NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

STYLE GUIDE
for work in
LITERATURE
2016 – 2017
(UPDATED AUGUST 2016)
CONTENTS
Introduction (1)
Acknowledging Sources (1)
Quoting, Paraphrasing and Alluding (2)
How to Format Quotations (2)
Referencing & Bibliography, and how they relate to each other (3)
Bibliography (4)
Primary Sources in the Bibliography (5)
Secondary Sources in the Bibliography (6)
References (8)
Referencing Primary Sources (9)
Referencing Secondary Sources (10)
Referencing Material from E-Readers (11)
Presenting Screenshots and Other Visual Materials (12)
Paragraphs, Citing Titles (13)
Secondary Quoting (13)
Guidelines for the Presentation of Submitted Work (14)
Plagiarism (16)
Essay Presentation Checklist (18)
How To: An Example (19)
Introduction
 The most important aspect of your work is always the quality of your research,
understanding, and thinking, but clear presentation tends to go along with clear and
intelligent thinking, so in order to do justice to that quality, to get a mark that reflects
it, to avoid plagiarism, and to have the satisfaction of presenting your work
professionally, you need to present your work correctly.
 This Guide is for the use of all undergraduates taking Literature, Drama, or Film
modules in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL), and it
sets out the conventions that you must follow in presenting your written work. The
main focus is on referencing and bibliography, which are vital to the integrity of your
writing. Full references must be given to all works that you quote, paraphrase or allude
to. The conventions may look complicated at first, but once you have used them
yourself they should come quite easily to you.
 Within SELLL, two styles are prescribed: one for work in literature based on ‘MHRA’
conventions and one for work in language/linguistics (the Harvard-style author-date
system). Students working across both disciplines (e.g. Q300 students) need both. The
full MHRA style guide can be found at:
[Link] For any
referencing or bibliography questions not covered in the School Style Guide, you
should consult the full MHRA style guide before asking your lecturers or seminar
leaders.

Acknowledging Sources
Why acknowledge?
Full and accurate acknowledgement of sources is essential in order to give the location of the
material, to preserve academic integrity and avoid plagiarism (see pages 16-17), and to
situate your work in an ongoing scholarly debate.

How to acknowledge?
All primary and secondary sources used should be fully acknowledged in two or three ways.
There are details on all this below, but essentially:

If you quote verbatim from a source, you must:

a) indicate that it is a quotation by enclosing the quoted words in single quotation
marks, or (in the case of a long quotation) indenting them
b) give a reference at the point where you quote
c) include the source in your bibliography

If you paraphrase an idea from a source (as distinct from quoting it verbatim), there are no

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quotation marks, but you must still give a reference and include the source in your
bibliography. This is necessary where the idea is not your own and where it can be regarded
as the intellectual property of its author. It is not necessary in the case of ideas that are very
widely accepted or of well-known matters of fact (see the section on Plagiarism, pages 16-17,
for examples).

Quoting, Paraphrasing and Alluding

There are two main ways of using other people’s material in your essay: quoting (or citing) it
directly and paraphrasing the argument or theory, i.e. summarizing or explaining it in your
own words. Most of the time, you will use a combination of both. As a third option you may
occasionally want simply to allude generally to a published work, for instance as an example
of a particular school of thought. In all cases you must always acknowledge your sources by
referencing them fully, and in the case of direct quotations you will need to choose and format
them carefully. Here’s an example showing three possible uses of the same source, a work by
Hirsch.

Quoting (using the exact words of the source; citing word for word or verbatim):
As Hirsch puts it, ‘The book [David Copperfield] is more faithful to psychological reality
and to life itself, perhaps, than to any simple thesis about personal growth and
development’.

Paraphrasing:
Hirsch resists reducing the complexity of David’s development to a simple theory.

Alluding:
… (though see an opposite argument by Hirsch).

How to Format Quotations

Short quotations (fewer than 40 words of prose, or one or two lines of poetry)
Short extracts that you quote verbatim from a source text must be clearly placed within single
quotation marks (= inverted commas), e.g.:

Keach argues that the poem’s irregular rhymes ‘are part of the evidence the poem offers
that the arbitrary connections of thought and language need not leave the
“human mind’s imaginings” in vacancy’.

As in this example, you should integrate short quotations smoothly into your own prose, so
that the whole thing is grammatically coherent.
 You may want to omit material from the original source. If you do this, you should
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 mark the omission by using an ellipsis: […].
 In order to make the quotation intelligible you may also need to make small changes
or additions to the quoted material. If so you must put any changes in square brackets.
You might, for instance, need to replace ‘reject’ by ‘reject[s]’ or ‘he’ by ‘[Browning]’.
 A quotation within a quotation is placed within double quotation marks, as in the
example above.
 When you quote two lines of verse, mark the line-break with a single upright stroke
(|). (If the quotation includes more than two lines of verse, set it out as verse: see
below).

Longer quotations (longer than 40 words of prose or two lines of verse)

These should be set off from the main body of the text by indenting and using closer line
spacing. An example of verse quotation:

Shelley’s poem invites the reader to open up this closed world to imaginative possibility:

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Keach argues that ...

 As this shows, you should introduce the long quotation with a colon (though
sometimes a comma is appropriate), then give the quotation, then start a new
sentence rather than resuming your own sentence. I.e. don’t enclose a long quotation
within a sentence of your main text, since it makes it difficult for a reader to follow
the meaning of your sentence.
 You should not enclose long quotations in quotation marks.
 As in the case of shorter quotations, if you omit material from the original source, you
need to mark this clearly by using an ellipsis, i.e. […], and if you alter or add to the
quoted material you should signal this using square brackets, i.e. [ ].
 You must reference the sources of both shorter and longer quotations: see below.

Referencing and Bibliography, and how they relate to each other

Referencing: Throughout your essay, you need to give references, i.e. to reference the
sources of details, at the point where you mention them. These mainly take the form of
footnotes, though repeat references to primary texts go alongside citations in the main body
of your essay.
Bibliography: This is an alphabetical list at the end of the essay gathering together all the
sources that you reference.
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References and bibliography map onto each other very closely, so you can produce one from
the other, compiling the bibliography and producing the references from it, or the other way
round: inserting the references as you go along and compiling the bibliography from them.
Either way, you should compile your references and bibliography as you work on your essay:
if you leave them to the final stages you may lose track and miss items out (thus risking
plagiarism).

What’s the difference between a reference and a bibliography entry?

Look at these examples, and notice the difference in each case:

A novel or other book by a single author

Reference: Molly Lefebure, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium (New York: Stein
and Day, 1974), pp. 96-97.
Bibliography: Lefebure, Molly, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium (New York: Stein
and Day, 1974)

A short poem from an anthology

Reference: John Keats, ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’, in An Anthology of Romantic Poetry, ed. by F.
S. Jelf (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), ll. 17-19.
Bibliography: Jelf, F. S., ed., An Anthology of Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)

NBB: So there are three main differences, and these give us simple rules for turning
bibliography entries into references or vice versa:
a) author’s surname goes first in the bibliography entry but not in the reference
b) the reference needs a page or line number (unless you are referring to an entire work)
c) reference to short pieces (poems/stories) also need to include their author and titles,
but these details don’t go into the bibliography

An example of referencing and bibliography in action

There’s a useful extract at the end of this Guide illustrating ‘How to’: how the conventions for
referencing and bibliography work (page 18). It acts as a summary of some of main points in
the Guide, but it’s also worth having a look at it now and noticing for yourself what
information is being given, and in what formats.

Bibliography
Layout & Content of Bibliography
Your bibliography must be organised alphabetically by authors’ surnames. It should be a
single list, not divided into primary and secondary texts, and it should not contain bullet
points. In work on film, you can either include films in the same list as printed sources, or list
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them as a separate Filmography. Either way, they should be ordered alphabetically by title.
The bibliography should not be a general list of ‘Works Consulted’, but must contain only the
works that you reference (unless your module leader informs you otherwise).

Information required
For a book, for example, you need to give:
A. SURNAME of author (comma)
B. FIRST NAME(S) in full or initials (comma)
C. TITLE in italics, with first and main words capitalised (open brackets)
D. PLACE OF PUBLICATION (colon)
E. PUBLISHER (comma)
F. DATE (close brackets)
See below for examples of this and other types of publication.

Formatting the entries

You need to be clear what sort of publication you are referencing in order to choose the
right information and format, as shown in the sample entries below. A basic distinction is
between primary texts (poems, novels, plays etc.) and secondary (e.g. literary criticism,
biographies).

Primary Sources in the Bibliography

Note that:
I. You should always cite from a particular edition, usually edited by one or more scholar
II. You don’t specify individual short poems and short stories in the bibliography: the
entry there covers the collection the short piece comes from, while the title of the
individual short piece is given in the reference (footnote).

A literary work (novel, long poem or play) without editor

Auster, Paul, The Music of Chance (London: Faber and Faber, 2000)

A literary work (novel, long poem or play) with editor

Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. by David Bevington (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1996)
Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, ed. by A. C. Cawley (London: Everyman, 1975)

An edited anthology
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Major Works, ed. by Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
Jelf, F. S., ed., An Anthology of Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)
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A film
The Grapes of Wrath, dir. by John Ford (20th Century Fox, 1940)
i.e. cite the title, director, distributor and the date when the film was initially released in
cinemas. For further film conventions, see page 10 and pages 12-13. For information about
how to reference items such as DVD special features that were not released in cinemas, see
the MHRA Handbook (available online) or take advice from the staff teaching film modules.
For primary works with two or more authors, or published in a second edition, or translated:
use the basic formats above and see below.

Secondary Sources in the Bibliography

A book by a single author
Lefebure, Molly, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium (New York: Stein and Day,
1974)

Note that the Lefebure is a monograph (secondary, critical text), while Auster, The Music of
Chance (listed above) is a novel (primary, literary text), but the format is the same.

A book by two or more authors

Birkett, Jennifer, and James Kearns, A Guide to French Literature: From Early Modern to
Postmodern (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997)

Notice that the second author’s forename and surname are not reversed, since they are not
involved in the alphabetical order of the bibliography.

A book published in a second edition

Feuer, Jane, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)

A translated book
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. By
Hazel Barnes (London: Routledge, 1995)

A multi-authored anthology or a collection of essays

Armstrong, Isobel, ed., New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts
(London: Routledge, 1992)

An article or chapter in a multi-authored anthology or a collection of essays

Jordan, Elaine, ‘The Dangers of Angela Carter’, in New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on
Theories and Texts, ed. by Isobel Armstrong (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 119- 31

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Note that you need to specify the title of the article (‘The Dangers of Angela Carter’) then of
the book (New Feminist Discourses), preceded by ‘in’. You must specify page numbers to show
the location of the item in the book.

If you cite two or more articles from the same collection you can enter the collection in the
bibliography (e.g. Armstrong above), then enter the articles more briefly, e.g.
Jordan, Elaine, ‘The Dangers of Angela Carter’, in Armstrong, New Feminist Discourses, pp.
119-31

An article in a scholarly journal

Britzolakis, Christina, ‘Angela Carter’s Fetishism’, Textual Practice, 9 (1995), 459-75
Cixous, Hélène, ‘Castration or Decapitation?’, trans. by Annette Kuhn, Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society, 7 (1981), 41-55

The format here is similar to that for an article or chapter in a multi-authored volume: you
need to specify the title of both article and journal (but this time without ‘in’ between), and
give page numbers to show the location of the item (but this time without ‘pp.’).

You should use this same format for articles from journals that you access through JSTOR or
similar electronic archives. This is because they are not web material as such, but simply
scanned electronic copies from printed volumes.

An article in a newspaper
Schmidt, Michael, ‘Tragedy of Three Star-Crossed Lovers’, Daily Telegraph, 1 February 1990,
14.

Course materials
NB. Quoting from, or paraphrasing, course materials may or may not be appropriate on a
particular module. If in doubt, please ask your module leader.

If you do use course materials, you must acknowledge them. These are the recommended
formats for entries in the bibliography in literary essays.
a) Lecture (if you are using words or ideas used by the lecturer):
Pincombe, Mike, ‘Hamlet, Revenge!’ (lecture given on 4th October 2014)
b) Handout (when referencing this item remember to add a page number):
Pincome, Mike, handout to ‘Hamlet, Revenge!’ (lecture given on 4th October 2014)
c) Powerpoint presentation posted on Blackboard (when referencing this item
remember to add the slide number):
Pincome, Mike, powerpoint presentation for ‘Hamlet, Revenge’ (lecture given on
4th October 2014)

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 d) Primary texts posted on Blackboard:
If all the usual publication information in provided then use this, you don’t need to
specify that you accessed the material through Blackboard. If the information is
incomplete, give as much as possible, adding ‘text posted on Blackboard’.

A website
1. Remember that you need to be very discerning about the web materials you use. If
in doubt, ask the module leader concerned.
2. For web materials that you use, the general principle is to give the same
information and use the same format as for a printed item of similar type – as far
as possible. e.g.:
Mandell, Laura and Alan Liu, ‘Selected Seventeenth-Century Events’, in
Romantic Chronology (U. of California, Santa Barbara, 1999)
<[Link] [last accessed 22 April
2013]
3. If the author is not identified, you should use the title of the site to order the item in
your alphabetical list. You should also state when you last accessed the webpage,
since they frequently change.
4. See page 7 (“An article in a scholarly journal”) on scholarly articles accessed through
web archives. Where online material is simply an electronic parallel to printed
material you simply use the normal format for the printed version.
5. Remember also that you only need to give the url and access date for materials that
are only available on the web.

References
References accompany your main text, giving the source for material at the point of use. They
(mainly) take the form of footnotes, for example:

At the first citation from a particular work:

Insert a footnote, simply choosing ‘Footnote’ from the ‘Insert’ menu, which will automatically
produce a footnote reference number in the main text and below. Note that the footnote
reference number in the main text goes last, after the close of the quotation marks and/or
other punctuation,3 (i. e. like this, with the 3 after the comma).

Referencing Primary Sources

When you cite the primary source for the first time, insert a footnote and in it:
a) Give full publication details of the edition from which you are quoting. This is the same
as in your bibliography (see above), and you can paste it in from there, except:
b) Author’s surname does not go first, since this is not an alphabetical list.

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 c) If you are citing a short poem or short story you need to add this in the reference, e.g.
‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’, ‘The Cook’s Tale’.
d) Notice that long poems are italicised, e.g. Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales, while
short poems and short stories are in quotation marks, as above.
e) You must specify page numbers (or line numbers in the case of poetry or verse plays),
unless you are referring to a work as a whole.

The format for page numbers is: p. = page, pp. = pages (note full stop and space after p).
The format for line numbers is: l. = line, ll. = lines.

A literary work (novel, long poem or play)

Paul Auster, The Music of Chance (London: Faber and Faber, 2000), p. 94.

A short poem from an edition or anthology

‘Julian and Maddalo’, in Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Major Works, ed. by Zachary Leader and
Michael O’Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), ll. 14-15.
John Keats, ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’, in An Anthology of Romantic Poetry, ed. by F. S. Jelf
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), ll. 17-19.

NBB You can create references for other types of source by using the formats shown above
under ‘Primary/Secondary Sources in the Bibliography’ and converting them by following the
simple rules stated on pages 3-4, i.e. putting author’s surname last; adding author and title of
short poem/story if necessary; and adding page and/or line numbers if necessary (as it usually
is). If something is not covered in this guide, consult the full version of the MHRA guidelines
at [Link]

Films
As long as a bibliographic or filmographic entry is provided in the Bibliography, there is no
need to provide footnotes or references in brackets when mentioning a film, or referring to
any specific moment or piece of dialogue from a film.

If you are going to cite the same primary source again

You need to indicate this in the footnote the first time it is mentioned, e.g.:

‘Julian and Maddalo’, in Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Major Works, ed. by Zachary Leader and
Michael O’Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), ll. 14 -15. All subsequent references
to Shelley’s writings are from this edition, and are given in parenthesis after quotations in the
text.

All subsequent references to primary works are given in the main body of your essay, rather

9
than in footnotes, and may be abbreviated.
Give a short in-text reference in brackets immediately after the quoted passage.
The reference consists of the title and page and/or line numbers.
a) Unless the title is very short, you will need to abbreviate it. You may be aware of
accepted abbreviations for works you are writing about (e.g. PL for Paradise Lost, or
Murder or MO for Murder on the Orient Express), but if not, use a short title (like
Music). Do not abbreviate authors' names in the form of initials.
b) Give page numbers for prose in the format (Music, p. 57) or (Music, pp. 57-58).
c) Give line numbers for poetry in the format:
- for a long poem: (AM, l. 17) or (AM, ll. 17-21)
- for a short poem: (‘Ode’ l. 23) or (‘Ode’, ll. 23-25)
d) For classic plays in verse, give act, scene and line numbers, e.g. (King Lear, 4.2.11-14).
e) Some long poems in parts are formatted similarly, e.g. Paradise Lost has cantos and
line numbers, e.g. (PL, 2.189). (Older works of criticism use a mixture of Roman and
Arabic numerals for references like these, e.g. ([Link].11-14) and (II.189)).
f) Films: As long as a bibliographic or filmographic entry is provided, there is no need to
provide footnotes or references in brackets when you mention a film or refer to a
specific moment or a piece of dialogue from a film.

Referencing Secondary Sources

Whenever you quote, paraphrase or allude to a secondary source it must be acknowledged
in a footnote. Insert a footnote reference number (as explained above).

Then in the footnote itself:

At the first reference to a particular source:
Give the full bibliographical information. This is the same as in your bibliography (see above),
and you can paste it in from there, except:

a) Author’s surname does not go first, since this is not an alphabetical list.
b) You must specify the page number(s), unless you are referring to a book or article as
a whole. Examples of how to refer to specific pages:

A book
5Molly Lefebure, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium (New York: Stein and
Day, 1974), pp. 96-97.

An article/chapter in a multi-authored anthology

6 Elaine Jordan, ‘The Dangers of Angela Carter’, in New Feminist Discourses: Critical

Essays on Theories and Texts, ed. by Isobel Armstrong (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.
119-31 (p. 121).
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An article in a scholarly journal
7 Christina Britzolakis, ‘Angela Carter’s Fetishism’, Textual Practice, 9 (1995), 459-75

(p. 467).

Notice that for articles in multi-authored anthologies or journals you need to give the page
span, i.e. the opening and closing pages, followed by the actual page cited in brackets.
For articles in multi-authored anthologies, the page span is preceded by ‘pp.’, hence ‘pp. 119-
31 (p. 121) for the Jordan article above. For articles in scholarly journals the page span is not
preceded by ‘pp.’, hence ‘459-75 (p. 467)’ for the Britzolakis article above.

Subsequent references to the same secondary source also go in footnotes.

In subsequent references to the same source, don’t repeat all this information; just use a
short version, e.g.
8 Lefebure, pp. 98-99.

9 Britzolakis, p. 469.

If you are using more than one work by the same author, give a short version of the title too,
e.g.
10 Lefebure, Coleridge, pp. 98-99.

In the case of a website, treat it as far as possible like a similar printed source, e.g. if you know
the author, refer to him/her, or if not, use the title. Either way, the reference should match
an entry in your Bibliography.

Referencing Materials from E-Readers

Bibliography
For referencing E-reader material in the bibliography use the following format, making
sure to reference both the E-reader edition (Kindle or otherwise) and the edition the E-
reader took the edition from. Two examples:

Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre (Kindle Edition, 2006; London: Penguin, 2006) Brontë,
Charlotte, Jane Eyre (Kindle Edition, 2010; London, Service & Paton, 1897)

Footnotes
For referencing E-reader material in the footnotes use chapter numbers, e.g.:
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Kindle Edition, 2006; London: Penguin, 2006), ch. 10.

Poetry
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For referencing poetry use the stanza/section numbers only (these should work as per
paper copy). There is no need to count up line numbers.

Plays
Use Act/Scene numbers to reference material from plays.
If in doubt. If you are in any doubt about referencing E-reader material (or anything else),
please speak to your module leader in the first instance.

Presenting Screenshots and Other Visual Materials

When presenting visual materials of any kind (diagrams, tables, screenshots from films,
photographs of paintings etc.), present them as figures, in the main text rather than in an
appendix, number them (Figure 1 etc.), and provide explanatory captions employing the
appropriate referencing method (e.g. the film stills used below have no footnotes because
footnotes are not used when referring to films). Ensure that all visual material is presented
large enough to be understood. The Figure should be set between paragraphs rather than in
the middle of a paragraph, and as close to the text where you discuss it as possible. You should
refer to the Figure explicitly in your discussion.

An example (showing end and beginning of the adjacent paragraphs):

While the long shot is by far the most numerous shot distance in the original, the most
numerous shot distance in the remake is the medium close-up.

Figure 1: Corresponding shots from the 1965 and 2004 versions, respectively, of Flight of the
Phoenix.

Tight singles are even used in sequences where the plot emphasises collective action. For
example, [...] (see Figure 1) [...]

Paragraphs
Each paragraph should be indented (use the tab key).

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Citing Titles
a) Titles of books, plays, long poems and periodicals must be in italics, e.g. Twelfth
Night.
b) Titles of short poems, short stories and articles must be enclosed in single quotation
marks and not italicised, e.g. Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. What counts as a long or
short poem? As a rule of thumb, italics are used for items that are published
separately.

Secondary Quoting
This is the case of second-hand quotation: using a quotation that is cited in the source you
are reading. I.E. You are reading author Y, who quotes author X’s observation that ‘blah,
blah, blah’. You want to you use the ‘blah, blah, blah’.

How to handle this?

1. Avoid it if at all possible: if you can access the original source, you should do so.
2. Ask yourself whether you really need this quotation.
3. If you do, then it’s safest to do this:
In your footnote: reference both the secondary source (Y, the one you have read) and
the original one (X). Give all the information that Y gives about X (in some cases this
might be incomplete – but that’s not your fault). In your bibliography, only give the
secondary source (Y, the one you have actually read. To list the original source would
imply that you had read it, which would be (albeit unintentionally) dishonest.

An example:
Your text:
The nautical meaning of the word ‘is contextually plausible but not supported by usage
elsewhere’.1

Footnote:
Diana Whaley, The Poetry of Arnórr jarlaskáld (Brepols: Turnhout, 1998), p. 151, cited in
Judith Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), p. 174.

Bibliography:
Jesch, Judith, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001).

Guidelines for the Presentation of Submitted Work

Word count
Word limits vary, and while the following normally apply, it is vital that you check the
instructions for each individual submission.

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Stage 1
Please follow the word limits stated for individual assessments.
Stage 2/3
Submitted Work for 20-credit module (if 100% of assessment): 4,000 words Independent
Research Project: 4,000 words
Extended Study: 5,000 words
Dissertation (Stage 3 only): 10,000 words
The word count includes quotations, references and footnotes, but excludes the bibliography
and any diagrams or tables.

You should aim for the word limit stated (and writing concisely is an important skill), but work
may be 10% longer or shorter than the stated limit. If submissions go more than 10% over the
limit markers will not read the excess, and at 10% or more below the limit work risks being
self-penalising, i.e. it may well have insufficient breadth or depth.
NB: Your submission must contain a statement of the number of words: you should both
type this on the front page of the submission, and write it on the Feedback Sheet.

Overall Presentation
 Your work must be presented according to the conventions for referencing,
bibliography etc. as set out in this Style Guide. It must include a bibliography of all
sources (printed or electronic) used.
 You should present and proof-read your work carefully. See the Essay Presentation
Checklist in this Guide.
 The feedback sheet is a useful guide to the qualities looked for in submitted work. You
should also see the Criteria of Assessment on the school website and follow any
subject specific advice given by the director of your module(s).
 All submissions should be word processed on A4 paper and printed on both sides of
the paper with margins of at least 1 inch (2.54cm) or the default in Word. The text
should be 1.5 or double spaced. The recommended type size is 12 and the font should
be Times New Roman or similar. Please use recycled paper!
 You should include page numbers in a single sequence.
 At Stage 2 and 3, your work must be anonymous, identified by your student number
but not your name.
 Your work should have a title page on which is typed:
o The title of the essay
o The name and number of the module
o Your student number
o The statement: I hereby certify that this submission is wholly my own work, and
that all quotations from primary or secondary sources have been
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 acknowledged. I have read the section on Plagiarism in the School Style Guide
/ my Stage & Degree Manual and understand that plagiarism and other
unacknowledged debts will be penalised and may lead to failure in the whole
examination or degree.

Submission Instructions
Information about your assessments and the hand in dates can be found in the Module
Handbooks. The hand in procedure may vary from one assessment to the next so it is
important to make sure you follow the instructions you are given.
Some assignments can be submitted up to 7 days before the deadline. For information on
which assessments this covers, please visit the School website.
For information on how to submit your work please visit the Current Students section of the
School website.

Submission Dates
All submission dates are available on the School of English website and in Module Guides. You
should note that the University has severe penalties for submitting late (even by a few
minutes). Work submitted between 1 minute and 7 days late will be capped at 40, work
submitted over 7 days late receives a mark of 0. Students will extenuating circumstances
should submit a PEC form.

Marking and Feedback

Stage 1 work is first marked by module leaders or seminar tutors and moderated by a second
member of staff.
Stage 2/3 work is normally marked by the module leader or a member of the teaching team
and moderated by another member of staff with related expertise. External examiners —
experts in the relevant subjects from other universities — oversee the whole examining
process and sample work to check overall fairness of assessment and marking according to
the Criteria of Assessment, published in the School Handbook.
Your work will be returned to you, annotated with comments from the first marker, in
addition to the comments on the Feedback Sheet, once available (approximately 20 working
days after the end of the assessment period), and in the next semester there will be an
opportunity to raise any queries with the module leader.

Formative (non-assessed) essays: Arrangements for these are somewhat different and will
be announced in the context of individual modules.

Plagiarism
Definition
Plagiarism is the use of any source, published or unpublished, without full and specific
acknowledgement. It is a form of cheating which can be quite easily detectable and can result
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in failure of modules or in disciplinary action. Please read the following carefully:

• ‘Any source’: this may be printed, electronic, or another student's work (whether at
this university or another). It can also involve course materials.
• Purchasing an essay from someone else is a form of plagiarism.
• Submitting the same work for different modules is self-plagiarism.
• Plagiarism is not necessarily deliberate: it can result from incomplete note-taking, or
haste in the final stages of an essay or project.
• It can occur in an examination script as well as in submitted work.
• Proper acknowledgement: merely listing a source in a bibliography is not enough —
see the sections on referencing in this Guide.
• You must acknowledge fully if you quote verbatim from a source, but also if you
paraphrase a source or use its distinctive ideas.
• You do not need to provide references for ideas that are widely accepted as matters
of fact, or for any information of a general nature. For example, you don’t have to
indicate a source when you mention that Shakespeare died in 1616, that Saussure was
a Swiss linguist, or that /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive.

Avoiding Plagiarism
At the writing-up stage, follow the guidelines above, but you can help yourself at the earlier
stages too:
• In taking notes, make sure you very clearly distinguish between your source material
and your own material. One suggestion would be to use different colour pens to
differentiate between your ideas and those taken from another source.
• Make sure that any notes, photocopies, or electronic files that you keep are fully
documented with the name of the author and the source from which they were taken,
so that you have this information readily available for your write-up. Never import
material from an electronic source into your drafts with the intention of modifying it,
or attempt to make an essay out of a patchwork of material from electronic or printed
sources that you have lightly modified. Even if you acknowledge the sources it will be
a very poor essay, and if you do not, it will constitute plagiarism.
• Insert your references and compile your bibliography as you draft your essay.
• Some plagiarism comes about because of last-minute panic, so organise your time
well. Don’t be tempted to plagiarism because of difficult circumstances: there are
ways of dealing with those.
• See also the Newcastle University ‘Right-Cite’ webpages for further information and
advice: [Link]

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Essay Presentation Checklist

Word Limits: check carefully that you are adhering to the word limit for your assignment.

Candidates must not draw substantially on the same material in more than one answer or reproduce
work already submitted for assessment.

Since the criteria for awarding marks explicitly include the following, you should check that you have
in fact taken them into account.


1. Accurate English: grammar, syntax, no sentence fragment, correct punctuation
and use of vocabulary. Appropriate styles (e.g. don’t use contractions such as
‘don’t’, ‘won’t’ etc.

2. Layout: margins, 1.5 or double spaced lines, pages numbered and bearing your
student number (but not your name), paragraphs clearly indicated by
indentation or line-space.

3. Spelling and proof-reading: spellcheck used if available, essay read through for
things the spellcheck won’t spot, correct use of apostrophe to mark
possessives and omission of letters (e.g. society’s and societies). Note its, not
it’s = of it.
4. Quotations: short quotations and longer quotations handled correctly as in
this style guide

5. Titles, referencing and notes: titles, references and notes (if any) as per this
style guide. All quotation and paraphrase referenced

6. Bibliography: complete; in alphabetical order of author, all required

information in the right order and punctuated correctly

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 SELLL/DW/Sept2013; ‘How To’ by MR

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