A few useful tips for writing a research essay – includes citation style guide
The Essay
The research essay is the foundation of studies in the humanities. It is the
key forum in which you get to test your ideas against those of your peers
and of other scholars.
Getting Started
There are some basic things that you need to remember when beginning
your essay.
• An essay presents an argument. It does not simply present
information. Your reader wants you to shape the available
information, comment on it, and order it in such a way that the
essay makes a point.
• With this in mind, you should choose a topic that interests you
and on which you have a strong opinion.
• You should make sure that you answer all parts of the
question. This is vital. If there is any part of the question that
you do not understand, clarify this with your tutor.
• Make sure to carefully examine the key words and concepts in
the question so that you answer it correctly. For example:
Compare: examine the characteristics of the objects in
question to demonstrate their similarities and differences;
Contrast: examine the characteristics of the objects in question
to demonstrate their differences;
Analyse: Consider the various components of the whole and
explain the relationships between them;
Discuss: present the different aspects of a question or
problem;
Evaluate: examine the various sides of a question to reach a
normative judgement.
Planning Your Essay
Planning your essay is your first and most important task. This includes
dividing your time between three stages: researching, writing, and editing.
Each of these stages is important to the overall success of your essay.
Students often make the mistake of spending too much time on the first
stage of their essay and then rushing the final stages. It is pointless to
research a large body of secondary material if you do not leave time to
engage with it properly.
It is important that your essay attempts to contribute to and engage with
current theories and developments in your field. Try to read the most
recent secondary materials on your topic, as these are likely to give you
the best ideas about the current debates surrounding it. You should also
remember that in many disciplines in the school (Art History, English
Literary Studies, Screen Studies and Theatre Studies) the primary focus
of your essay should be the primary material (book, painting, film or
performance) under consideration. Secondary reading should, then, not
be the only focus of your essay. Rather, it should help you to strengthen
the claims that you wish to make about the text under consideration.
Researching Your Essay
Think laterally about the kinds of secondary materials that you use for an
essay. For example, if you are writing on the representation of the
heroine in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, don’t just look for
articles/books on Austen or Northanger Abbey. You may not be able to
find a book or article that is solely concerned with Northanger Abbey. Or
you might find that all of the books on the text might have been already
borrowed from the library. If this happens to you, try changing your
approach. You might find something useful to your essay by looking up
books on the history of the gothic; or on women writers in the late
eighteenth century; or on the rise of the novel. And when you’re thinking
about what kinds of secondary materials might be useful to you, you will
find that the way in which you want to analyse the primary material will
help you to choose which secondary material might be most appropriate.
For example, if you are concerned with looking at issues of gender in the
novel, you are more likely to find something of use for your essay in an
historical account of the role of women in eighteenth-century England.
Writing Your Essay
When considering the way in which you would like to answer the question
you choose, remember that your essay should engage with the topic in
terms of the particular issues raised in lectures and tutorials. Be careful at
this stage not to stray too far from the objectives of the subject. Write up
a preliminary plan, making sure that you have a clear-cut introduction, a
developing argument, and a conclusion.
Try to avoid making your introduction sound too much like a dictionary or
encyclopedia entry: it’s usually best to go straight to the issue, and then
come back to any necessary background detail or definition once you
have established the angle you are taking. Similarly, your conclusion
should not merely restate what you have said in your introduction. Nor
should it introduce new material. Rather, it should tie all of the various
threads of your argument together and point them in a particular
direction. Remember, the aim of the game is to attract your tutor’s
attention. A repetitive conclusion is not an effective way to end an essay.
The best time to see your tutor is once you have a detailed essay plan,
illustrating how each point of your argument follows on from the previous
one and how you will use primary and secondary materials to support
your claims. Once you have a plan, you can then go on to write the essay
proper. Make sure that you allow yourself enough time to further develop
your ideas through the writing process.
A Note on Internet Sources
Internet sources should be approached with great caution. Many
websites, unlike most books and articles, have not undergone any
process of scholarly evaluation and appraisal before publication. Unless
you are undertaking a study of, say, fan communities, it is best to limit
your use of the internet to internet-based scholarly journals. To ensure
that you are getting good quality internet sources, look for the words
‘peer-reviewed,’ or ‘peer-refereed’ in the journal’s information. Wikipedia
and the like are not acceptable sources of scholarly information.
Style Tips
The key to a successful essay is not just content. You must try to make
sure that your essay is clearly written, and easy to follow. The ‘Keep It
Simple’ principle is useful to follow when it comes to writing. Don’t allow
jargon to detract from the effectiveness of your argument. Also,
remember that it is useful to read through your essay aloud before
submission, and/or to get a friend or relative to read it over for you.
Some Other Useful Tips
• Invest in a good dictionary.
• Apostrophes. Students often get their use of apostrophes
confused. Apostrophes indicate possession (Sally’s cat) and they
are also used to form contractions (can’t, or isn’t). One of the
most common problems is confusing its (the possessive of it, as
in ‘its quality’) and it’s (the contraction of ‘it is’). You should also
remember that apostrophes are not required to form the plural of
a number (1990s).
• Avoid repetitive expression. Try to find synonyms or other ways
of rephrasing your central ideas. This will show you have a
nuanced understanding of the issues.
• You should make sure that your essay is the right length. There
is roughly a 10% leeway on either side of the suggested word
limit. Footnotes and quotations from primary and secondary texts
are not normally counted as part of the word limit.
Documenting Your Sources
There are many different ways of documenting your sources. You should
make sure that you are consistent in your application of the method of
documentation you choose, and that all relevant information is given.
Please keep in mind that your discipline might have a preferred method
of source documentation, so it is important that you find out whether or
not this is the case before you begin your essay.
Note: Keep track of all quotations that you have taken from sources,
including page numbers. There is nothing more frustrating than having a
great quote that you want to use in your essay and not being able to
locate where you found it.
Chicago Style (Cinema Studies)
This system is an author-date method, it does not have footnotes or
footnote numbers. Cited references are referred to in the text, and listed
in the bibliography at the end of the text. Examples:
Book
In Text:
(Creed 2003, 53) or … Creed (2003, 53)
Reference List
Creed, Barbara, 2003. Media Matrix. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen and
Unwin
Book (multiple authors)
In Text:
(Creed and Hoorn 2001, 87) or … Creed and Hoorn (2001, 87) …
Reference List:
Creed, Barbara, ad Jeanette Hoorn, eds. 2001. Body Trade: Captivity,
Cannibalism and Colonialism In the Pacific. Annandale, N.S.W.: Pluto
Press.
Chapter
In Text:
(Ndalianis 2002, 509) or … Ndalianis (2002, 509) …
Reference List:
Ndalianis, Angela. 2002. ‘The rules of the game: Evil Dead II … Meet Thy
Doom.’ In Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasure of Popular Culture, ed.
H. Jenkins, T. McPherson and J. Shattuc, 503-516. Durham, NC: Duke
Univ. Press.
Journal Article
In Text:
(Ndalianis 1997) or … Ndalianis (1997) …
Reference List:
Ndalianis, Angela, 1997. ‘The film/computer game connection: shoot ‘em
ups, spectatorship and gameplay.’ Popular Culture Review 8: 49-58.
E-Journal Article
In Text:
(Ndalianis 2000) or … Ndalianis (2000) …
Reference List:
Ndalianis, Angela, 2000. ‘The frenzy of the visible: spectacle and motion
in the era of the digital.’ Senses of Cinema 3 (February),
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/3/matrix.html
Newspaper Article
In Text:
In her article on the Melbourne launch of Japanese Story in The Age, 22
July 2003, Gabriella Coslovich …
Not listed in reference list.
DVD
Not cited in text.
Reference List:
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. DVD. Directed by Fritz Lang. [Australia]: Eureka
Video, 1999.
Video
Not cited in text.
Reference List:
Welles, Orson, and Herman J. Mankiewicz. Citizen Kane. 3 videodiscs.
Directed by Orson Welles. Los Angeles, Calif.: Janus Films and Voyager,
1987.
Website
In Text:
(McEldowney 1994). Or … McEldowney (1994) …
Reference List:
McEldowney, Philip, 1994. Introduction: Women in China – a Reference
Guide (online). (Cited 16 October 2001).
http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7Epm9/libsci/womFilm.html
For further information on this style, please consult The Chicago Manual
of Style 2003. 15th edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MLA
The MLA system uses parenthetical references to identify quotations and
a ‘Works Cited’ list at the end of your essay to list sources. Footnotes are
used in this system only for supplementary information.
Some tips on preparing your Works Cited list:
• Only include sources you cite in the body of your essay;
• Do not use dot points;
• Make sure you place your sources in alphabetical order;
• Carefully check the placement of commas, colons etc.;
• Above all, be consistent.
Book
Miles, Malcolm. Urban Avant-Gardes: Art, Architecture and Change. New
York: Routledge, 2004.
Republished book
Doyle, Arthur Conan. A Study in Scarlet. 1887. London: Penguin, 1981.
Translated book
Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter with
Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.
Two or more books by the same author
McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: a Revolution in Literary
Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
—. The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method
and Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
Chapter in an essay collection
Wolfson, Susan. “Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception.”
Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Ed.
Harriet Kramer-Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt. Lexington: UP of
Kentucky, 1999. 214-241.
Essay collection
Kramer-Linkin, Harriet and Stephen C. Behrendt, eds. Romanticism and
Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Lexington: UP of
Kentucky, 1999. 214-241.
Journal article
Davis, Emily S. “The Intimacies of Globalization: Bodies and Borders On-
Screen.” Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism, Culture, and Media
Studies 62 (2006): 33-73.
Journal article in a reference book
Coulter, Ellis Merton. “John Adair.” Dictionary of American Biography. Ed.
Allen Johnson. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1964.
Encyclopedia article, signed
Epps, Helen H. “Textiles.” World Book Encyclopedia. 2003 ed.
Encyclopedia article, or Dictionary entry, unsigned
“Onomatopoeia.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed.
2003.
Previously published scholarly article reprinted in a collection of
essays
Frye, Northrop. “Literary and Linguistic Scholarship in a Postliterate Age.”
PMLA 99 (1984): 990-95.
Rpt. in Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays, 1974-88. Ed. Robert D.
Denham. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1990. 18-27.
Excerpted sources from multivolume critical anthologies
(includes Contemporary Literary Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary
Criticism, etc.)
Daches, David. “W. H. Auden: The Search for a Public”. Poetry 54
(1939): 148-56.
Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Robyn V. Young. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1991.
332-33.
Book in a series
(such as Opposing Viewpoints, Taking Sides, and Contemporary World
Issues)
Wexler, Barbara. Violent Relationships: Battering and Abuse among
Adults.
31
Information Plus Reference Series. Detroit, Gale, 2005.
Film
Napoleon Dynamite. Dir. Jared Hess. 20th Century Fox, 2004.
NB: Performers’ names can be added if relevant.
Review
Hayward, Rhodri. Rev. of Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology, by
Sally Shuttleworth. British Journal for the History of Science. 31 (1998):
481-83.
Article from a monthly magazine
Hitchens, Christopher. “A Breath of Dust.” Atlantic Monthly Jul-Aug 2005:
142-46.
Article from a weekly magazine
Boyce, Nell. “A Law’s Fetal Flaw.” U.S. News and World Report 21 July
2003: 49-51.
Newspaper article
Feder, Barnaby J. “For Job Seekers, a Toll-Free Gift of Expert Advice.”
New York Times 22 Mar. 1994, late ed.: A1+
Lecture
Otto, Peter. “Blake’s Critique of the Book: Songs of Innocence and
Experience.” Lecture, “Blake.” University of Melbourne. Parkville. 19 Mar.
2007.
Article in an electronic journal
Hoeveler, Diane Long. “Objectifying Anxieties: Scientific Ideologies in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Lair of the White Worm.” Romanticism on
the Net 44 (Nov. 2006): 26 pars. 21 March, 2007.
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2006/v/n44/014003ar.html
Website
There is still no consensus among the scholarly community concerning
how to cite web material. The main aim of your citation is to allow your
reader to locate the source you have used. With this in mind, the most
important thing to do is include as much detail as possible. The following
generic form should suit most web information.
Author’s name. “Title of the document.” Information about print
publication (where available). Information about electronic publication.
Access information (including date of your access and the URL).
Jackson, K. Media Ownership Regulation in Australia. E-Brief, updated
26 March 2002. Parliament of Australia, Parliamentary Library, Canberra.
Consulted 1 Jan. 2003.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/sp/media_reguations.htm
In-Text Citation
The MLA system uses parenthetical citations, not footnotes. When you
quote or paraphrase someone else’s work, you must give the author’s
name and the page number of your quote in parentheses, usually at the
end of the paragraph. If you mention the author in the sentence itself, you
need only cite the page number. You do not need to cite page numbers
at all if you are referring to an entire work.
Basic examples:
“Badiou’s philosophy takes a forbiddingly systematic form; it
is anti-historical, technically mathematical and broadly Maoist in
political persuasion” (Osbourne 19).
Osbourne notes, “despite appearances, Badiou is insistent that his
philosophy has no ‘foundational ambition’” (22).
If the quote is more than four lines long, you must indent it and the
parentheses is placed after the punctuation.
Austen’s depiction of Marianne is designed to highlight the physical
manifestations of her sensibility:
Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a
remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form,
though not as correct as her sister’s, in having the advantage of
height, was more striking … her features were all good; her smile
was sweet and attractive, and in her eyes, which were dark, there
was a life, a spirit, an eagerness which could hardly be seen
without delight. (39)
The ellipses ( … ) here indicate that material has been omitted.
For more complex examples, please see the MLA Handbook.
