Structure
Always structure your answers, be they exams or essays.
Ensure that your answers have an introduction, a main body and a conclusion.
Introduction
In your introduction, introduce the thesis: What question do you intend to answer?
Set forth your hypothesis: What do you anticipate the answers to be?
Explain your rationale: Whey are you doing this?
Finally, explain the process your will engage in: What can the reader expect and why?
Main Body
Explore the question using a series of well-defined sections that introduce and fully examine an aspect that you believe to be relevant.
Ensure that your arguments are fully developed and completed
Conclusion
Tell the reader what you have accomplished, how and why.
Citing
Use quotations intelligently.
Neither over use nor under use sourced material
If you quote, you MUST cite a reference!
Footnote Entry Example
- James D. Boys, Clinton’s Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 109.
Bibliography Example
Boys, James D. Clinton’s Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World. London:
Bloomsbury, 2015.
Submission
Ensure you submit on time.
The university’s late submission principles are clear and will be enforced.
REFERENCING
Footnotes are the standard style of referencing used by historians, you might not be used to them, but you will be obliged to utilise them for all referencing in any written work submitted on this course. Footnotes not only allow the reader to find the source of the information or the quote under discussion; they also provide space to mention ideas, questions, controversies and other interesting points which do not fit into the main body of the paper. Furthermore, they allow the writer to reference a wide range of different primary and secondary sources.
Footnotes are very simple to use on the Microsoft version of the University network. To create a footnote, place the cursor at the place in the text where you want to put a footnote. Choose Insert then Footnote. Make sure that it is set for ‘automatic numbering’. Then hit the OK button and a superscript number will appear in your text where you placed your cursor, and the same number will appear at the bottom of the page. This is where you write your footnote. When you add another footnote, or delete one, the program will automatically give it the correct number and position it at the bottom of the page in the right order.
When should a text be ‘cited’?
- All direct quotes.
- All words, phrases, sentences that have been paraphrased, or are based directly on a source.
- Any thought, idea or opinion that you read somewhere.
- Places where you might want to make additional comments that do not fit in the text.
- Specific examples that support or illustrate your statements.
The footnote system uses footnotes to provide references to sources. The first reference to a source is in full, the second and subsequent references in an abbreviated form. These examples constitute the main features of the Chicago style footnoting you need to know.
USING INTERNET SOURCES
Students are encouraged to make full use of the Internet, but they must remember that any information cited from on-line sources must be in addition to the required number of published sources for any piece of written work. Any written work that relies solely on Internet-based sources will be heavily penalised.
There is a great deal of excellent material on the web, but there is also a great deal of unsubstantiated and unreferenced rubbish, so you’ll have to be able to difference the wheat from the chaff. It is therefore vital that you be able to discriminate in the online research process between credible and non-credible sources. Sources such as online academic journals (EBSCO-host, JSTOR) or homepages for universities and research centres are good. Obviously, academic work should be biased towards academic sources. Many other sources are also useful, including news sources, Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), advocacy agencies, think-tanks, government web-sites and international institutions.
