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A Guide to Written Assignments

Peter Evans and Ellen Van Goethem

April 2012

This guide gives general hints and practical information for researching and writing the assignments that you will be given at university.

Absolute rules described below include (1) no tolerance for plagiarism and (2) specifi-cation of all sources. But there are also general guidelines, and so the specific format you use when citing sources may vary with subject area or teacher preference: always check with the teacher of the particular course. And we don’t attempt to be comprehensive: you may have to consult a style guide (see p.30 below) for more help.

Most importantly, (1) be critical:• Think about what to read.• Think about what you are reading.• Think before writing.

and (2) never try to pass off something written by somebody else as your own work:• Specify all your sources.• Write in your own words wherever possible.• Where you use another writer’s words, make this clear.

Some issues are dealt with at some length, others briefly. More space is not given to an issue because it is more important but because it is more complex or needs bulkier examples.

Contents

What to keep in mind ................................................... 1Starting out right ......................................................... 6What to look at ........................................................... 6Digesting written material ............................................ 11Writing the paper ....................................................... 18

The big picture .................................................... 18Integrating sources into the text ................................20The nitty-gritty ....................................................31Presentation ........................................................ 35

What to keep in mind

Whether you are reading or writing, you need to understand certain basic concepts, and to beware of any of a variety of fallacies (errors of logic). A discussion of fallacies can easily take up an entire book.1 Here we present fundamental concepts and also a mere

1As one good example, S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies, 6th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000). Indeed, even a single kind of fallacy can take up much of a book. Douglas Walton, Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). In the library at {116/188} and {116/155} respectively. (Here and below, braces { } contain the call number [請求番号].)studyguide.odt

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sample of fallacies, just enough to give an idea of the range that exist.

Truth

How sexist is Japanese society? The meaning of sexist (and perhaps even that of Japanese society) probably has to be clarified before a meaningful answer can be given, and even this answer would certainly be disputed. The same is true for many questions. Objections such as these encourage notions such as that “truth is just relative”: that whether something is true (and not merely whether it appears to be true) depends on who you are. Wrong: “A university education in Japan costs money”, “Tokyo is in Korea”, and “We will die” express three propositions (meaningful assertions) that are true, false, and true respectively.2

That a proposition is either true or false is the law of the excluded middle, one of the three classic laws of thought (which probably date back to Aristotle). Of course some people reject these laws. But you should demonstrate competence in their use before attempting to reject them, if you want to be taken seriously (and if you want your assignments to get passing grades).

Validity

If all men love pink and I (an author of this guide) am a man, then I love pink. The argument is valid, even though the first premise (that all men love pink) is untrue.

Icelandic people like eating hákarl (rotting shark meat). We (your authors) are not Icelandic. Does this imply that we don’t like eating hákarl?

No it doesn’t, even though every stage happens to be true. (Icelandic people [or many of them] do like hákarl, we are not Icelandic, and we hate the thought of hákarl.) The argument is invalid.

If this seems odd, consider an analogous argument. “Japanese people like eating chocolate. I am not Japanese. And therefore I don’t like chocolate.” Obvious nonsense!

Using P and Q to stand for different propositions, both arguments (about hákarl and chocolate) take the form “If P, then Q. Not P, therefore not Q.” Invalid, even if the conclusion is true. There’s a name for this kind of fallacy (logical error): denying the antecedent.

Another kind of fallacy is affirming the consequent. It follows the pattern “If P, then Q. Q, therefore P.” Example: “If people do weight-training, they’ll build up their muscles. He’s very muscular, so he must have done weight-training.” No, his muscles may have instead come from rowing. And even if he did happen to have done weight-training (so the conclusion is true), the argument would be invalid.

Invalid arguments, such as those that deny the antecedent or affirm the consequent, rarely occur across two or three short sentences, as above. But they do sometimes arise across the span of a newspaper column or a book chapter. Look out for such invalid arguments, and avoid falling for them or making them.

Fact and opinion

Confusingly, the words fact and factual are ambiguous. In one sense – one that often

2Yes, there might be some institution somewhere that calls itself a university and offers distance educa-tion free of charge to people who can be anywhere, Japan included. “Tokyo” might be the name of a restaurant in Seoul. Imaginably, “We will die” could be said in a fantasy novel by an immortal. However, we do not use language in such perverse ways.studyguide.odt

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arises in idioms, such as It’s a fact that – the statement that the area of Japan is 100,000 sq km is not factual, simply because it is untrue (the figure must be trebled). But in the sense in which we use these words, that statement is factual: it’s the kind of objective assertion that can be shown to be true or false (and that happens to be false).

So the area, population, GDP and so forth of Japan are matters of fact. But whether Japan is a pleasant place to live is subjective, a matter of opinion.

It is not always easy to arrive at opinion-free fact. Indeed, even a fact as dry as the area of Japan depends on whether or not Iturup (Etorofu) and other islands belong to Japan, a matter on which Japanese and Russian opinions differ. But if such precision is necessary (and since the islands only total about 0.013% of the area of Japan, it normal-ly does not), then we can provide it by defining “Japan”.

Meanwhile, what’s normally subjective can be approached in an objective way. Care-ful research (too intricate to be summarized here) can create an index for measuring pleasantness, which – at least in principle – can then be used to see how pleasant Japan really is to live in compared with, say, Hawaii or Costa Rica.

Further, the perceptions and opinions of others can themselves merit discussion and study. Napoleon was not short3 (and anyway for most historical or other purposes his actual height would probably be of only minor interest); but the widespread belief that he was short4 could be of interest to people concerned with caricature or the relation between stigma and body-image.

Facts are not almighty and opinions can be worth discussion, but you should at least be aware of which it is that you are dealing with.

Anecdote, and the man in the street

Somebody you know (A) may have gone to some city (X) and there had an experience that was remarkable (wonderful, terrible, etc).

Somebody you know (B) may have been faced with a problem (how to get over influ-enza, how to enter Tokyo University, etc), have come up with a solution (eat only turnips, wake every morning at 4 a.m., etc), and then recovered/succeeded.

This kind of evidence is merely anecdotal. Friend A actually tells us nothing about X, other than that the experience is possible. But obviously a huge range of experiences (from falling in love to being hit by a truck) are possible in any city. To see if a turnip diet really helps with influenza, the anecdote of B means nothing (especially as influ-enza normally gets better): we instead need results from matched groups of influenza sufferers, one group fed on turnips and the other not. And so forth.

Never be content with anecdotes such as these. Instead, you have to study the parti-cular subject.

A friend, your mother, a teacher of yours in high school, a grandparent, or somebody else may have once told you something or other.

Perhaps all of your friends may believe that something or other is true.

3His height was measured after his death, and found to be roughly 1.69 metres. Marcel Dunan, “La Taille de Napoléon”, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon 89 (October 1963), 178-179; reproduced in http://sn.im/nb_taille (napoleon.org), accessed 19 March 2012. This is greater than the estimated height of Dmitry Medvedev, Nicolas Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi. “Sarkozy Height Row Grips France”, BBC, 8 September 2009, http://sn.im/sarko_height (bbc.co.uk), accessed 19 March 2012. And of course in Napoleon’s time, average height was less than it is in the 21st century.

4As reflected in, or reflecting, popular portrayals. One example among many is James Gillray’s print “The Plumb-Pudding in Danger, or, State Epicures Taking un Petit Souper” (1805), reproduced at for example http://sn.im/plumb_pudding (commons.wikimedia.org).studyguide.odt

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Sorry, but your friends, your mother and the rest are for the most part not experts.5 You and they are instead mere “men in the street”,6 whose opinions are normally of little interest. So don’t write what they tell you. Instead, you have to study the parti-cular subject.7

You study your subject either directly (and according to a very carefully thought-out method), or (and for most courses, far more often) by reading academic material about it.

From description to prescription

As pointed out by the philosopher David Hume,8 people tend to slip carelessly from descriptions of what is or was to what should be. One may claim for example that China has for centuries encouraged a Confucianist respect for one’s elders and seniors, and of course one can also argue that this Confucianist influence should continue. However, it’s wrong to infer that it should continue simply from the fact that it has continued.

After all, the same inference would have led centuries-old practices such as foot-binding (纏足), slavery and wife-beating to continue.

Appeal to authority

Writers often cite other authorities (people believed to be experts on the subject), and when writing for most kinds of university course you will have to do so as well. (Details are explained at length below.) But there are dangers to this.

Let’s see what’s involved. An appeal to authority (or argument from authority) boils down to this:

● Most of what authority A says about subject matter S is correct. ● A says P about S. ● Therefore P is very likely to be correct.

For many purposes, this is appropriate. (Certainly we depend on it a lot in this guide, forever supplying footnotes showing that somebody has written this or that.)

In many subject areas, matters are not so clear. Language acquisition (LA) is an example. Although researchers agree that people over 20 have a lot more trouble learn-ing a new language than do children under 5, they disagree on why. So your use of an authority in this area is more likely to resemble:

● Most of what authority A says about LA is taken seriously by her fellow scholars.● A says P about LA.● Therefore we can take P seriously.

Now let’s see a journalistic example of how this can go very wrong:The media did not report on the temperature rise in the U.S. during the time period when no airplanes flew after the 9/11 attack, proving that

5Imaginably, there are exceptions. For example, your mother might really be an expert on the particular subject that you are studying. If so, we apologize to you both and congratulate her. But you must treat her utterances on the subject in the same way that you’d read those by experts you don’t happen to know.

6Perhaps a sexist term, but neither person in the street nor any alternative seems to have supplanted it.7Public opinion – the synthesized opinions of men in the street – can of course be significant and merit

studying. But the gauging of public opinion has its own stringent requirements: it’s not done by asking people whom you already happen to know.

8David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature (1739–40), book III, part I, section I. But first see “Is–ought problem” in Wikipedia.studyguide.odt

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pollution from airplanes does not increase temperatures, on the contrary, it provides a level of cooling protection. (Lord Monckton)9

This takes the form of “The media did not report on X, proving that Y”.X itself may strike you as odd, given that the period when almost no airplanes flew in

the US after the “9/11” attack was only a very few days, and temperature rises and falls lasting a few days are commonplace. It’s also unclear from this whether Monckton is cited as having said Y, or as having said the whole thing. But it is clear that Monckton is cited as an authority for some climate-related proposition.

To put it politely, Monckton is not an authority. He lacks an education in this area;10 this itself does not damn what he writes,11 but it calls for particular care. He misunder-stands or misrepresents what he reads and cites, and some of his evidence appears to have simply been invented.12

Base rate fallacy

Defining or even describing this fallacy would take more space than we want to spend on it;13 so instead we’ll jump straight into an example of the kind of information that gives rise to it:

A device has been invented for screening a population for a disease known as psylicrapitis. The device is a very good one, but not perfect. If someone is a sufferer, there is a 90% chance that he will be recorded positively. If he is not a sufferer, there is still a 1 percent chance that he will be recorded positively. Roughly 1 percent of the population has the disease. Mr. Smith has been tested, and the result is positive. The chance that he is in fact a sufferer is: __________14

Stop and think and come up with a percentage. Many people guesstimate that it’s very likely – the study in which this passage first

appeared found that the average guesstimate was 85%.But let’s not just guess but instead try to work it out, imagining a sample of ten

thousand people. We start by filling in the information that we know:

9Ileana Johnson Paugh, “UN is Fleecing US and the EU Carbon Tax”, Canada Free Press, 11 March 2012, http://sn.im/un_fleecing (canadafreepress.com), accessed 24 March 2012. Paugh does not specify where Monckton said this.

10Andrew Burrell, “Monckton Blasts Australia over Climate Change ‘Scam’”, The Australian, 20 June 2011, http://sn.im/monckt_ba (theaustralian.com.au).

11To suggest that it did would itself be a fallacy, that of dismissing an argument because of the identity of the person who made it. Like many kinds of fallacy, in English it’s given a Latin name: argumentum ad hominem. Meanwhile, our treatment of the fallacy of appealing to irrelevant or fictional authority is argu-mentum ad verecundiam.

12George Monbiot, “Viscount Monckton, Another Fallen Idol of Climate Denial”, The Guardian, 3 June 2010, http://sn.im/monck_fallen (guardian.co.uk).

13There’s more about this fallacy (although based on a curiously tasteless example) at Gary N. Curtis, “The Base Rate Fallacy”, The Fallacy Files, http://www.fallacyfiles.org/baserate.html .

14M. Hammerton, “A Case of Radical Probability Estimation,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 101 (1973), 252; quoted in Gerd Gigerenzer, Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 213. Numbering of the sentences has been removed.studyguide.odt

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healthy with psyl total

positive result 1% of the healthy

90% of those with psyl

negative result 99% of the healthy

10% of those with psyl

total 99% of 10000 1% of 10000 10000

Now for some simple arithmetic:

healthy with psyl total

positive result 99 90 189

negative result 9801 10 9811

total 9900 100 10000

The likelihood that Mr. Smith has psylicrapitis is 90/189, or slightly under 50%.15 So you should be wary of “obvious” inferences from sets of numbers. Think carefully

about the implications of sets of numbers wherever your math ability is up to it – and after all, no difficult math was needed for the calculation above.

Starting out right

An important part of writing an assignment is understanding what the assignment really is. All teachers have the experience of receiving a paper that shows a fundament-al misunderstanding of what the assignment was – and then of giving it a low grade (if any grade at all). Don’t be shy about asking the teacher for needed clarification.

Then get started as quickly as you can. Obviously, the more time you spend on work the better it is likely to be. Moreover, returning to a project after an interval brings fresh insights: Ten hours of thinking, reading and writing spread across two weeks will bring a far better result than ten hours jammed into two days.

Discuss the assignment with classmates. If there are differences of opinion on what it is, ask the teacher – most teachers make their email addresses known to students, and welcome questions on important matters such as this.

The details of the assignment may contradict what’s written in this guide. If so, you should of course follow the teacher’s directions, and not this guide. But it’s a good idea first to double-check that you really understood the directions.

Once you’re sure of what the assignment is, again discuss it, and your approach to it, with your classmates.

What to look at

Often you’ll be expected to write about one or more academic papers, magazine articles, book chapters, short stories, etc, that the teacher specifies. Read them and work hard to understand them. Do not use somebody else’s Japanese (or other) transla-tion of this material: it may have mistakes, or be deliberately different from the

15Gigerenzer gives it as 50%. The difference results from our use of precision and his lack of it. Actually our precision here is bogus, given that the calculation is from data such as roughly 1 percent. We’ve been precise in order to make the table easier to read. studyguide.odt

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original.It’s likely that there will also be a list of optional or recommended reading. Consider

the items on this list before going further.In this section we give advice on advancing beyond such a list.Often you will be expected to find other relevant material for yourself. What is suit-

able and how you find it will depend a lot on what the purpose is.You may be expected to look at printed material from the library. For certain pur-

poses, the internet may be as good or better; but teachers take a dim view of students whose reason for avoiding the library is that it involves a short walk.

For some special purposes you may be asked to look at material – such as blog entries by people who are anonymous or not obviously qualified, or Wikipedia articles – that is normally dismissed as inadequate for university work. This is not a license to use such material for other purposes as well.

Printed material

The library is divided into two parts: upstairs (the first floor), which is mostly for popular books in Japanese (it’s something like a high school library), and downstairs (B1 and below), where we expect you to spend most of your time.

Which books should you look for first? Any good book or paper that you’re specifically asked to read is likely to cite other books and papers. Among them, look for those that are obviously important or described interestingly. (Additionally, a coursebook may have specific suggestions for “further reading”.)

Books

Look for books first by typing search terms in the “OPAC” (catalogue), which you’ll find both at http://sn.im/hosei_opac and of course in special-purpose computers in the library. If this shows a promising title at Ichigaya, don’t ask for it at the counter but instead go to the shelf yourself and look at it there: it’s likely that other books of inter-est will be shelved close by. If you see that Hosei’s Tama or Koganei library has some-thing that looks promising, order it. Thanks to the “Yamanote Consortium”, you can in principle use the libraries of Aoyama Gakuin, Gakushuin, Kokugakuin, Meiji Gakuin, Rikkyo and Toyo as if you were a student in any of those universities.16 And you can use (but not borrow from) other excellent libraries too.17

Not everything in the library is worthwhile. The many exceptions include facsimile editions of old books that contain racist pseudoscience. (The library offers these for people wanting to study not race but instead the history of racism or pseudoscience.)

In general, look for books that meet all of these requirements:● they are recent;● they are not reprints of much older material;● they are written by people who appear to be qualified in what they are writing

about;● they scrupulously specify their own sources (in a way that this guide explains

below for your writing);

16For details, see 山手線沿線私立大学図書館コンソーシアムの利用方法, http://sn.im/yamanote_conso (hosei.ac.jp), and note in particular that the Consortium’s loaning to students of other universities is often suspended during exam seasons and at other times.

17Note particularly NACSIS Webcat http://webcat.nii.ac.jp/ (a catalogue for all Japanese university libraries), and Tokyo Metropolitan Library http://www.library.metro.tokyo.jp/ at Hiroo.studyguide.odt

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● they come from what appear to be reputable publishers.These guidelines may be too strict for some purposes. But look for the best books

available: those that meet the requirements above.The books must also (perhaps with some effort) be understandable. Very many

academic books are written for postgraduates (or even “postdocs”, people with a doctorate in the subject); since you are an undergraduate, you probably won’t be able to understand them. Do not cite or quote material that you don’t understand.

If you’re sure that an intelligent choice of (correctly spelled) keywords in the OPAC brings nothing, then consider less academic material.

If by contrast there are too many hits, rethink your keyword choice. If this fails, ask a librarian for help.

Periodicals

An academic journal typically has a very sober title, cover design, and page design. There’s rarely any point in looking through the contents pages of an issue, or volume, of such a journal, because typically most of an issue (let alone volume) will be about sub-jects other than your own. (Exceptions to this are issues whose titles clearly show that they are devoted to a single topic.) Instead, you look within an issue or volume for a particular article that you already know is in it.

Increasingly, academic journals are available on the web. (See p.10 below.)There’s also rarely any point in looking through newspapers or non-academic maga-

zines for any article that might appear on a given subject. (Exceptions include a study of how this or that event or issue was portrayed in a newspaper or magazine.)

The web

In summer 2009, much US newsprint was devoted to the insistence by a group of people (“birthers”) that there was no proof that Barack Obama had been born in the USA (and therefore that he could not legally be President). The birthers’ questions and objections were repeatedly answered – but the birthers just kept on going. On 27 July, the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about this:

[Question] Is there anything you can say that will make the birthers go away?

Gibbs: No. (Laughter.) I mean, the God’s honest truth is no. [...] If I had some DNA, it wouldn’t assuage those that don’t believe he was born here. [...]

[Question] Why do you think it keeps coming up?Gibbs: Because for $15, you can get an Internet address and say whatever

you want.18

Gibbs was right. Simply, whereas it’s very hard for people to have their ideas spread around the world by (for example) Oxford University Press, hundreds of millions of people can say almost anything on the web – and plenty of people do. There is an enor-mous amount of guesswork, uncritically recycled myth, misinformation and stupidity out there, conveniently accessible via Google or whatever is your favorite search engine.

Some subjects receive a lot of attention, most of which is better ignored. There are

18Press briefing by Robert Gibbs, 27 July 2009; http://sn.im/wh_rg (whitehouse.gov), accessed 17 September 2009. Emphasis added. You can see a video of this within “Womb Raiders: The Fight for the Truth behind Obama’s Birth”, Colbert Nation, 28 July 2009, http://sn.im/w_raiders (colbertnation.com, accessed 18 September 2009).studyguide.odt

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various tools that can simplify your task of looking for material that’s worthwhile: academic databases, Google Books and Google News. But before turning to these, we’ll first look at alternatives that are generally not suitable.

The more risky

WikipediaWe start with Wikipedia, because for many subjects, the top hit at a search engine is

likely to be the article at Wikipedia (whether Japanese or English).Wikipedia is not a reliable source. (Wikipedia itself tells this to would-be contribut-

ors.19) However, the better-written articles in English-language Wikipedia link their content to particular sources; and, when not vandalized, such articles can be useful for finding sources. Only a very small percentage of Japanese-language Wikipedia articles attribute their content to particular sources; Japanese-language Wikipedia is rarely worth looking at.

Wikipedia’s copyright terms (“copyleft”) allow other websites to reproduce its con-tent if certain conditions are met. Other websites do this (usually adding advertising, and often ignoring Wikipedia’s conditions). These copies are of course no more reliable than the originals, and they are often worse.

Sites for general reference and content farmsOther websites attempt to provide information about a great variety of subjects. Two

that come up particularly often in search engines are about.com and answers.com. Although about.com is owned by the same company that owns the New York Times and includes some fine content, you cannot assume that its content is sufficiently reliable for university use. Answers.com is a “content aggregator”, deriving much of its material from other sites (such as Wikipedia); it too is unsuitable for research.

Other “content farms” and similar websites that should never be used include (but are not limited to): helium.com, EHow, Squidoo, Yahoo Voices, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo Answers, HubPages, examiner.com, writing.com, suite101.com, articlefeeder.com.

If you want to cite a particular source, your job is not just to see that the website does not appear on this list of unsuitable sources. You instead need evidence that the source does merit being cited.

Official websitesAlso likely to come near the top of a search engine’s list of tips are official sites: when

we looked in Google for “coca-cola” in December 2009 we were first offered “Coca-Cola Global: Soft Drinks & Beverage Products” (coca-cola.com); for “rugby union britain”, we first got “Welcome to the Official Site of the Rugby Football Union” (rfu.com).

The official website of a company, trade or other organization (or an individual), is essentially advertising. The website will claim to offer information and may even do so well; but the information is chosen in order to avoid criticism, to bring more business, and to increase profits. Although you may use an official website to see what an organi-zation says about itself, you should not use it for a balanced or rounded picture of that organization.

Don’t take this to unthinking extremes. Putting aside the question of whether material in Time (the magazine) is of sufficient depth to merit use in a university course, you shouldn’t reject an article in Time merely because it appears in an “official website”

19“Are wikis reliable sources?” Within “Wikipedia: Reliable Source Examples”, for example as last edited by Kiefer.Wolfowitz on 5 February 2012, http://sn.im/wp_rse_w (wikipedia.org).studyguide.odt

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(time.com) of Time Warner. There’s nothing wrong with this. But in order to find out about Time Warner itself, you should not rely on its website (timewarner.com).

Blogs and web forumsBlogs and web forums should almost never be used for assignments.Exceptions include material that is indisputably written by people who are clearly

shown by reliable sources to be either experts on the subject or of importance to it. If you’re interested in the views of the social/cultural historian Joe Moran, then of course go to his blog.20 Or if you want to write about Christopher Anderson’s book Capitolio, you may be interested in the entry about it in the blog “5b4”,21 as the entry starts with a review by Jeff Ladd, who’s a prominent writer and editor on related subjects,22 and continues with a discussion between Ladd and Anderson (together with contributions by other, mostly anonymous people).

The mere fact that somebody writes and publishes a lot about a subject does not mean that this person is an expert or even that the person’s writing should be taken at all seriously. Do not look around blogs and the like for writers who appear on those blogs to be experts; instead, when you have other reasons to believe that a writer is an expert, it might be appropriate to look in that person’s blog.

OrganizationsA great many websites come from organizations whose names and websites may be

impressive but whose reality is unimpressive. These include “think tanks” less concerned with research than with pushing an agenda,23 and “astroturfing” (covertly financed attempts to look like “grassroots” organizations).24

You should therefore be very cautious when relying on any of these sources. See how they are referred to by other websites (and beware of “walled gardens”, where various fringe or partisan websites praise each other). What follows is an incomplete list of more reliable internet sources.

The less risky

Academic databasesVarious websites index, link to, or even host a large number of academic papers on a

wide variety of subjects. These include:● JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/)● Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)

20“Joe Moran’s Blog”. http://joemoransblog.blogspot.com/ .21Jeff Ladd, et al., “Capitolio by Christopher Anderson”, 5b4, 31 August 2009; http://sn.im/capitolio_ca

(blogspot.com), accessed 23 January 2012.22 On Ladd (who writes as “Mr Whiskets”), see for example Liz Jobey, “Errata Editions: Reviving Out-of-

Print Photography Books”, The Guardian, 16 March 2009; http://sn.im/gua_errata (guardian.co.uk), accessed 23 January 2012.

23“Think tanks” with a particular ideological slant are nothing new, but increasingly their primary pur-pose is helping one side or another in a political struggle. See David Weigel, “Cato Goes to War”, Slate, 5 March 2012, http://sn.im/kbros_seize (slate.com); Tevi Troy, “Party Ties Corrupting Think Tanks”, Times Union, 17 March 2012, http://sn.im/ties_corrupting (timesunion.com); both accessed 25 March 2012.

24As examples of astroturfing, “Americans for Prosperity” is (and its predecessor “Citizens for a Sound Economy” was) financed by the Koch brothers. Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War against Obama”, New Yorker, 30 August 2010, http://sn.im/mayer_covert (newyorker.com), accessed 11 February 2012. Dhmo.org, the website of the (fictional) “Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division”, is an amusing parody of a website expressing (fictional) consumer concern about an imaginary danger.studyguide.odt

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● IngentaConnect (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/)● getCITED (http://www.getcited.org/)● CiteULike (http://www.citeulike.org/)

More are offered and described at http://sn.im/hosei_dbase (hosei.ac.jp). For the best to consult for a specific academic field, ask your teacher.

Most of the links are not to the papers themselves but instead (a) to abstracts, and (b) to offers of the entire paper if you

● are using an IP number that’s recognized by the service,● have a usable ID and password, or● pay money (credit cards happily accepted).

If there seems to be no way to get a wanted paper without paying, look for its title in a general search engine, such as regular Google (not Google Scholar). Many authors post their papers on their own websites (the same papers that cost money elsewhere). Alternatively, many of the papers will have also appeared in print in an academic journal that may be available at one of the Hosei libraries or through the interlibrary copy service (ask a librarian for help).

Google Books and Google NewsGoogle Books (http://books.google.com) has the full text of many books, substantial

sections of very many more, and short snippets of more again. There is no distinction between good and poor books, and indeed Google Books contains amusing trash such as Weekly World News.

Google News (http://news.google.com) lists many hits in what can liberally be des-cribed as news sources. These include newspapers worth taking seriously but also tab-loids, gossip columns, and other junk. A large percentage of this material costs money, but remember that everything at the (London) Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/) and some other newspapers is free, and that the registration that’s needed to read some material on other websites costs nothing.

Despite the large amount in Google Books/News that does not merit serious attention, the percentage here that’s worthwhile is likely to be higher than what you’ll find via a regular search. So try Google Books/News if the number of hits that you get in a regular search is overwhelming.

Japanese newspapersA large amount of the content of the Japanese newspapers Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi,

Nikkei and Sankei is available online if your computer is connected via Hosei and if you look in the database of the particular website. A link to each database is provided at the library’s website.

Digesting written material

You’ll need to read a number of different kinds of written material at university. We deal with three matters here. First, which parts you should read first. Secondly, what should be running through your head as you read. And thirdly, what you have to note down (and there’s a surprising amount of this) in order later to identify what you’ve read.

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The parts to read first

For literature in the narrower sense (short stories, poems, etc), you have to read from the beginning to the end (and then reread); what’s written below is about other material.

Faced with a book, locate the part that discusses (the parts that discuss) what you are interested in. This may well mean jumping in half way. (Of course, this may be too optimistic: you may have to move back in order to understand concepts that the writer assumes you understand and terms that she uses.)

Typically, an academic book is clearly divided into chapters and sections, and each of these starts with an introduction and ends with a conclusion (whether or not so labeled). Try the introductions and conclusions first; if they look promising, then look at the material that comes between them.

In many disciplines, an academic paper is likely to have an abstract. Typically this isn’t titled in any way; rather, it’s a block of text appearing immediately below the title and name(s) of the author(s). Read this and make sure that you understand it and that the paper really looks useful. If so, read the introduction and conclusion/summary (whether or not so labelled).

How to read

A recent edition of a large reference book25 – e.g. a dictionary, encyclopedia, or handbook26 – is usually reliable.

This is also true for recent textbooks, i.e. books with general titles (e.g. Social Psychology) that are written for university students and that typically come complete with exercises at the end of the chapters. But the writers of textbooks have limits of space; as you read, ask yourself what the writer might be omitting.

For other kinds of material, be wary. No, the authors are not trying to mislead you. However, experts do often disagree.27 Ideally, you should read all the sides currently taken seriously by a substantial percentage of experts on the issue. In practice, you won’t have anywhere near enough time. But if at all possible, look at your subject as written up from at least two points of view. Read any paper rather as if you were a lawyer: look hard for any part of the argument that’s less than convincing, for any flaws. Note if, for example, a writer seems to be using a key term to mean one thing in one place and something else a few pages later. Or if the writer seems to infer causation (“X causes Y”) from mere correlation (“Y tends to be higher when X is high”).

The problem can be simpler. Even in a respected periodical, writers can make un-warranted guesses or assumptions. This is a subject for an entire book, but we’ll explore it via one example from the British newspaper/website The Guardian.

On 14 February 2012, the website published an article about Mike Daisey,28 whose

25A reference book isn’t just any book that’s referred to (it’s not 参考文献), it’s instead a book intended to be referred to rather than read.

26A handbook to an academic subject is a kind of encyclopedia of the subject, though with fewer and longer articles than would be normal in an encyclopedia.

27Example: (1) Steven Pinker wrote a book about language titled The Language Instinct. (2) Geoffrey Sampson then wrote a book – Educating Eve (later republished as The “Language Instinct” Debate) criticiz-ing Pinker’s book. (3) Neil Smith then wrote an article for Glot International criticizing Sampson’s book. Et cetera.

28Matt Trueman, “Mike Daisey Gives Anyone a Free Byte of His Steve Jobs Play”, The Guardian, 14 February 2012; http://sn.im/daisey_play (guardian.co.uk), accessed 18 February 2012.studyguide.odt

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name may well not have then been familiar to most of the intended audience.29 Here’s the start of the article:

A playwright has jeopardised the European premiere of his work by announcing plans to make the script available for performance by any other performer, at any time, anywhere in the world without paying royalties.

Mike Daisey, who wrote The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, is due to perform the monologue at the HighTide festival in May.30

Further within the same article:Daisey’s announcement yesterday that he will post a full script online, and allow anyone to perform it royalty-free, raises the possibility of the per-formance being gazumped. “The monologue will be released as a PDF, and it comes with very open licences and you can perform it forever, without paying royalties, wherever you want,” he told the New York Times.31

The article ends:[HighTide’s artistic director Steven Atkinson] maintains any [productions by people other than Daisey] will not lessen the impact of Daisey’s own performance. “The text itself is only part of what makes The Agony . . . an extraordinary piece of theatre. It’s Mike himself that is unmissable.”32

Here’s our summary of the article:The playwright Mike Daisey, who is about to perform the monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs in an English drama festival (its first performance anywhere in Europe) has surprised various people by announc-ing that anyone will be able to perform the monologue anywhere without the need to pay him anything. Will this result in his being outshone by some other performer?

As Daisey was quick to point out,33 this article is strange. First, although Daisey has had at least one play performed, he is not primarily a playwright and this is not a play;

29There had already been another article in the same newspaper/website about the same “play” (mono-logue) of Daisey’s: Matt Trueman, “Steve Jobs Play Brings Bite of Big Apple to Suffolk”, The Guardian, 7 February 2012; http://sn.im/jobs_bite (guardian.co.uk), accessed 18 February 2012.

30Our notes: (i) The Guardian does not use italics for the titles of books, periodicals, performance pieces and so forth. Here and below, we have added italics in the conventional way. (ii) A playwright is some-body who writes plays. (iii) Jeopardise (or jeopardize) means endanger. (iv) The European premiere of a play, movie, etc is its first public performance anywhere in Europe. (v) People wanting to perform a play that is still copyright (e.g. that by a living playwright) must make a payment to the playwright; this is called a royalty. (vi) The title The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs alludes to The Agony and the Ec-stasy, first a 1961 novel by Irving Stone about Michelangelo and then a 1965 movie made from this; Steve Jobs was the cofounder and head of Apple Computer. (vii) The HighTide Festival is based in Halesworth, Suffolk, southeast England.

31Our notes: (i) Gazump is British slang for a shady practice in the sale of real estate. By extension, the performance being gazumped means Daisey’s performance being overshadowed by somebody else’s per-formance. (ii) A very open licence means a copyright license of a kind commonly called copyleft: one al-lowing an unusual degree of freedom of reproduction (the opposite of “all rights reserved”). The license would later appear at the start of the document, available from http://sn.im/daisey_tatesj (blogspot.com).

32Ellipsis in the original article.33Mike Daisey, “The Guardian Publishes the Dumbest Thing You Will Read Today”, Mike Daisey: His

secret fortress on the web, 14 February 2012, http://sn.im/dumbest_thing (blogspot.com), accessed 18 February 2012.studyguide.odt

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instead, he’s a monologuist34 and this is a monologue (as is clear from the NYT article35 on which this Guardian article is based and to which it links). With the wording has jeopardised (rather than for example risks jeopardising), the opening sentence of this article seems strangely biased, especially given that Daisey’s fame is that of a performer of his own work rather than merely a writer – indeed, the article quotes Atkinson making a similar point.

So all in all this article mischaracterizes Daisey, seems to overstate the likelihood that Daisey may be outshone, and then strangely emphasizes the effect on Daisey (rather than that on audiences, or, since this is a political work, that on society) if Daisey were to be outshone.

And all of this in something presented in the newspaper’s website as a news item rather than commentary. (It is signed, but this is common for many Guardian news items.) And not just any newspaper website, but one that is highly regarded and that we too recommend as better than average.

Noting information on sources

When you come to write up your work (e.g. in a term paper or thesis) you’ll have to specify your sources precisely and helpfully. Undergraduates often realize this far too late in the writing process, shamefacedly telling the teacher such things as “I don’t remember its title or where it was, but I found it via Yahoo”, and then having to re-research their sources. Avoid this risk: be scrupulous and precise right from the start.

For every work you intend to use for your paper, you will need to write down its title, who wrote it, as well as when and where it was published.

Title

Note the actual title of the work you use. If it’s in Japanese, note it in Japanese.36 (Ditto for Spanish, etc.)

If the work is an English translation, note the title in English; if the work is a Japanese translation, note the title in Japanese. (Ditto for Chinese, etc.) It’s a good idea to note the title of the original too. Don’t pretend that any retranslation of yours is the original text.

The title of a Western book may vary across title page, spine and front cover; use what’s on the title page.

The title of a Japanese book may also vary; use the title in the colophon (奥付).It’s not necessary to preserve exact capitalization. For example, if a book’s title page

tells you

PROJECTS IN

L I N G U I S T I C SA PRACTICAL GUIDE TO RESEARCHING LANGUAGE

then the use of capitals (like the layout) is merely a matter of design: you’ll eventually

34A monologuist is somebody who delivers a monologue: an entertaining talk to an audience. (So a rakugoka 落語家 is a kind of monologuist.)

35Adam W. Kepler, “Steve Jobs Monologue Downloadable, Free”, New York Times, 13 February 2012; http://sn.im/sj_mono-free (nytimes.com), accessed 18 February 2012.

36Later, you’ll probably need to provide this and similar information in romanized form. So look for and note down any information about readings (読み) that isn’t obvious.studyguide.odt

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present this as either (a) Projects in Linguistics: A Practical Guide to Researching Lan-guage or (b) Projects in linguistics: A practical guide to researching language.37

Many academic (and other) books belong to series. (For example, Zheng He: Images and Perceptions / Bilder und Wahrnehmungen, published in 2005 by Harrassowitz, is number 15 in the series “South China and Maritime Asia”.) In most cases, you can safely ignore series.

Authors, editors and translators

Note down the full names of any author of material you might later cite, and (with the exceptions noted below) also the full names of any editor of any larger work in which it appears.38

In some disciplines, it’s normal for a single paper to have four or more named authors. Such disciplines usually follow citation styles (see p.30 below) that avoid the need to name all of them. Look into this before you spend much time writing down many names.

If, say, an author’s surname is “Dąbrowska” (note the “ą”),39 then write it down and later type it as “Dąbrowska”, not “Dabrowska”. (If you don’t know how to get your soft-ware to do “ą”, find out.)

If a name isn’t in roman script, then make a note of it in this other script. Make a note of any additional roman-letter version. (For example, though Hepburn would mandate “Seigō”, 松岡正剛 writes his given name as “Seigow” on at least some of his books in Japanese.)

Specifically:Authors: Again, write down their names.More material is by named authors than at first appears. As examples, (i) the articles

in the “Macropædia” section of Encyclopædia Britannica are signed, and (ii) articles in many “Oxford Companions” are signed with initials whose meanings are explained near the front of the book.

If you can’t immediately find the name of the author of a web page that you might want to use, search for the name at the foot of the page, in an “About” page of the website and so on. If you still can’t find it, or if you can find it but can’t easily see why the author would be considered an authority, think hard about whether the web page should be used.

Editors: Note the full names of all the editors of any (non-reference) book in which a paper you use appears.

You don’t have to note the editors of any reference book, or even the chief editor. (However, if a reference book is clearly written by – and not just edited by – one or a very small number of people, then of course they are noted as authors.40)

37These are the (a) “up” and (b) “down” styles of capitalization respectively; for more about them see p.34 below.

38“Full name” here means the full name as it appears. Don’t go beyond this to the full legal name: a book titled Back to Work whose title page says it’s by Bill Clinton is by “Bill Clinton”, and not by “William Jefferson Clinton”, even though the latter is indeed the writer’s full name. Depending on which style guide you use (see p.30 below), (i) you may not need to specify any name beyond surname and initial(s) (so “John Maynard Keynes” becomes “J. M. Keynes”), and (ii) you may not need to specify the name of more than one author/editor if there are more than a certain number of them (so “Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, W. Tecumseh Fitch” can be simplified to “Marc D. Hauser et al.” or even “M. D. Hauser et al.”).

39For somebody writing about material in English, this is not merely a distant possibility. Example: Ewa Dąbrowska, Mind and Brain: Some Psychological and Neurological Constraints on Theories of Grammar (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004).

40Example: Stuart Sutherland, The International Dictionary of Psychology, 2nd ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1995) – a dictionary actually written by Sutherland.studyguide.odt

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You do not have to note the editors of journals or magazines.Translators: In most cases, there is no need to write down the name of a translator.

However, if you’re writing about the way in which a work has been translated, then of course you will later have to specify its translator. You should also do so if the work is of a kind (e.g. poetry) where the translator is likely to have an unusual degree of influ-ence.

Publication date: Book editions, printings, reprints

Note the year in which the source you use was published. Be careful here, as a parti-cular text may have several publication years.

As an example, a popular book might have first appeared in 2001 (a book dealer might describe this as “first edition”), been reprinted (with no change) twice that year and once the following year (“first edition, second/third/fourth printing”), been reprinted with a few minor corrections in 2003 (“first edition, fifth printing”), and appeared with changes as a “2006 edition” in 2005.

Where content and pagination (page-numbering) may differ, say exactly which of these versions of the book you are using. But skip details that have no effect on content or pagination.

How should you identify the version of a book?If a book is an edition other than the first, say so; if it’s the first, don’t mention this.Ignore the “printing” (or “impression”). So if the second edition of a book came out in

1996, then a copy that a scrupulous used book dealer might call “second edition, second printing (1998)” is for our purposes just the 2nd edition (“2nd ed.”) of 1996.

Find an alternative for “new” (whose meaning quickly becomes unclear). If you don’t know whether something calling itself “New 2008 edition” was the 2nd, 3rd or even 7th edition, call it “2008 ed.”.

Publication can be much more complex than this (with facsimile editions of books published much earlier, etc); for guidance with such complexities, see one of the style guides listed in section p.30 below.

Place and publisher

The publisher of a printed work is not the same as the printer. If Kodansha (講談社) and Dai Nippon Printing (大日本印刷) are both named in the same book, they have performed very different roles, so don’t mix them up. You normally have to specify the publisher of a printed work; you never have to specify the printer.

If a newspaper, magazine or journal is well known (Time), is well known in its acad-emic field (American Journal of Sociology), or has a distinctive title (Hartford Courant), then don’t bother to note its publisher or place of publication. By contrast, if a title (e.g. 紀要) is likely to be shared by other publications, then also note the publisher, the place, or both.

For a book, note the name of the city (or occasionally town or even village) given by the publisher. (You’ll find this on the title page, the copyright page, or both.) If the placename is well known and unambiguous, you don’t have to worry about the state or nation (so you won’t need “Pittsburgh, PA”; “Pittsburgh” is enough). If it’s ambiguous or not so well known, note where it is: “Athens, GA” (as opposed to Greece); “Cambridge, MA” (as opposed to Britain); “Mahwah, NJ” (because Mahwah is likely to be unfamiliar). If the publisher names more than one place, just note whichever it names first. If the

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place on the title page is not the same as the one given on the copyright page (as happens surprisingly often), choose either.

Yes, there is an element of mere convention here. Every teacher knows that there is only one “Cambridge University Press” and that it’s in Cambridge. Yet convention dic-tates addition of the placename: “Cambridge: Cambridge University Press”. Be patient.

Note down the publisher of any web page that you want to use, if it’s not obvious from the name of the website. The “Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument” website http://www.nps.gov/flfo/ is published by the U.S. Department of the Interior National Parks Service; and the news story “World Fire Maps Now Available Online in Near-real Time” (http://sn.im/world_fire_maps) is part of ESA News (esa.int) which is published by the European Space Agency.41

Web addresses

Give the specific URL (URI) of the precise page that you are referring to, not merely that of the site’s top page.

Some websites use frames to obscure the precise URL of what you are looking at. It’s your responsibility to do your best to provide the specific URL.

If you encounter obscurity such as this, then you can probably get the precise URL by right-clicking42 the area within the browser window that interests you, and either asking for its “properties” or having it displayed in its own tab or window, and getting the URL from that. If you’re faced with a dynamic URL (a URL that varies according to when or how the page is accessed and that cannot be simplified43) or material within Flash, make a note of how the reader can reach the material that you are citing.

If a shortened URL (available free of charge from such websites as tinyurl.com, sn.im, and bit.ly) would be appreciably easier to type than the original URL, note this instead, but also note the original domain name. Take the option44 provided by the service of choosing a name that you like: the result may be slightly longer than the default shortened URL but is likely to be easier to read and type. An example, “http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/08/pensioner-rock-stars” is a chore to type, so go to http://sn.im and have it shortened to “http://sn.im/pensioner_stars”; you then note down “http://sn.im/pensioner_stars (guardian.co.uk)”.

Note the author’s name (if you can find it), the title of the page, and the title of the website. If the URL changes, then people will still be able to find the page via a search engine.

If (i) there is any chance that the page may change over time, and (ii) the page does not give precise information on when it was last revised or modified, then note the date when you accessed (or retrieved) it. (Both access and retrieve are fancy but convention-al terms for “download” or “read”. Use whichever you prefer.)

If you think that the page may disappear or be altered substantially, use WebCite (webcitation.org) or BackupURL (backupurl.com) to archive it, and note down the new

41By contrast, The Gymnosperm Database (conifers.org) appears to be published by Christopher J. Earle as well as edited by him; there’s no need to mention him as publisher too.

42If you’re using a Mac with just one mouse button, then press Command while clicking the sole button.43By contrast, an URL may have session-specific content that can be cut to make a working URL. For

example, when one of your authors looked in amazon.com for Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner’s Reading Mastery (Level 2 Storybook 1) at amazon.com, he was shown it on http://www.amazon.com/Re ading-Mastery-Storybook-Rainbow-Edition/dp/0026863553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=133335154 4&sr=1-1 , but simple experiment showed that this could be simplified to http://www.amazon.com/Read ing-Mastery-Storybook-Rainbow-Edition/dp/0026863553 and still work.

44As of March 2012, the option was called “nickname” by sn.im and “custom alias” by tinyurl.com.studyguide.odt

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URL. These services will refuse to archive certain pages; you can save such pages (to your hard drive, USB memory device, etc), noting down the original URL.45

It’s very unlikely that Wikipedia itself will merit citation (see p.9 above), but if you do need to cite a page in any website, such as Wikipedia, that has links to a series of revised versions, choose what appears to be a good version and note the URL of that specific version.46

If the material also appeared in a newspaper, magazine, etc, give full information about this as well as the web information.

Writing the paper

The big picture

A suitable structure for a paper depends on what the paper is for. A paper reporting on, say, a psychology experiment would have a structure – with sections titled “Method”, “Results”, “Discussion”, etc – different from what’s described in this section, which applies to much material but not all.

Preface (optional)

If it is necessary to write about any of:● your personal reasons for choosing the particular subject or approach● the process of writing the paper (how long it took, how difficult it was)● the inspiration or help you received from others

then this belongs in a preface (and nowhere else).But normally it is unnecessary, and a preface is therefore unnecessary.If needed, a preface goes on an unnumbered page after the title page and before the

introduction. It does not need to be titled.

Introduction

In the introduction to your paper, you must:● arouse the reader’s interest ● say clearly what you are writing about● clearly state:

• your research question• your goal in the paper• your method of reaching that goal

Most of these should be obvious, but the first may not be. If the paper is about baroque architecture in Poland, and it’s in a course about the history of European architecture and in response to a specific course assignment, can’t you assume that the reader (teacher) will be interested?

Interested in Polish baroque architecture, yes; interested in your paper about it, not

45If a page that previously existed has already disappeared, look for its URL at the Internet Archive “Wayback Machine” (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php). Methods for saving Flash animations and so on are beyond the scope of this booklet; a search of the web will bring explanations.

46For English-language Wikipedia, see the tab labeled “History”. There’s such a tab in the Wikipedia of every language (in Japanese, 履歴表示; in Spanish, “Ver historial”; etc).studyguide.odt

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necessarily. The reader may already be exhausted after reading your classmates’ work. Refresh the reader by starting out directly and concisely. After all, an interested reader is a more contented reader, and a more contented teacher is likelier to give a good grade.

What you should not do is introduce your subject by introducing each area that it touches on. So a paper about baroque architecture in Poland should not have a lengthy introduction to either baroque architecture or Poland. However, it should briefly intro-duce those aspects of baroque architecture or Poland that must be clarified in order for the body of your paper to make sense to a reader who has some education in this area.

The introduction is better written, or extensively revised, after much of the rest of the paper has been written.

The introduction is not normally titled. However, you may title it – either “Introduc-tion” or, if you have a good reason, something else.

Even in a paper whose sections are numbered, the introduction need not be num-bered. However, it may be numbered 0 or 1.

Body

The body of the paper is everything that comes between the introduction and the conclusion. It’s the meat of the paper: the material that you want to express. In it, you develop an argument that puts across your main idea. Everything is supported by evi-dence: your own or others’.

What counts as research, or which sources are authoritative, is determined by the subject. Your reading in the subject should have already given you an idea of what is appropriate, in addition to the general points that we make on pp.6–11 above.

At an early stage, you should make an outline, arranging your thoughts and structuring your argument. As you base your work on this outline, you may want to make changes to it; this is no bad thing, as long as you have good reasons for the changes.

The body of the paper never has an overall title (whether “Body” or anything else). Instead, its individual sections may be titled, and perhaps numbered too. (Numbering without titles is not suitable.)

There should normally be three or four sections (whether titled or not). If you only have two, consider breaking one of these into two. If you have five or more, consider combining sections or deleting those that seem less important.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, you briefly restate what you have written, summarizing the argument.

If appropriate, you can end the conclusion with policy recommendations or sugges-tions for future research.

If you have titled the sections of the body of the paper, then the conclusion too should be titled: normally “Conclusion”, but “Conclusion and recommendations” or something else if more appropriate.

Bibliography

If you use the author–date system (see p.22 below) for citing sources, you should add a bibliography (titled one of “Bibliography”, “List of references” or “Works cited”) after the conclusion. When using notes, a bibliography is optional.

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Be careful to include in the list of references only those works that you actually refer to in your paper – and list all of them.

See p.22 below for a bibliography for an author–date system, and p.24 for a bibliography to go with notes.

Integrating sources into the text

Once you have material that you want to cite or quote, you need to know how to do this. If you get this seriously wrong, even unintentionally, you’ll be charged with plagiarism, which is about the worst thing that can happen to you. But even if you avoid this risk, there are better and worse ways of putting into your own prose facts, ideas and words you’ve taken from other writers.

Plagiarism

Where not clearly marked otherwise, your paper should be written in your own words, using your own ideas. If not, you risk being charged with plagiarism, i.e. intellectual theft. The penalty may include failing the course.

Plagiarism need not be intentional. It can be the result of carelessness. Therefore you should be sure not to make any of the following mistakes:47

● quoting a source without either (a) using quotation marks or (b) formatting in a distinctive block (“block quotation”)

● paraphrasing a source in words so similar that the result is just a reworded quotation

● using ideas, methods or text from a source without clearly showing that you are citing them.

To avoid being charged with plagiarism, you have to cite exactly what (information, ideas, or quotations) you have taken from elsewhere, and for each of these exactly where you have taken it from (even if it’s easily available to anyone from the internet and/or copyright-free). The principles are very simple: be completely honest, and give all the information anybody might need in order to find what you used.

The best way to become able to do this is to read a lot of academic papers and books and thereby to get used to them, consulting a style guide (see section p.30 below) when you get lost. This section on citations can’t be a substitute for either familiarity or a style guide, but it should still help.

Citations

You are likely to encounter at least four ways of citing material, and you may have to use either of two of these. In this section, we look at these two: the “author–date” system (also called “parenthetical citation”), and notes (either “footnotes” at the bottom of the page, or “endnotes” at the very end). Each of these has pluses and minuses, and each is commoner (though not necessarily better) in certain disciplines.48

47 Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, 7th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 77.

48 A word on two other citation methods. First, mass-market books – such as Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought – that cite academic research often have endnotes without little index numbers in the text. Thus if you want to find the source of, or more about, an assertion on page 137, you look in the back for a note about p.137. This system is unsuitable for university work, which typi-cally has a number of citations for a single page. Secondly, specialist material in medicine and the natural studyguide.odt

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● With the author–date system (also called the Harvard system), you identify each source within your text by author(s), year and (where appropriate) page number(s), and have a reference list at the end.

● With notes (footnotes or endnotes), the first time you refer to a book, article, etc, you give full details in a note. The second time and after, you give less information (in order not to waste space). It may be a good idea to supplement notes with a bibliography.

The systems are equally informative: the big difference between them is of how much of the information is where. With author–date, more of it is in the main text, which can mean that the reader has to bounce around less from one place to another, but can also mean that the main text gets bogged down with authors’ names and years.

Another difference is the obvious demand by author–date for authors’ names. News articles in newspapers, etc, typically don’t name the authors, so it’s hard to know what to do. If you’re citing much of this kind of material, use notes instead. If you want or need to use author–date but also need to make a few citations of anonymous material, then use notes for the latter only and author–date for the rest.

In what follows, we examine citation methods by seeing how to cite twelve different works. These works (all in English unless otherwise noted) are:

● the (apparently unaltered) 1985 edition of a book by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen that had been put out by a different publisher two years earlier

● a paper by Daniel Dennett that appears in a book and that previously appeared in an academic journal

● an entry in the blog of Ben Goldacre49

● a chapter (about a film titled The Palm Beach Story) within a book by Leslie Halli-well50

● a paper by Charles Landesman that appears in an academic journal● a paper by Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff that also appears on Jackendoff’s

website● an article by Jonathan Raban for the London Review of Books (LRB) that appears

on the LRB’s website but that an author of this guide thought might be deleted and therefore had archived by WebCite

● a book in Japanese by Satō Fumio● an article by Michael Tye within a philosophy encyclopedia that only exists

online51

● a news article that once appeared on CNN’s website but that has since been deleted and is now only viewable via the Internet Archive52

● a book by Nigel Whiteley that’s partially viewable at Google Books

sciences often has a numbered list of references at the end (sometimes called the Vancouver style), and citations within the text refer to these numbers. The writers rarely cite particular material within each reference item; they instead cite the experimental results or conclusion of the item as a whole. This system is unsuitable for work that often needs to cite parts of papers or books.

49Why a blog? This one is unusual and (where relevant) worth citing because Goldacre is a respected author on medicine, quackery and pseudoscience. The blog entry here also appeared in the Guardian newspaper and is at http://sn.im/detector_myth within the Guardian’s own site.

50Halliwell’s book is marked “Paladin”, but Paladin wasn’t a publisher; it was merely an “imprint” (i.e. brand name) of a publisher called Granada. Thus “Granada, Paladin”.

51The access date (15 November 2009) isn’t given, as the page is clearly dated 2007 and is so labeled here.

52The access date (15 November 2009) isn’t given, as the date of the retrieval by the Internet Archive is itself given, and this stored version will not change.studyguide.odt

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● an essay in Japanese and also in English translation by Yamashita Yûji,53 within a bilingual exhibition catalogue that has an English and a Japanese title

Six of these require URLs. The original URLs of two of the six are so short and simple that it’s reasonable to expect a reader to type them in. Each of the other four is shor-tened by one or other redirecting service (see the section above on “Web addresses”, p.17).

This collection certainly doesn’t cover all the kinds of sources you might want or need to cite, but it should cover a lot of them. For other kinds, use a style guide (see section p.30 below) or an online reference generator (see p.31 below).

We will first see how these sources are cited using the author-date system; then we will look at source citation using notes.

Author–date systemIf you are referring to a specific section of the book or article, you mention author(s),

year, and page number(s). You put each of these at the end of the clause, sentence or paragraph where it applies.

. . . (Satō 1995, 56) . . . (Landesman 1964, 18) . . . (Whiteley 2003, 145) . . . (Konttinen 1985, 75) . . . (Dennett 1977, 231) . . . (Halliwell 1984, 346–47) . . . (Pinker and Jackendoff 2005, 229–30) . . . (Yamashita 2007, 155) . . . (Tye 2007, “Qualia and Introspection”) . . .54

If you’re not referring to a particular page number/span or section of the book or paper, you can skip the page number(s). You also put each of these at the end of the clause, sentence or paragraph that you need to label.

(Voss 1997) . . . (Dennett 1977) . . . (Yamashita 2007) . . . (Goldacre 2009) . . . (Halliwell 1984) . . . (Landesman 1964) . . . (Raban 2008) . . . (Pinker and Jackendoff 2005) . . . (Tye 2007)

The entries in the reference list at the end will look like this:Dennett, Daniel C. 1977. Are dreams experiences? Philosophical essays on

dreaming, ed. Charles E. M. Dunlop, 227–50. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (First published in Philosophical Review 85 [1976]: 151–71.)

Goldacre, Ben. 2009. Wtf? Bad Science. http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/wtf/ (accessed 14 November 2009). (First published in The Guardian, 14 November.)

Halliwell, Leslie. 1984. A horse in the bedroom: The Palm Beach Story. Chap. in Halliwell’s hundred: A nostalgic choice of films from the golden age. London: Granada, Paladin.

Konttinen, Sirkka-Liisa. 1985. Byker. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe.Landesman, Charles. 1964. Dreams: Two types of explanations. Philosophi-

cal Studies 15: 17–23.Pinker, Steven, and Ray Jackendoff. 2005. The faculty of language: What’s

special about it? Cognition 95, 201–36. Available as a PDF from http://sn.im/sp_rj_faculty (tufts.edu), accessed 14 November 2009.

Raban, Jonathan. 2008. Cut, kill, dig, drill. London Review of Books, 9 October. http://bit.ly/raban-cut (lrb.co.uk), accessed 14 October 2008. Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/5bYl8214G

53Although the author’s given name would be “Yūji” in Hepburn (and “Yûzi” in Kunrei/Nippon), the book gives it as “Yûji”, which is therefore adopted here.

54Here and throughout, we use single spacing for what a student should write. But, as explained on p.36 below, the body of an assignment should use 1.5 times or double this.studyguide.odt

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Satō Fumio (佐藤文夫). 1995. Min’yō no kokoro to kotoba: Shi to min’yō (民謡の心とことば　詩と民謡). Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō.

Tye, Michael. 2007. Qualia. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

Voss, Valerie. 1997. Hurricane Danny skims Louisiana tip, moves northeast. CNN. 18 July. http://sn.im/reuter_danny (cnn.com, archived by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on 17 June 2006).

Whiteley, Nigel. 2003. Reyner Banham: Historian of the immediate future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Extracts available at http://sn.im/whiteley_banham (Google Books), accessed 19 March 2012.

Yamashita Yûji (山下裕二). 2007. Japanese art smiles, I smile / Nihon bijutsu ga warau, soshite watakushi ga warau (日本美術が笑う、そして私が笑う). The smile in Japanese art: From the Jomon period to the early twentieth century / Nihon bijutsu ga warau: Jōmon kara 20 seiki shotō made ( 日本美術が笑う縄文から 20 世紀初頭まで), ed. Hirose Mami (広瀬麻美). Tokyo: Mori Art Museum.

We happen to have chosen “down” style (see p.34 below) for the capitalization of titles but we could have chosen “up” style instead. Whether you choose “up” or “down” for book and article titles, you should use it consistently. However, even when you use the “down” style for book and article titles it is normal to present the titles of movies, periodicals, etc in the “up” style.

Note the order within each entry: Surname, personal name. Year. Title. Etc. And these entries are listed in alphabetical order. If you cite two or more works by the same author, list them chronologically, so if you also cited a 2007 work by Ben Goldacre it would go immediately above the 2009 work. If you cite two or more works by one author from one year, give a letter to each; so if you also cited a second 2009 work by Gold-acre, one of the two would be “Goldacre, Ben. 2009a.” and the other “Goldacre, Ben. 2009b.”

NotesBy notes we mean either footnotes (at the foot of the page) or endnotes (at the end

of the paper). You can normally use either, although a particular style guide or teacher may require one or the other. Your software (Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, etc) will number and place them properly; do not attempt to do this yourself.

A note may be used to provide further (necessary/appropriate) detail that wouldn’t fit in the body of what you are writing. But here we do not look at this use of notes (“con-tent notes”), and instead only discuss the use of notes for citations (“source notes”).

When you mention a book or paper for the first time, you give full publication details in the note. Unlike entries in a reference list, the writer’s name in its normal order, and commas and parentheses are used rather than periods:

4. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Byker (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1985), 75.

5. Satō Fumio (佐藤文夫), Min’yō no kokoro to kotoba: Shi to min’yō (民謡の心とことば　詩と民謡; Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō), 56.

6. Charles Landesman, “Dreams: Two Types of Explanations,” Philosophic-al Studies 15 (1964), 18.

7. Yamashita Yûji (山下裕二), “Japanese Art Smiles, I Smile” / “Nihon Bijutsu ga Warau, soshite Watakushi ga Warau” (日本美術が笑う、そして私

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が笑う). Parallel texts in Japanese and English. The Smile in Japanese Art: From the Jomon Period to the Early Twentieth Century / Nihon Bijutsu ga Warau: Jōmon kara 20 Seiki Shotō made ( 日本美術が笑う縄文から 20 世紀初頭まで), ed. Hirose Mami (広瀬麻美) (Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2007), 155, 159.

8. Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff, “The Faculty of Language: What’s Special about It? Cognition 95 (2005), 229–30. Available as a PDF from http://sn.im/sp_rj_faculty (tufts.edu), accessed 14 November 2009.

9. Michael Tye, “Qualia and Introspection”, “Qualia”, Stanford Encyclo-pedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ , accessed 15 November 2009.

10. Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 145. Extracts available at http://sn.im/whiteley_banham (Google Books), accessed 19 March 2012.

11. Daniel C. Dennett, “Are Dreams Experiences?” Philosophical Essays on Dreaming, ed. Charles E. M. Dunlop (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 231.

12. Leslie Halliwell, “A Horse in the Bedroom: The Palm Beach Story,” chap. in Halliwell’s Hundred: A Nostalgic Choice of Films from the Golden Age (London: Granada, Paladin, 1984), 346–7.

13. Ben Goldacre, “Wtf?” Bad Science, http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/wtf/ (first published in The Guardian, 14 November).

14. Jonathan Raban, “Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill,” London Review of Books, 9 October 2008; http://bit.ly/raban-cut (lrb.co.uk), accessed 14 October 2008. Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/5bYl8214G

15. Michael Tye, “Qualia”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

16. Valerie Voss, “Hurricane Danny Skims Louisiana Tip, Moves North-east”, CNN, 18 July 1997. http://sn.im/reuter_danny (cnn.com, archived by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on 17 June 2006).

These are capitalized in “up” style, which is commoner in notes.Any second or later endnote/footnote in which you refer to a source that is already

mentioned should be abbreviated: don’t repeat the publication details, but instead simplify the author’s name and the title.

19. Tye, “Qualia and Introspection,” “Qualia.”20. Halliwell, “Horse in the Bedroom,” 346–7. 21. Pinker and Jackendoff, “The Faculty of Language,” 231.22. Satō, Min’yō no kokoro to kotoba, 79.23. Dennett, “Are Dreams Experiences?” 231–2.24. Yamashita, “Japanese Art Smiles, I Smile,” 157, 161.25. Konttinen, Byker, 29.26. Landesman, “Dreams,” 18. 27. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, 225.28. Voss, “Hurricane Danny Skims Louisiana Tip.”29. Tye, “Qualia.”30. Goldacre, “Wtf?”

Because all the necessary information about a work’s publication date, publisher, etc is already mentioned in a footnote when the work is first cited, a bibliography is not normally needed. But if you are asked to include one, the content of a bibliography will look like this: studyguide.odt

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Dennett, Daniel C. “Are Dreams Experiences?” Philosophical Essays on Dreaming, ed. Charles E. M. Dunlop. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

Goldacre, Ben. “Wtf?” Bad Science, 2009. http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/wtf/ First published in The Guardian, 14 November.

Halliwell, Leslie. “A Horse in the Bedroom: The Palm Beach Story.” Chap. in Halliwell’s Hundred: A Nostalgic Choice of Films from the Golden Age. London: Granada, Paladin, 1984.

Konttinen, Sirkka-Liisa. Byker. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1985.Landesman, Charles. “Dreams: Two Types of Explanations.” Philosophical

Studies 15 (1964): 17–23. Pinker, Steven, and Ray Jackendoff. “The Faculty of Language: What’s

Special about It?” Cognition 95 (2005), 201–36. Available as a PDF from http://sn.im/sp_rj_faculty (tufts.edu), accessed 14 November 2009.

Raban, Jonathan. “Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill.” London Review of Books, 9 October 2008. http://bit.ly/raban-cut (lrb.co.uk), accessed 14 October 2008. Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/5bYl8214G

Satō Fumio (佐藤文夫). Min’yō no kokoro to kotoba: Shi to min’yō (民謡の心 とことば詩と民謡). Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1995.

Tye, Michael. “Qualia.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2007. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Extracts available at http://sn.im/whiteley_banham (Google Books), accessed 19 March 2012.

Yamashita Yûji (山下裕二). “Japanese Art Smiles, I Smile” / “Nihon Bijutsu ga Warau, soshite Watakushi ga Warau” (日本美術が笑う、そして私が笑う). Parallel texts in Japanese and English. The Smile in Japanese Art: From the Jomon Period to the Early Twentieth Century / Nihon Bijutsu ga Warau: Jōmon kara 20 Seiki Shotō made ( 日本美術が笑う縄文から20 世紀初頭まで), ed. Hirose Mami (広瀬麻美). Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2007.

These are in “up” style, which is commoner in such a bibliography. As in a reference list for author–date citations, the entries are in alphabetical order; but unlike this, the year (or date) of publication comes at or near the end of each item.

If you do have a bibliography in addition to footnotes, then you might take this as an opportunity to put all the detail there and reduce the complexity within the footnotes. Thus for example the first footnote referencing Yamashita’s parallel-text essay could be simplified from what’s shown on p.23 to:

7. Yamashita Yûji, “Japanese Art Smiles, I Smile” / “Nihon Bijutsu ga Warau, soshite Watakushi ga Warau”, The Smile in Japanese Art: From the Jomon Period to the Early Twentieth Century / Nihon Bijutsu ga Warau: Jōmon kara 20 Seiki Shotō made , ed. Hirose Mami (Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2007), 155, 159.

or even to:7. Yamashita Yûji, “Japanese Art Smiles, I Smile”, The Smile in Japanese

Art: From the Jomon Period to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Hirose Mami (Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2007), 155, 159.

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Inclusions and secondary citations

You’ll frequently need to read, and later to cite, a work that’s within another work. For example, if you’re reading Daniel Dennett’s paper “Are Dreams Experiences?”, you must note where you found it: within a book titled Philosophical Essays on Dreaming, edited by Charles E. M. Dunlop. Be careful not to give the impression either that you’re citing something by Dunlop or that what you’re citing is in a book by Dennett himself.

The web is similar. “Sequoia sempervirens” (http://www.conifers.org/cu/se/) is part of The Gymnosperm Database (conifers.org); both titles need to be noted.

Or you might encounter something interesting by one person within material by another. Thus a short quotation by Thomas Nagel appears in note 16 to Dennett’s paper. If you want to quote or cite it, then you’ll have to note (i) where it is within Dennett’s paper, (ii) the publication details of the book in which Dennett’s paper appears, (iii) the publication details of the paper by Nagel (details as presented by Dennett), and (iv) the page number that Dennett gives for it. A note would then read:

7. Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Philosophical Review 83 (1974), 440; qtd in Daniel C. Dennett, “Are Dreams Experiences?” Philo-sophical Essays on Dreaming, ed. Charles E. M. Dunlop (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 242, n.16.

Direct quotations

Only use direct quotations when necessary, and limit the length of any quotation.If you do need to quote directly from a source, use quotation marks (“ ”) if the quota-

tion will take up fewer than four lines, or an indented block if it’s longer. Such an indented block is single-spaced, and is not normally enclosed in quotation marks.

Whether a quotation is between quotation marks or in an indented block, it should in principle be unchanged. However, the following alterations are possible:

● square brackets “[ ]” to enclose a helpful paraphrase (one that doesn’t change the meaning) or a comment or explanation

● “[sic]” to reassure readers that you are quoting accurately even though the content, phrasing or spelling might make them think otherwise

● “. . .” (an ellipsis) to show an omission (one that does not change the overall meaning). Optionally, an ellipsis is within square brackets: “[. . .]”

● use of double quotation marks for what are originally singular quotation marks, and vice versa

● emphasis of part of the text (usually with italics) – as long as you note thisA little explanation for some of these:Only use “[sic]” for what a well-informed reader might well think was a typing error.

An example:Some market shares may even have been lost forever. To other Primeur wines from Spain and Italy (like the Novello), to good substitutes for ordinary Bourgogne and Bordeaux from the newly opened markets in Southeastern Europe, to new wine countries in the America’s [sic] (the United States, Chile) and ironically also in the Pacific itself (Australia and New Zealand).55

Do not use “[sic]” merely in order to show your disagreement.If the passage you want to quote already has an ellipsis, say so, in order that the

55Jaap van Ginneken, Collective Behavior and Public Opinion: Rapid Shifts in Opinion and Communica-tion (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003), 81. (America’s should of course be Americas.)studyguide.odt

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ellipsis won’t be misunderstood as yours. See the footnote for the following example:Duchess Meg was pining slowly and surely away . . . One morning, in Spring-time, she altogether vanished.56

English provides a choice between single quotation marks ‘ ’ and double quotation marks “ ” for quotations. Thus you’ll see such passages as

The only difference in the two performances was that for the later one he needed more time to “revive” the entire situation in which the experiment had originally been carried out. . . .57

with double quotation marks, andDebates about the relative successes and failures of these changes in agri-cultural production continue, but Norman Borlaug, sometimes termed ‘the Father of the Green Revolution’, remains unknown.58

with single quotation marks. You too have a choice (although you should be consistent, and a particular style guide may demand the one rather than the other59). But whichever you use, change nested quotation marks so that they contrast. Therefore if you’re using double quotation marks (as we do), then:

. . . “[F]or the later [experiment] he needed more time to ‘revive’ the entire situation” (Luria 1968, 18) . . . . Willis points out (2006, 46) that “Norman Borlaug, sometimes termed ‘the Father of the Green Revolution’, remains unknown”.

But if you’re using single quotation marks, then:. . . ‘[F]or the later [experiment] he needed more time to “revive” the entire situation’ (Luria 1968, 18) . . . . Willis points out (2006, 46) that ‘Norman Borlaug, sometimes termed “the Father of the Green Revolution”, remains unknown’.

Here’s a passage that already has italics for emphasis. Optionally, you can point out that they aren’t your additions: see the footnote.

. . . the thoughts, feelings, and actions of people may be linked in profoundly different ways. They may be linked in a tight, direct, and relatively unmediated way. This results in the kind of alternative social behavior usually identified as typical collective or mass behavior. But they may also be linked in a loose, indirect, and highly mediated way. That results in the kind of conventional social behavior we are used to in most of ordinary life.60

If you wanted to add emphasis to that, you’d need to explain. Below is one solution. (Again, see the footnote.)

. . . the thoughts, feelings, and actions of people may be linked in profoundly different ways. They may be linked in a tight, direct, and relatively un-mediated way. This results in the kind of alternative social behavior usually identified as typical collective or mass behavior. But they may also be linked in a loose, indirect, and highly mediated way. That results in the kind of

56Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson: Or an Oxford Love Story (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1952), 54. (Ellipsis in the original.)

57A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory (New York: Basic, 1968), 18–19. (Note the double quotation marks.)

58Katie Willis, “Norman Borlaug (1914–)”, pp. 45–50 of David Simon, ed., Fifty Key Thinkers on Develop-ment (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 45–46. (Note the single quotation marks.)

59Some style guides prescribe both and some writers use both, perhaps one kind for words and phrases that are being discussed and the other for actual quotations. We don’t recommend such distinctions.

60Van Ginneken, Collective Behavior and Public Opinion, 84. Original emphasis.studyguide.odt

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conventional social behavior we are used to in most of ordinary life.61

Let’s see how a number of these changes can be made to a single passage. First, the original. A philosophy book says:

It is easy to think of familiar situations by which Black’s account of humbug appears to be unproblematically confirmed. Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about “our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.” This is surely humbug. As Black’s account suggests, the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs that he himself regards as false, concerning such matters as whether our country is great, whether it is blessed, whether the Founders had divine guidance, and whether what they did was in fact to create a new beginning for mankind. But the orator does not really care about the Founding Fathers, or about the role of the deity in our country’s history, or the like. At least, it is not an interest in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his speech.62

Out of context, this is a bit mystifying. What is “Black’s account”? Also, it is very unusual for a student paper to need such a long quotation. How best to shorten and alter the passage depends on the new context and the purpose, but here’s one solution, with emphasis explained in its footnote:

Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about “our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.” This is surely humbug. As [Max] Black’s account [in The Prevalence of Humbug] suggests, the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs that he himself regards as false, concerning such matters as whether our country is great, whether it is blessed, whether the Founders had divine guidance, and whether what they did was in fact to create a new beginning for mankind. But the orator does not really care about [these matters]. . . .63

Working a citation or quotation into a sentence

Imagine that you are studying and writing a paper on art, specifically the English painter Stanley Spencer.64 More specifically, you are studying Spencer’s painting during the Second World War of shipbuilders at work in Port Glasgow, Scotland.

You look through Duncan Robinson’s book Stanley Spencer, published in 1990 by Phaidon (then based at Oxford). On p. 92 of this book you are particularly interested by the following paragraph:65

In Port Glasgow Spencer’s old affection for the human race was rekindled. Like Cookham, Clydeside revealed a strong sense of community; like the soldiers he fought beside in Macedonia, the shipbuilders operated under orders, a structured work force of individuals who laboured together from

61Van Ginneken, Collective Behavior and Public Opinion, 84. Underlining added.62Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 16–17.63Frankfurt, On Bullshit, 16–17; emphasis added.64A little background information: Spencer (1891–1959) came from Cookham, west of London, and had

worked as a hospital orderly in Macedonia during World War I.65Two explanations: “[pl. 74]” means “plate 74”, a reproduction elsewhere in the book of a work by

Spencer; note 3, pointed to at the very end, refers the reader to p. 163 of Maurice Collis’s earlier book Stanley Spencer. (We have reproduced such minutiae as “[pl. 74]” and “3” in order to explain citation; this should never be done within a paper.)studyguide.odt

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shift to shift like an army of ants crawling in and out of the vast steel hulks of their own constructing. But as his innumerable sketches and studies show [pl. 74], Spencer saw the workmen as individuals, whether they were hammering or drilling, welding or rivetting, or simply at ease, perched on the blade of a propeller and eating a sandwich. For the artist who had found significance in the drudgery of sluicing a hospital washroom, the concentrated activity of the men in the shipyards inspired a kind of awe: “I was as disinclined to disturb them,” he explained, “as I would be to disturb a service in the church.”3

How you might cite any of this would depend on your purpose. Below are a few ways, each using the “author–date” system (see p.22 above). (Each will look strange by itself, but try to imagine it within a paragraph of your own in your paper about Spencer.)

● Spencer was attracted by the community and work in Port Glasgow (Robinson 1990, 92).

● The workers at Clydeside were like “an army of ants” (Robinson 1990, 92).● Robinson (1990) describes the workers at Clydeside as like “an army of ants” (92).● As Robinson puts it, the workers at Clydeside were like “an army of ants” (1990, 92).● Robinson (1990, 92) claims of the Port Glasgow works that “[Spencer’s] innumer-

able sketches and studies show [that he] saw the workmen as individuals”.● For Spencer, Clydeside combined elements of both Cookham and Macedonia

(Robinson 1990, 92).● Spencer showed great respect for the Clydeside workers: “I was as disinclined to

disturb them . . . as I would be to disturb a service in the church” (Collis 1962, 163; qtd Robinson 1990, 92).

If you wrote any of these you would have to explain in a bibliography or list of refer-ences at the end of your paper what “Robinson 1990” meant. And “Collis 1962, 163” in that last citation would require adding Collis’s book to the list. Your bibliography should therefore list

● Robinson, Duncan. 1990. Stanley Spencer. Oxford: Phaidon. and perhaps also

● Collis, Maurice. 1962. Stanley Spencer. London: Harvill.If you used notes instead, you’d write something like one of:● Spencer was attracted by the community and work in Port Glasgow.5

● The workers at Clydeside were like “an army of ants”.5

● Robinson describes the workers at Clydeside as like “an army of ants”.5

● As Robinson puts it, the workers at Clydeside were like “an army of ants”.5

● Robinson claims of the Port Glasgow works that “[Spencer’s] innumerable sketches and studies show [that he] saw the workmen as individuals”.5

● For Spencer, Clydeside combined elements of both Cookham and Macedonia.5

● Spencer showed great respect for the Clydeside workers: “I was as disinclined to disturb them . . . as I would be to disturb a service in the church”.5

The number 5 was chosen at random for these illustrations: the actual number for any note would of course be assigned by the software.

The note itself would be the same for any of these other than the last; for the last it would specify both the page in Collis’s book and also the page in Robinson’s book. So it would be one or other of:

5. Duncan Robinson, Stanley Spencer (Oxford: Phaidon, 1990), 92.5. Maurice Collis, Stanley Spencer (London: Harvill, 1962), 163; qtd in

Duncan Robinson, Stanley Spencer (Oxford: Phaidon, 1990), 92.

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Style guides

A number of style guides give their readers detailed advice for citation methods and other editorial decisions. A very versatile and helpful one is The Chicago Manual of Style (often simply referred to as “Chicago”). It’s what we use here (except where noted otherwise). It is big and heavy (in part because it contains a lot of material for book authors and designers as well as students) and rather expensive, so there’s also a shorter and simpler version for students: A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, by Kate Turabian. The differ-ences among the various editions needn’t concern you;66 use whichever you can get hold of easily. Here’s what you’ll find at Hosei:

● The Chicago Manual of Style. 13th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Library, B4: {R021/19}

● The Chicago Manual of Style. 14th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Library, B1: {R021/19/14}

● The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. GIS Reference Room: {021/CH}

● Turabian, Kate. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 6th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Library, B4: {836/59}

● Turabian, Kate. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers. 7th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. GIS Reference Room: {836.5/TU}, Library, B4: {836/96}

And you’ll always be able to access:“Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide.” The Chicago Manual of Style Online.

http://sn.im/cmos_cite (chicagomanualofstyle.org).However, a particular teacher, course or purpose may demand some alternative style.

These may include:APA: The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 5th ed.

Washington, DC: APA, 2001. GIS Reference Room: {140.7/AM}. 6th ed. Washington, DC: APA, 2001. GIS Reference Room: {140.7/AM}.67

LSA: “Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America: Language Style Sheet”. http://sn.im/lsa_style (lsadc.org).

MHRA: MHRA Style Guide: A Handbook for Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses. Modern Humanities Research Association. Available free of charge as a PDF file from http://sn.im/mhra_guide (mhra.org).

MLA: Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2005. GIS Reference Room: {836.5/GI}

These differ on such matters as “up” versus “down” capitalization, and whether to put “p.” in front of a page number: nothing exciting or dramatic.

Good online guides to multiple styles include:● “Citation and style guides”. Concordia University Libraries.

66In short, coverage of computer- and internet-related matters has increased. Aside from this, the 15th edition adds a chapter on “Grammar and Usage”, but this is poor and better ignored. Geoffrey K. Pullum, “The Chicago Manual of Style – and Grammar”, Language Log, 2 February 2005, http://sn.im/cms_and_g (upenn.edu), accessed 12 February 2012. This points out mistakes in the 15th edition, but it’s clear that serious problems remain in this chapter within the 16th edition (which we have not yet seen).

67The first printing of the 6th edition has various misprints. See “Reprint Corrections, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition”, http://sn.im/apa_corrections (apastyle.org), accessed 16 March 2012. studyguide.odt

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http://sn.im/concordia_styles (concordia.ca).● “How to cite references”. Murdoch University Library.

http://sn.im/murdoch_styles (murdoch.edu.au).● “Research how do I . . .” Pollak Library, California State University Fullerton.

http://sn.im/pollak_styles (fullerton.edu).(Don’t confuse these books and websites with guides to written style, on which see

p.33 below.)

Online citation-source generators

Some services offer a web interface by which you type information into fields and produce a correctly formatted citation source. These include:

● Citation Machine (for Chicago, APA and MLA): http://citationmachine.net/● KnightCite (for Chicago, APA and MLA):

http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/

The nitty-gritty

Sentences and paragraphs

Every paragraph should make one point, and normally this point should be expressed concisely in a topic sentence, which is usually the first one of the paragraph.

A series of short sentences is tiring for the reader, and a series of long sentences is boring. Vary the lengths.

Clarity and precision

Be as clear as possible. Don’t say “in the past” – this may mean last month, two years ago, or three centuries ago. Don’t say “hundreds” if you can instead say “two or three hundred”. And so forth.

Consider Bhutan. It lies between China and India, and when compared with either, it’s a small country. Its area is 38,394 sq km.68 Outside an India/China context, can we call it small? If compared with Japan (377,915 sq km), yes; if compared with Taiwan (35,980 sq km), no.69 That it’s smaller than Japan, larger than Taiwan, and has an area below the median or mean for countries (nations and autonomous areas)70 are all matters of fact; but out of context, small is vague.

Technical terms

It may seem to the impatient reader that certain academic disciplines use technical terms primarily in order to impress. And there may be some truth to this. But far more often, technical terms are used for a reason. As an example, the word sleepwalking is divided by linguists into three morphemes (sleep|walk|ing) because no everyday alter-native to the word morpheme will do as good a job: “parts”, for example, would be just

68“Bhutan”, The World Factbook (CIA), 15 February 2012, http://sn.im/wfb_bt (cia.gov), accessed 19 March 2012.

69“Japan”, The World Factbook (CIA), 6 March 2012, http://sn.im/wfb_ja (cia.gov); “Taiwan”, The World Factbook (CIA), 7 March 2012, http://sn.im/wfb_tw (cia.gov); both accessed 19 March 2012.

70“Country Comparison: Area”, The World Factbook (CIA), n.d., http://sn.im/wfb_areas (cia.gov), accessed 19 March 2012.studyguide.odt

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as good for other divisions (e.g. s|l|e|e|p|w|a|l|k|i|n|g); and even “meaningful parts” might well exclude ing, which probably has no meaning.

So use the correct terms for what you are writing about. For psychology, use the appropriate psychology terms; for international relations, use the appropriate IR terms, and so forth.

Accuracy in names

When writing a foreign name, never convert back from katakana and never guess. Instead, find out the correct form and use it. As an example, the original title of the 1996 film ジキル&ハイド is not Jikiru and Hide or even Jekyll and Hyde; it’s instead Mary Reilly.71

Foreign terms

Italicization of foreign-language terms: You should italicize all Japanese and other foreign-language terms (matoi, marcassin72) except for those that standard English-language dictionaries show have entered the English language (“kimono”, “canard”73).

Japanese personal names: If you are mainly writing about the period before Meiji, write Japanese personal names in the Japanese order (“Katsushika Hokusai”, not “Hokusai Katsushika”). If you are mainly writing about the period after Edo, use the order that you prefer (or that your instructor prefers). If your subject matter straddles these periods, it is better to standardize on one order.

Japanese characters (kanji and kana): Provide characters at the first mention of a person, placename, literary work, era name, or other Japanese term that may not be known to the reader: “Katsukawa Shunshō (勝川春章) and Katsushika Hokusai”.

Romanization of Japanese: Use any one of the Hepburn (revised or modified), Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems to render Japanese words in the Roman alphabet.

A full description of these systems and how they differ is beyond the scope of this booklet.74 Briefly, though, Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki are close to each other but Hepburn is very different; as an example, the former two represent 新宿 as “Sinzyuku” and Hepburn represents it as “Shinjuku”. Use diacritics where the romanization system demands them: for example, for 川合玉堂 not “Kawai Gyokudo” but “Kawai Gyokudō”.

After deciding on one standard, you should use it throughout your paper. But for personal names, use the clear preference of the person whose name it is (for example, for the artist 靉嘔, not “Aiō” but “Ay-O”); likewise for institutions, corporations, etc

71 This is the kind of question for which Wikipedia can be useful. Here’s the procedure: (1) Look up the title (or name) that you know in Wikipedia of that language (so if you know the Japanese title, look it up in Japanese Wikipedia), and quickly check that it is indeed about your subject and not something else. (2) Click on the link to the article on the same subject in Wikipedia of the language that interests you (probably English), and check that it too is indeed about your subject and not something else. (3) Click on one or two links from that second article to reliable sources to be doubly sure of this. (4) Note down the title.

72Matoi: 纏. Marcassin: French term for a young wild boar, and therefore a term that appears in restaur-ant menus.

73Canard, originally the French for “duck”, is used in English to mean “story that’s widely believed but untrue”.

74See “Hepburn romanization”, Wikipedia, last edited by Skullketon on 7 January 2012, http://sn.im/rom_hep ; “Kunrei-shiki romanization”, Wikipedia, last edited by Lmatt on 3 January 2012, http://sn.im/rom_kunrei ; “Nihon-shiki romanization”, Wikipedia, last edited by Lmatt on 3 January 2012, http://sn.im/rom_nihon .studyguide.odt

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(not “Hōsei” or “Sonī”, but “Hosei” and “Sony”). Also, do not alter the spellings within book and other titles, or those within quotations.

Romanization of Chinese: Give Chinese names in Pinyin (拼音), not the Japanese on-yomi. Thus “Zhou Enlai” for 周恩来, not “Shū Enrai”. You may additionally supply hànzì (Chinese characters) if doing so might be helpful.

Romanization of Korean: Give well-known Korean names as they are normally given in English (e.g. “Seoul”), and other Korean names according to one of the standard romanization systems. Do not just romanize whatever is the Japanese pronunciation (e.g. the on-yomi of hanja). Thus “Park Chung-hee” (the conventional form) for 박 박박=朴正

熙, and not “Paku Chonhi” or “Boku Seiki”. Because of the many possible ambiguities of romanized Korean, it’s helpful also to provide hangul and/or hanja for a name that is not very well known.

Yourself (not)

If your subject is alimony or Buddhist philosophy, then write about it. Don’t write about yourself, or even give the impression that you are doing so. Avoid “I”, “me”, “my”, unless you have a very good reason. But if you do have a good reason, go ahead and use it – either “we” (to mean one person) or a windy formula such as “the present writer” is far worse.

In particular, avoid “I think” (as well as more wordy alternatives, such as “it seems to me that”). You may be tempted to use it for any of several reasons. For an idea that has just occurred to you? No, work on the idea before presenting it. For an idea that you cannot be sure is entirely right, but after long thought are fairly sure is right? Then go ahead and present the idea, without a personal disclaimer. For a factual statement that is probably correct, but possibly wrong? Then use seems or probably or some other alter-native in which “I” is not necessary.

Grammatical correctness, register, etc

If you’re not a native speaker of English, and perhaps also if you are, go through every sentence of what you have written, checking that the verb agrees with its subject.

Your word processor may have a function called “grammar check” or similar. Its results may or may not be worth a look. Find out for yourself: if it seems to be useful, use it; if not, forget it.

Many teachers believe that contractions (such as isn’t for is not) sound too casual for academic use – that they’re not in a suitable register. It’s therefore safer to avoid these. Words that a dictionary labels “informal” or “slang” should be avoided too.

But don’t aim at a distinctly formal register. For example, commence is a formal word, but it has no advantage over begin or start, both of which are neutral (used both informally and formally). Indeed, it has drawbacks: If your writing is littered with commence and such unnecessary formality, the result is likely to be boring, perhaps even ridiculous.

A short guide such as this typically recommends one or other guide to good written style.75 This one does not, because time spent with the better of these guides is more effectively spent reading academic material on your subject, and also because even the most highly regarded of such guides tend to be full of claptrap. (As a prominent

75This is a different matter from citation/editorial style – for which there are recommendable books; see p.30 above) – although some books combine or confuse the two.studyguide.odt

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example, a perennial bestseller is William Strunk and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style:76 much of its content is about grammar and is wrong;77 and its advice about style is silly too.78) The way to write well is through a lot of practice, and the way to write a particular paper better is via a series of drafts, each thoughtfully revised from its predecessor.

Spelling

Run a spell check before printing your paper. Correct spelling is not just a matter of form; it also helps readers to understand. Remember that computer spell-checks are unintelligent (for example, not knowing whether the writer intends “there”, “their” or “they’re”, and thus allowing “they lost there socks”) and that you will have to use your own brain to check through your work again after running a spell check.

If you are sure that a technical term, author’s name or similar that’s not recognized by the checker is correct, add it to the “dictionary” of the spelling checker. Thus if you are citing work by the psychologist Ellen Bialystok and are sure of the spelling of her sur-name, get your software to learn it – any later misspelling (“Bialystock”, “Byalistok”, etc) will then be much more conspicuous.

It’s likely that your spelling checker for English expects US spelling. If you’re writing for a teacher who is more likely to use British spelling, don’t worry: teachers are happy with either US or British spelling.

Capitalization

When writing titles – whether of your own paper, of books or papers by others, or of newspapers, films, etc – you have a choice between the “up” and the “down” style of capitalization.

In “up” style, you should capitalize not only names but also nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. However, unless they are positioned at the beginning of the title or subtitle, you shouldn’t capitalize articles, prepositions, coordinators (and, but, or), or to in infinitives. Examples:

● Pleasing the Four Gods: Shijin sōō, Site Selection, and Site Adaptation● Discrimination between /au/ and /ao/ by Non-native Speakers of Japanese● Eugene Richards’ Dorchester Days as a Political Statement

In “down” style, all words are lowercase except for the first word of the title or subtitle, as well as words (e.g. names) that have to be capitalized even in normal text. Examples:

● Pleasing the Four Gods: Shijin sōō, site selection, and site adaptation79

● Discrimination between /au/ and /ao/ by non-native speakers of Japanese

76Time has put this among “the 100 best and most influential [books] written in English since 1923”,“All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books”, Time, n.d., http://sn.im/time_100_swes (time.com), accessed 12 February 2012. Just one example of adulation of this book by a university teacher of writing: “Read [The Elements of Style]. Memorize it. Live it.” Jack Lynch, “Guide to Grammar and Style”, Rutgers University, http://sn.im/rutgers_swes (rutgers.edu), accessed 12 February 2012.

77Geoffrey K. Pullum, “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice”, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 April 2009, http://sn.im/fifty_stupid (chronicle.com), accessed 12 February 2012.

78Geoffrey K. Pullum, “Those Who Take the Adjectives from the Table”, Language Log, 18 February 2004, http://sn.im/adjec_table (upenn.edu), accessed 12 February 2012.

79The “Four Gods” are so capitalized because they (四神) have this as a collective name. (Compare “The relations of the Czech Republic with its four neighbours”.)studyguide.odt

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● Eugene Richards’ Dorchester Days as a political statement80

For “up” style you have to know which “part of speech” (noun, preposition, etc) every word is, and the style guides disagree over the exact rules. “Down” style is therefore easier to get right, and we recommend it.

Presentation

Tables and illustrations

Place tables and illustrations as close as possible to the parts of the text to which they relate. Give each table or illustration a number and a caption, capitalize the words as you would a title using either “up” style or “down” style. Here’s an example:81

The present study attempts to investigate whether the power to conform to group judgments is sufficiently strong to override status differences commonly said to have considerable influence within Japanese institutions such as universities. The experi-ment employed the pairs of cards (Fig. 2) made famous in Solomon Asch’s experi-ments of the 1950s in a Japanese university setting, as individual fourth-year student participants were given to understand that they were surrounded by a group of four first-year co-participants (in reality, first-year confederates of the experi-menter) when asked to identify which of the lines on one card was of the same length as the line on the other card.

Paper

Use white A4 paper.Print your homework on one side only, or on both sides, depending on the preference

of the teacher. Make sure that legibility of one side is not impaired by what’s on the other side.

Lettering

Text must be printed in black.Choose a sober typeface that is easy to read in large quantities, such as Helvetica or

Georgia. Avoid Century, which is particularly ugly. When choosing a typeface, remember that one that’s unusually distinctive is probably tiring and irritating in large quantities. For your standard body text, use a size no smaller than 11-point and no larger than 12 (or 13, if it’s an unusually small typeface). You can use a size one or two points smaller for notes, bibliography, table contents, and captions.

80Dorchester Days is a book of photographs by Eugene Richards. If this too were in the “down” style, it would be Dorchester days, but titles within titles are normally in “up” style.

81For our example we’ve employed a copyleft image from http://sn.im/asch_cards within Wikimedia Commons. It was created by Wikimedia Commons user Nyenyec and is licensed under the Creative Com-mons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License, at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ .studyguide.odt

Fig. 2. Test cards

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Line and paragraph spacing

For your regular text, set your line spacing to 1.5 times or double the normal mini-mum so that corrections and comments can be more easily inserted. Notes, biblio-graphy, table contents, and block quotations may be single-spaced.

Get your word processor to use a paragraph style that either (a) drops the start of a new paragraph a few millimetres below the expected position of a new line, or (b) in-dents the start of a new paragraph by the equivalent of three or four letters. (Do not indent by hitting the space bar.)

Page numbers

For a short paper, get the software to number all pages consecutively at the bottom centre, bottom right or top right. For a paper that has any “front matter” (title page, abstract, preface, acknowledgments, contents page), start the numbering after this, on the first page of the main text.

Top page

At the top of your first page, you should include● your name● the instructor’s name and/or the title of the course● the date of submission● the title of your paper

Here’s an example:

Copyleft notice

This work was created by and is copyright ©Peter Evans (GIS, Hosei University, Tokyo) and Ellen Van Goethem (Faculty of Humanities, Kyushu University, Fukuoka); and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License, at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ . In short: you are free to share it and make a derivative work from it on condition that (i) you attribute it appropriately, and that (ii) you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

studyguide.odt

Yamada Hanako09x0001Professor Noam EinsteinApril 1 2012

Pleasing the Four Gods:Shijin sōō, site selection, and site adaptation