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ACADEMIC STYLE GUIDE
When you write essays, you must include a bibliography at the end showing what you have read, and in the body of the essay you must indicate the precise source of any information and ideas not your own, even if you are paraphrasing them. Such referencing enables the reader to engage with your argument fully and also protects you from an accusation of plagiarism. The required information must be presented in a consistent and precise form. Entries must be consistent, so that the reader can understand what kind of source you are using and can find it if they want to consult it too. Entries must also be precise, so that the reader can understand exactly where the dividing line is between your ideas and those of your sources. For these reasons, in-text citations must always give page references whenever you are using other people’s words or ideas, while your bibliography should always list all the pages that an article or a chapter covers, not just those pages from which you have quoted or taken ideas. Many different styles of referencing have been developed to meet the needs of specific disciplines. The Department requires students to use the Modern Language Association referencing system, commonly known as MLA, which is the one most widely used in the arts and humanities. It is very important that you follow the standard format for each kind of entry, which makes it easy for the reader both to assess the nature of your sources and to access them. Just imagine if you opened a telephone directory to find some entries with the name first, some with the phone number first, some with the address first – and some information, such as house numbers or area codes, missing altogether. That is what it is like to provide non-standard documentation in an essay. MLA documentation style acknowledges sources by giving, in parentheses in the body of your essay, the author’s surname and the page(s) to which you are referring; full bibliographical details are included in a List of Works Cited, or bibliography, at the end of the essay. Bibliographies are presented in alphabetical order of authors’ surnames. Below are examples, both generic and specific, of the way to reference the most commonly cited types of material in your bibliography.
A book by a single author: Last name, First name. Title Underlined. City of publication: Publisher, Year.
Wiles, David. A Short History of Western Performance Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
(Tip: in Word, you can create the hanging indent necessary for bibliographical entries by pressing control and t anywhere within the entry; this automatically indents the second and subsequent lines.) ( Note: if a book is part of a series, the series title, without underlining or quotation marks, should be placed between the book title and city of publication. See sample bibliography for examples.)
A book by two or more authors: Last name, First name, and First name Last name. Title Underlined. City of publication: Publisher, Year.
Gilbert, Helen, and Joanne Tompkins. Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics. London: Routledge, 1996.
An anthology with one editor: Last name, First name, ed. Title Underlined. City of publication: Publisher, Year.
Gilbert, Helen, ed. Post-Colonial Plays: An Anthology. London: Routledge: 2001.
An anthology with two or more editors: Last name, First name, and First name Last name, eds. Title Underlined. City of publication: Publisher, Year.
Bradby, David, and Maria M. Delgado, eds. The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Cave, Richard, Elizabeth Schafer, and Brian Woolland, eds. Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory. London: Routledge, 1999.
( Note: in the preceding three examples, ‘ed.’ and ‘eds.’ are abbreviations for ‘editor’ and ‘editors’.)
A book with an author and a translator: Last name, First name of author. Title Underlined. Trans. First name Last name of translator. City of publication: Publisher, Year.
Lecoq, Jacques. The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre. 1997. Trans. David Bradby. 2000. Rev. ed. London: Methuen, 2002.
( Note: in the preceding example, further information is necessary for bibliographical completeness; this includes the date of publication of the French original (1997), the first date of publication of the translation (2000), and the fact that the present edition of the translation is a revised one.)
A work in an edited volume: Last name, First name. ‘Title of Article in Single Quotation Marks’. Title of Volume Underlined. Ed. First name Last name. City of publication: Publisher, Year. Page numbers of entire article.
Schafer, Elizabeth. ‘Daughters of Ben’. Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory. Ed. Richard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer, and Brian Woolland. London: Routledge, 1999. 154-78.
( Note: in the preceding example, ‘Ed.’ is an abbreviation of ‘edited by’, so is used even when there are two or more editors.)
Cross-references: If you use two or more essays from the same edited work, there is no need to repeat bibliographical information. For example, if besides using Liz Schafer’s essay, referenced in the preceding example, you had also used Richard Cave’s from the same book, your bibliography would look like this:
Cave, Richard. ‘Designing for Jonson’s plays’. Cave, Schafer, and Woolland. 45-57. Cave, Richard, Elizabeth Schafer, and Brian Woolland, eds. Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory. London: Routledge, 1999. Schafer, Elizabeth. ‘Daughters of Ben’. Cave, Schafer, and Woolland. 154-78.
Here’s What I Did With My Body One Day. By Dan Rebellato. Dir. Andy Lavender. Perf. David Annen, Colin Hurley, Paul Murray, Danny Scheinmann. Pleasance Theatre, London. 7-31 Oct. 2004.
A film: Name of Film Underlined. Dir. First Name Last Name. Perf. First Name Last Name, First Name Last Name if pertinent. Name of distributor, Year.
Macbeth. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Jon Finch, Francesca Annis. Playboy/Columbia,
A video or DVD: Title of Film Underlined. Dir. First Name Last Name. Perf. First Name Last Name, First Name Last Name if pertinent. Year of original release. Medium. Name of distributor, Year.
Macbeth. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Jon Finch, Francesca Annis. 1971. Video. Cinema Club, 1998.
A play broadcast on radio: Title of Play Underlined. By First name Last name. Dir. First name Last name. Title of series/slot. Name of station. Day Month Year of broadcast.
Emily Rising. By Dan Rebellato. Dir. Polly Thomas. The Afternoon Play. BBC Radio 4. 24 Aug. 2001.
A CD-ROM:
Last name, First name of author. Title of CD-ROM Underlined. Ed. First name Last name if applicable. CD-ROM. City of publication: Publisher, Year.
Staniewski, Wlodek. Hidden Territories: The Theatre of Gardzienice. Ed. Ali Hodge and Peter Hulton. CD-ROM. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
WEB RESOURCES:
In general, follow the rules outlined above, adding your date of access and the website’s URL to the end of the entry, enclosed within < >. Some examples follow.
Gower, John. Confessio Amantis, or Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Works of John Gower. Ed. G.C. Macauley. Oxford, 1901. Online Medieval and Classical Library. Ed. Douglas B. Killings. 10 May 2005. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Confess/ Lynch, Stephen J. Shakespearean Intertextuality: Studies in Selected Sources and Plays. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998. Greenwood eBooks. 25 April 2005. http://ebooks.greenwood.com/reader.jsp?x=20004F31. Ward, A. W. & W. P. Trent, et al., eds. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. Vol. 3: Renascence and Reformation. Ed. A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21. New York: Bartleby.com, 2000. 29 April
- http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
This guide covers only the most commonly used types of sources. For information on how to reference other types of material, consult Diana Hacker’s website, ‘Research and Documentation Online: Humanities’, where a drop down menu explains the correct format for 56 different kinds of published, electronic, multimedia, and online sources. You can find it at http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities/list.html. Other pages on the site offer helpful guidance on formatting in-text citations and information notes.
We also highly recommend purchase of Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual. 4th^ ed. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. Available from Amazon (ISBN 0-312- 40684-3), it contains not only a guide to MLA referencing but also very useful sections on all aspects of writing an essay: grammar, punctuation, supporting a thesis, integrating quotations, avoiding plagiarism, etc. Its website at http://dianahacker.com/pocket/ also provides interactive exercises to help you further develop writing and referencing skills. Other helpful websites include the University of Illinois Writers’ Center at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/index.htm and the University of Wisconsin Writing Center at http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/index.html.
Sample list of works cited
Bradby, David. Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Plays in Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Bratton, Jacky, and Gilli Bush-Bailey. ‘The Management of Laughter: Jane Scott’s Camilla the Amazon in 1998’. Women in British Romantic Theatre. Ed. Catherine Burroughs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 178-204. Bush-Bailey, Gilli. ‘Putting it into Practice: The Possibilities and Problems of Practical work for the Theatre Historian’. Contemporary Theatre Review 12.4 (2002): 77-96. Cave, Richard. ‘“After Hippolytus”: Irish Versions of Phaedra’s Story’. Amid our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy. Ed. M. McDonald and J. Walton. London: Methuen, 2002. 101-27. Cohen, Matthew Isaac. ‘Look at the Clouds: Migration and West Sumatran “Popular” Theatre’. New Theatre Quarterly 19 (2003): 214-29. Cozzi, Enzo, and David Bradby. ‘The first English performance of Pirandello’s The Mountain Giants’. Studies in Theatre Production 2 (1990): 5-21. Dymkowski, Christine. The Tempest. Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Gilbert, Helen. ‘Millennial Blues: Performing the (White) Nation’. Playing Australia: Theatre, Diaspora, Dialogue_._ Ed. Susan Pfisterer and Elizabeth Schafer. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003. 12-28. Goddard, Lynette. ‘West Indies vs England in Winsome Pinnock’s Migration Narratives’. Contemporary Theatre Review 14.4 (2004): 23-33. Govan, Emma. ‘Entertaining Illness’. Probing the Boundaries/At the Interface. Ed. Peter Twohig and Vera Kalitzkus. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. 125-140. Hodge, Ali, ed. Twentieth Century Actor Training. 2000. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Holmes, Jonathan. Merely Players: Actors’ Accounts of Playing Shakespeare_._ London: Routledge, 2004. Megson, Chris. ‘“The Spectacle is Everywhere”: Tracing the Situationist Legacy in British Playwriting Since 1968’. Contemporary Theatre Review 14.2 (2004): 15-26. ---. Cool Britannia? Three Plays About Modern Britain. University of Leicester: English Association, 1998. Nicholson, Helen. ‘Acting, Creativity and Justice: An analysis of Edward Bond’s The Children’. Research in Drama Education 8.1 (2003): 9-23.
increased public visibility. The range of activities that women practiced was piecemeal and mirrored their status within the medieval work place. (Normington 41-42)
Long quotations like these should be indented at both left and right and do not take quotation marks (to indent in Word, highlight a paragraph, click Format on the toolbar followed by Paragraph, and then adjust the left and right indentation about 2 cms). The parenthetical reference to author and page numbers, which in indented quotations follows the full stop, indicates that the reader will find the full details of this source under ‘Normington’ in the bibliography and that the material quoted is from pages 41 and 42. However, if you were using the two sources by Normington listed in the sample bibliography given above, you would need to identify which one this is by adding a short version of the title – e.g., (Normington, Gender 41-42) as opposed to (Normington, ‘Reviving’ 135). Although long quotations are sometimes necessary, it is best to quote selectively, using only those parts relevant to your analysis, and to integrate them into your own sentences. Short quotations of fewer than four lines should not be indented: they are signaled by the use of single quotation marks at beginning and end. For instance, you might write the following sentence: According to Normington, ‘[m]edieval records show that women received payment for a wide variety of [production] tasks’ (41). Here the full stop occurs after the parenthetical reference, which is part of the sentence. Note that you do not need to repeat the name of the author if you have already indicated it, and note also that you can use square brackets to make your own insertions into a quotation, whether it is a change of case or tense to fit in with your own syntax or the addition of a word that contextualises or clarifies the quotation. Remember that quotations are always indicated either by the use of quotation marks or by indentation, never by the use of italics. You can also omit irrelevant words from a quotation by inserting three ellipsis dots within square brackets. For instance, you might write the following sentence: According to medieval records, ‘women received payment for a wide variety of tasks, [... such as providing] “help in the kechyn”’ (Normington 41-42). Here, the square brackets indicate that you are omitting words from the original quotation, as well as adding your own so that the sentence structure is correct. Note that it is not necessary to signal that you have omitted words from the beginning of the quotation: the lower case letter at the start of the quotation indicates that the beginning of the quoted sentence has been cut. Also note that when a quotation contains a quotation, the latter takes double quotation marks within the single ones, as in the example above. You need to indicate that you have omitted words from the end of a quotation only if your omissions would lead a reader to think the quoted sentence is still complete. For instance, you might write the following sentence: Normington says that ‘The tasks that [women] generally undertook needed minimal attendance at rehearsal [.. .]’ (42). If it is clear you are using only a phrase, there is no need to include the ellipsis dots at the end of the quotation. For instance, you might write the following sentence: Women were paid ‘for a wide variety of tasks’ (Normington 41). Finally, remember that is essential to indicate your source even when you are not quoting directly. For instance, you might write the following sentence: Records indicate that medieval women participated in production work (Normington 41-42). Even though you are paraphrasing your source, you must reference it.
PRESENTATION OF ESSAYS
Essays should be double-spaced but may be printed on both sides of the paper; to change line spacing in Word, click Format and then Paragraph to access the drop down menu in Line Spacing. You should use a legible size 12 font and number your pages ; to do the latter, click Insert and then Page Numbers to access the menu. Always make sure you indent each new paragraph by hitting the tab key once: relying on extra spacing without indentation often obscures where a new paragraph begins.
