For books where there are more than four authors,use the first author only with surname and initials followed by ‘et al’. e required elements for a reference are: Author, Initials., Year. Title of book. Edition. (only include this if not the first edition) Place: Publisher

9 Grace, B. et al., . A history of the world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Books that are edited For books which are edited and but give editor(s) surname(s) and initials, followed by ed. or eds. Please note that ed. is the abbreviation for both editor and edition. e required elements for a reference are: Author, Initials., Year. Title of book. Edition. (only include this if not the first edition) Place: Publisher Keene, E. ed., . Natural language. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Silverman, D.F. & Propp, K.K. eds., . e active interview. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Chapters of edited books For chapters of edited books the required elements for a reference are: Chapter author(s) surname(s) and initials.Year.Title of chapter followed by ‘In’ Book editor(s) initials and surnames with ed. or eds. aer the last name. Title of book. Place of publication: Publisher. Chapter number or first and last page numbers followed by full-stop. Smith, J., . A source of information. In W. Jones, ed. One hundred and one ways to find information about health. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. . Samson, C., . Problems of information studies in history. In S. Stone, ed. Humanities information research. Sheffield: CRUS, , p. –. Multiple works Where there are several works by one author published in the same year they should be differentiated by adding a lower case letter aer the date. Remember that this must also be consistent with the citations in the text. For multiple works the required elements for a reference are: Author, Year. Title of book . Place of publication: Publisher. Soros, G., a. e road to serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Soros, G., b. Beyond the road to serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. is also applies if there are several authors with the same surname. As an alternative their initials can be included in the citation. Works by the same author should be displayed in chronological order, earliest first. Journal articles For journal articles the required elements for a references are:

10 Author, Initials., Year. Title of article. Full Title of Journal, Volume number (Issue/Part number), Page numbers. Perry, C., . What health care assistants know about clean hands. Nursing Times, (), p.–. Boughton, J.M., . e Bretton Woods proposal: an in-depth look. Political Science Quarterly,  (), p.–. Extras to note Author: Surname with capital first letter and followed by comma. Initials: In capitals with full-stop aer each and comma aer full-stop of last initial. Year: Publication year followed by full-stop. Title: Full title of article not in italics, with capitalization of first word and proper nouns only. Followed by full-stop unless there is a sub-title. Sub-title: Follows a colon at end of full title; no capitalization unless proper nouns. Followed by full-stop. Journal title: Full title of journal, in italics, with capitalization of key words. Followed by comma. Volume number: Issue/Part number: In brackets, followed by comma. Page numbers: Preceded by p and full-stop then first and last page numbers, linked by an en-dash.5 Followed by full-stop. Journal articles from an electronic source For journal articles from an electronic source the required elements for a reference are: Author, Initials., Year. Title of article. Full Title of Journal, [type of medium] Volume number (Issue/Part number), Page numbers if available. Available at: include web site address/ URL(Uniform Resource Locator) and additional details of access, such as the routing from the home page of the source. N.B. the URL should be underlined [Accessed date] Boughton, J.M., . e Bretton Woods proposal: an in-depth look. Political Science Quarterly, [online].  (), Available at: http://www.pol.upenn/articles (Blackwell Science Synergy) [accessed  June ] Hamill, C., . Academic essay writing in the first person: a guide for undergraduates. Nursing Standard, [Online]  Jul.,  (), p. –. Available at: http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/ejournals/ [accessed  June ]. Jenkings, R.,. Clashing with caching. ARIADNE, [Online] Issue , September. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/web-cache/ [accessed  December ]

e hyphen (the shortest of the dashes) is used to join compound words, like sub-title. e en-dash (the length of the letter n) is used for ranges, like –. e em-dash (the length of an m) is used to interrupt sentences, as ‘e boy—unaware of the cliff’s edge—backed slowly away.’ 5

11 Wright, A. & Cottee, P., . Consumer understanding of US and EU nutrition labels. British Food Journal [Online]  (), p. –. Emerald. Available at: http://www.emerald-library.com [accessed  September ] Beaver, M., . Errant greenhouse could still be facing demolition. Building Design, [Online]  Nov., p.. Available at: http://www.infotrac.london.galegroup.com/itweb/sbu_uk [accessed  August ] Internet For websites found on the internet the required elements for a reference are: Author, Initials., Year. Title of document or page, [type of medium]. Available at: include web site address/ URL(Uniform Resource Locator) and additional details of access, such as the routing from the home page of the source. N.B. the URL should be underlined [Accessed date] National electronic Library for Health. . Can walking make you slimmer and healthier? (Hitting the headlines article) [Online]. (Updated  Jan ) Available at: http://www.nhs.uk.hth.walking [accessed  April ] e title of a web page is normally the main heading on the page. It is good practice to keep a copy of the front page of any website you use. Website information For websites the required elements for a reference are: Author or corporate author, Year. Title of document ., [type of medium]. Available at: include web site address/URL(Uniform Resource Locator) and additional details of access, such as the routing from the home page of the source. N.B. the URL should be underlined [Accessed date] Note that this example includes details of when the website was updated: National electronic Library for Health. . Can walking make you slimmer and healthier? (Hitting the headlines article) [Online]. (Updated  Jan ) Available at: http://www.nhs.uk.hth.walking [accessed  April ] It is good practice to keep a copy of the front page of any website you use. Publications available from websites For publications found on the internet the required elements for a reference are: Author or corporate author, Year. Title of document . [type of medium]. Available at: include web site address/URL(Uniform Resource Locator) and additional details of access, such as the routing from the home page of the source. N.B. the URL should be underlined [Accessed date]

12 Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines. . Hypertension in the elderly. (SIGN publication ) [internet]. Edinburgh : SIGN (Published ) Available at: http://www.sign.ac.uk/pdf/sign.pdf [accessed  March ] Boots Group Plc., . Corporate social responsibility. [Online]. Boots Group Plc. Available at: http://www.Boots-Plc.Com/Information/Info.Asp?Levelid=&Level id= [accessed  July ] Defoe, D., . e fortunes and the misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders. [Online]. Champaign, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Available at: http://Promo.Net/CgiPromo/Pg/T.Cgi?Entry=&Full=Yes&Ftpsite=Http://www.Ibiblio.Org/Gu tenberg/ [accessed  November ] Tesco Plc., . Annual Report and financial statements . [Online]. Tesco Plc. Available at: http://.../Presentresults/Results_/Prelims/Report/ f [accessed  November ]

. Final steps Once you’re finished revising, here’s a checklist before you submit your essay: . Print the essay. . Re-read it for typographical and grammatical errors (apostrophes!) . Re-read the essay for correct citation format. . Make a cover sheet.6 . Download, print, and sign the evaluation form from the Classics Department website. . Make two copies of everything: one for yourself and one to submit. . Staple the evaluation form to the two copies and submit one. Note that there’s no need for elaborate bindings or cover sheets—usually the time you’d devote to that is best spent on the essay itself. When you’re writing, you should always save your work in two or three places. e most secure place is the network drive supplied by Computer Services or one of the cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, but you may also want a USB key or a portable drive in case the computer crashes. Computers have been known to crash, viruses destroy essays, etc., so keeping a backup on a USB drive and one on the network drive is a good idea. 6

e cover page should contain the following information: Title of essay Your name Your ID number Module number and name Name of lecturer Date of submission

13 Remember that written assignments not submitted by the prescribed deadline may be subject to penalty, and, in the case of extreme delinquency, may be discounted altogether for the purposes of marking and grading. So plan your time and meet your deadline! September 2012