English Literature Writing Guide

English Literature Writing Guide 1 Contents: Guidelines for Essay Writing 3 Writing Examinations 9 Stylesheet 11 Plagiarism 17 Grade Descriptors 18 2 GUIDELINES FOR ESSAY WRITING INTRODUCTION While most of you have already had experience of essay writing, it is important to realise that essay writing at University level may be different from the practices you have so far encountered. The aim of this tutorial is to discuss what is required of an English Literature essay at University level, including: 1. information on the criteria in relation to which your essay will be judged 2. how to plan and organise an essay o Planning an Essay o Essay Structure o Independence and Critical Reading o Use of Secondary Material 3. advice on writing style 4. a final checklist 5. WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA? In assessing essays, your tutors are asked to bear in mind:         Relevance to the essay-subject as it has been set; A well-defined line of argument, with each stage clearly marked; Appropriate, economical, and accurate illustration; Mastery of the relevant background material (contextual, critical, theoretical), and evidence of independent and wide-ranging reading; Evidence of independent thinking about the subject, and, where ideas are taken from critics, ability to apply them to materials of the student's own choice; Crisp expression. Failure to stay within the maximum number of words set for written work will be penalised; Spelling, punctuation, grammar; Accurate and comprehensive referencing of sources and list of Works Cited. 3 HOW TO PLAN AND ORGANISE AN ESSAY Planning an Essay Careful planning is the key to producing a good essay. Do NOT begin to write your essay the night before it is due to be submitted. You should allow yourselves time to consider, plan, write, rewrite and revise, and proof read your essay before its submission. The diagram and questions reproduced below will assist you in planning your essay. 4 ESSAY STRUCTURE Your essay should present a discussion and a reasoned argument: it should not be a set of random reflections on the texts or topic you have chosen. This will require some planning and organisation of your material before you begin to write, to ensure that your argument is coherent and engages directly with the question asked. A good introduction is often the key to a good essay. The first thing you should do is define any complex or potentially ambiguous terms in the question. This can also be one good way of effecting an introduction. Another is to consider why the question might be asked, what makes it interesting, or why it is relevant to the texts you are considering. You might also use your introduction to outline briefly your intentions in writing the essay: but remember that for a 1,000 or 2,000 word essay the introduction will necessarily be brief. 5 The body of the essay of the essay should relate to the issues you outline in your introduction. It also needs a coherent structure: if you have used your introduction to identify the key issues of your discussion, structuring the essay becomes easier, as you can address these issues in separate paragraphs. Make the links and transitions between paragraphs clear. Remember that every paragraph and sentence should contribute directly to your argument. Your essay needs to strike a balance between argument and supporting evidence. Avoid unsupported generalisations. Stating that 'society is a patriarchy' or that 'evil is more interesting than good' without offering evidence to support the assertion is little different from claiming that 'the earth is flat' or 'tall people are more intelligent than short ones'. Even your more particular points about texts or issues always need supporting evidence, often in the form of quotations from the texts. Remember that you may need to explain how your evidence supports your point. Your essay needs a conclusion to avoid it petering out and losing its force. You might use the conclusion to draw together the threads of your argument, to re-visit the original question, or even to point towards new questions that your discussion has opened up. Whatever your conclusion, you should use it to step back slightly from the detail of the preceding argument to re-consider the wider picture. INDEPENDENCE AND CRITICAL READING The purpose of an essay is to develop and present your own thinking about the texts and issues raised by the question. All essays are likely to draw on ideas taken from others, whether from critical books, lectures or discussions. But clearly an essay is not intended to be simply an anthology of others' ideas: those ideas should only be introduced in order to form and advance your own argument, which is both the substance and the purpose of the essay. USE OF SECONDARY (CRITICAL) MATERIAL Critical books and articles are often useful in stimulating your ideas about the literature you are writing on. It is also important to develop some awareness of the ongoing critical debate about works and literary issues; sometimes you may even be asked to write about the critical or theoretical works themselves. But ideas and words from other writers should never simply replace your own, either directly, or in the form of paraphrase. Quoted or paraphrased thoughts and words from another critic should be included in the text of your essay only if you wish to say something about them. You may want to take issue with them, or to develop them, or to illustrate a particular view which you then discuss. It is not helpful to quote from or paraphrase critics simply because you think their words sound more authoritative than your own. While you will often draw on other critics' ideas, you need to distinguish their words and opinions clearly from your own. Students should exercise caution and care in the use of paraphrase in particular. It is imperative that the reader should always be able 6 to distinguish your voice and argument from that of the critics you cite. So avoid simply ventriloquising critical arguments and conduct instead a critical engagement with them. For example, do not accept interpretations in critical works as matters of fact; demonstrate to the reader of your essay the ways in which you have produced a thoughtful response to the critics that you have employed. If you do not ensure that there is no confusion in an essay about the origin of its arguments, you will find that your readers are unable to judge your arguments. You will also lay yourself open to a charge of plagiarism, which is a serious academic offence. (See the section on Plagiarism below). Make sure your essay obeys these rules:  Words drawn directly from another writer should always be put in quotation marks: it is not acceptable to offer them incorporated into the body of your essay as if they are your own, even with minor variations.  If you either paraphrase a critic or other source, give a brief citation within brackets at that point (but see the cautionary note re paraphrasing above). STYLE University level essays should be written in a formal style and demonstrate your understanding of the codes of academic discourse as they relate to the study of English Literature. While there are variations between different disciplines, there are three main characteristics that are common to all academic essays. These are:  An overriding concern to interpret and make meaning through the presentation of arguments;  Careful attention to the marshalling of relevant and valid facts, examples and other kinds of evidence to substantiate or refute arguments and interpretations;  A structure or organisational framework which has not been chosen arbitrarily, but is instead designed to present arguments and evidence in a coherent and logically appropriate form. Clarity and expressiveness of language is obviously particularly important in essays on literature, and the development of an accurate and engaging writing style is one of the aims of a degree in this discipline. 7 FINAL CHECKLIST  Have I completed the cover sheet correctly?  Does my introduction:  Set the question/topic against a wider background?  Clarify my understanding of the question/topic?  Define key or problematic terms?  Outline the approach I will be taking?  Does the main body of the essay:  Present my key points clearly?  Develop an argument in a logical sequence?  Systematically support key points and argument with evidence / examples?  Accurately cite all sources used, even if not quoted directly?  Does my conclusion:  Bring together the main points?  Link back to the question/topic?  State clearly the conlusion(s) of my argument?  Does my essay:  Read clearly throughout?  Make correct use of grammar, syntax and punctuation?  Include a list of all cited sources?  Conform to the word limit set for this assignment? 8 WRITING EXAMINATIONS Examinations can be daunting, but they remain a valuable test of the critical skills you have acquired and of your ability to deploy them. The following paragraphs will help you to understand what is being asked of you in an examination. It is the purpose of exams to enable students to demonstrate width and depth of reading and the ability to develop an argument and support it with illustration. (It is not the purpose of exams to encourage the student merely to write out his or her class essays for a second time, or simply to transcribe notes taken in lectures that have a vague connection with the question set.) You will be expected to show your breadth of reading, and the rubrics on the papers will warn you about repetition of material. Obeying the rubrics is an important part of examination technique; disobeying them leads to major deduction of marks. In writing examination answers, as much as in writing essays, you are seeking to formulate a clear and well-argued response to the question that has been asked. Of course you will not be expected to write in the same detail and depth as in your term essays. It is no good simply laying out all you know about a particular text/author for the examiner's admiration. Take time at the beginning of the exam to choose the questions you wish to answer, making sure that you follow any rubric with care (e.g. one question from Section A, one from Section B, and a third from either); if you violate a rubric, your paper will be penalised (normally this means that the answer in which the rubric is broken has its mark halved). It is a good idea to write out the question at the beginning of your answer as well as numbering it. You should draw up a rough plan but remember to cross it out. Engage directly with the question asked. As with any other essay, you should have an introduction, an argument and a conclusion; the essay should offer a discussion which engages with more than a single point of view on the issues involved. Part of the skill of producing good examination answers is to know what to leave out as well as what to put in. If you have quotations that you want to use, make sure that they are fully illustrative of the point you are making and not just dragged in because you know them. If your answer consists of analysis as well as description, is clearly argued (and written), exhibiting thoughtfulness about the question asked (and perhaps some breadth of knowledge of the course as a whole), it is likely to get a good mark. If you simply describe the contents of whatever text/s you are discussing, with no evidence of analytic skills and/or any attention to the question, it will not do so well. Make sure you are answering the question asked: unthinking repetition or paraphrase of lecture material or course essays is unlikely to fulfil that requirement. Misspelling and/or mispunctuations (e.g. failure to use apostrophes properly; using commas where full stops are needed) give a very bad impression and will also affect your mark. 9 Always divide your time carefully. One very good, very long answer can never achieve a mark high enough to compensate for a second incomplete, overly short or abbreviated answer. Take your time, think, and write clearly. With preparation and thought, exams can be intellectually stimulating rather than an ordeal. They are there to assess your capacity to respond quickly, to write intelligently and clearly in relation to particular questions, and to show your capacity for stimulating and thoughtful written discussion under time pressure. As such they are a valuable part of the transferable skills you are developing at University. 10 III. PUNCTUATION The sense of your essay depends on its punctuation as well as on the words you choose. These are some common problem areas: a. Capitalization. In titles capitalize the first letter of the first word and of all the principal words including nouns and proper adjectives. Examples: To the Lighthouse, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Passage to India, Sons and Lovers, The Novel: Modern Essays in Criticism). Capitalize references to parts of a specific work. Examples: Mahood's Introduction (in Twelfth Night), Morrell’s Preface (in Four English Comedies). b. Exclamation marks should be sparingly used. c. Italics. As well as italicising (or if necessary underlining) the titles of published books, plays, pamphlets, periodicals, and long poems, also italicise foreign words used in an English text (except quotations, titles of articles, proper names and foreign words anglicized through usage). The underlining or italicising of words, phrases or sentences for emphasis should be done sparingly. d. Quotation marks. Be consistent in your punctuation. If you use single quotation marks, use them in the same circumstances throughout. The British system uses single quotation marks first, double quotation marks for quotations within quotations. Example: According to Northrop Frye, ‘The word “grace” with all its Renaissance overtones from the graceful courtier of Castiglione to the gracious God of Christianity, is a most important thematic word in Shakespearean comedy.’ e. Rhetorical questions, i.e., questions asked for effect rather than genuine enquiry, should be sparingly asked in your essay. f. Square brackets. Use them for a parenthesis within a parenthesis, to enclose interpolations in a quotation, or to complete missing information. Example: F.P. Wilson suggests that ‘in Marlowe’s share of the play [Doctor Faustus] there is nothing of predestination and reprobation’. 12 g. Colons and Semicolons. These are often under-used: use them sensibly. In particular, where part of a sentence could stand on its own as a separate sense-unit or sentence (as in the last sentence) it should be preceded by a colon or semi-colon and not just a comma. IV. NAMES OF PERSONS Poets, playwrights, novelists are customarily referred to by their surnames, e.g., Shakespeare, Marlowe, Goldsmith, Woolf. In essays, one refers simply to Byron (rather than Lord Byron) or Tennyson (rather than Alfred Lord Tennyson) or Woolf (rather than Virginia Woolf). Exceptions would include Eliot (which might refer to T.S. or George) or James (where it might refer to Henry or William). Well known authorities cited in your text (e.g., Barthes, Foucault, Freud, Marx) may be referred to similarly. When less well known literary critics are first mentioned in your essay the full name should be given; on subsequent occasions in the same essay the surname only is used. V. NUMERALS In general, numbers of fewer than three digits should be spelled out in words. However, if Arabic numerals are used for numbers over 99, use them also for smaller numbers in the same sentence or related groups of sentences. Dates. Be consistent in your style: either '17 August 1991' or 'August 17, 1991,' but not both. Correspondingly, use either 'August 1991' or 'August, 1991,' but not both; 'in 1981-82' or 'from 1981 to 1982'; '500 B.C.' but 'A.D. 500'. In your text, spell out references to centuries, e.g., 'the nineteenth and twentieth centuries'. VI. QUOTATIONS a. Quote accurately. If you underline words for emphasis, you should indicate that the emphasis is yours. Use ‘sic’ sparingly [within square brackets] to show that the error appears in the original and is not yours. Example: The Home Herald printed the mayor’s letter, which was an appeal to his ‘dear fiends [sic] and fellow citizens’. b. Ellipsis. For ellipsis within a sentence, use three . . . spaced periods, leaving a space before the first period. Quotations that are complete sentences should end with periods even though matter in the original may have been omitted. To indicate ellipsis after the conclusion of a complete sentence, use four periods with no space before the first. . . . c. Integrated quotations. Verse quotations of part of a line or a single line are normally run-on, i.e., integrated in your text and placed within quotation marks. Lines of verse are separated by a slash (/). 13 Example: Cummings admires his father for moving ‘through dooms of love / through sames of am through haves of give’, for his resilience and graciousness of spirit in confronting the vicissitudes of life. Prose quotations of fewer than four lines should be run-on as part of your text, placed within quotation marks, and the sentence which includes the quotation should make grammatical sense. d. Long quotations. When a quotation extends for more than four typed lines of prose or three lines of poetry, it should be introduced by a colon (unless it is run-on) and set off from the text by indenting the entire quotation ten spaces from the left margin. It should be double spaced and there should be no additional space above or below. No quotation marks are required when it has been set off from the text in this way. It should not be italicised and should not be centre-justified. VII. REFERENCES IN THE TEXT Proper referencing is a key part of any essay, allowing your reader (and you, in future) to check or work further with the sources you have used. Accurate and full acknowledgement of these sources also ensures that you avoid any risk of plagiarism – by showing clearly and exactly how and from whom you have derived any ideas or expressions not originally your own. While footnotes and endnotes were once the convention, they have now been replaced by brief citations within the text. Your reader should be able to find the full citation for all of your references in your Works Cited List which should appear at the end of your essay. In-text references should appear in brackets within your main text. Where the identity of the source is apparent from the context, only a page number is required. Where the source is not apparent, you should provide the author’s name and the page number. Examples: According to Fussell, ‘the Oxford Book of English Verse presides over the Great War in a way that has never been fully appreciated’ (159). As one critic has asserted, ‘the Oxford Book of English Verse presides over the Great War in a way that has never been fully appreciated’ (Fussell 159). The Oxford Book of English Verse played a defining role in the culture of the First World War (Fussell 159). Where more than one work by the same author is being cited, then the short title of the relevant work should be included: Example: (Fussell, Great War 159). 14 Content footnotes, on the other hand, may be included but should be kept to a minimum. They should be consecutively numbered (in superscript), single spaced, and appear at the bottom of the page. Example: Where the main text reads: It has been asserted that the Oxford Book of English Verse played a defining role in the culture of the First World War (Fussell 159).1 The content note might read: 1While Fussell’s emphasis on polite reading practices held sway until relatively recently, historical accounts have since emerged which emphasise the importance of popular working class culture in the British trenches. VIII. WORKS CITED A list of all works cited should appear on a new page at the end of your essay, arranged in alphabetical order. Use quotation marks (but not italics or underlining) for titles of articles, essays, short stories, short poems, songs, chapters and sections of books. Use italics or underlining for titles of published books, plays, long poems, pamphlets, periodicals, operas, films and classical works. Please note: the following are just a few examples of the different kinds of entries that you might have to use. If you can’t find what you are looking for here, you should consult 1. A book with a single author: the simplest form of reference. Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. 2. Two or more books by a single author Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. ---. Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. 3. A book by multiple authors Hughes, Linda, and Michael Lund. The Victorian Serial. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. 4. An edited collection of essays Watt, Ian, ed. Pride and Prejudice: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963. 5. A work in a collection 15 Brower, Reuben A. ‘Light and Bright and Sparkling: Irony and Fiction in Pride and Prejudice. ’ Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Watt. Englewood Cliffs , N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963: 62-75. 6. An edition Shakespeare, William. Anthony and Cleopatra. Ed. John Dover Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. ---. Twelfth Night. Ed. J. M. Lothian. London: Methuen, 1975. 7. An article in a journal Reiss, Edmund. ‘Medieval Irony.’ Journal of the History of Ideas 42.2 (1981): 209-26. 8. A web site The quality of web site content varies enormously, from refereed journals by reputable academic presses to discussion groups for teenage fans of Wuthering Heights. You should therefore be particularly cautious about the electronic sources that you use. As with printed sources, there is a prescribed format for the citation of electronic texts. Entries should include (where applicable) the name of the author, title of the web page, title of the site, date of publication, date it was accessed, and url: Jones, Mary. ‘Why read Wordsworth?’ Life and Work of Wordsworth. 2002. 15 Nov. 2004 . 16 PLAGIARISM Plagiarism is the use of material taken from another writer's work without proper acknowledgement, presenting it as if it were your own. While it is perfectly proper in academic study to make use of another person's ideas, to do so under the pretence that they are your own is deceitful. Plagiarism, whether in coursework or examinations, is always taken extremely seriously within the university as it is a form of cheating. Work found to be plagiarised may be penalised, assessed at zero, or not accepted, and in serious cases may lead to disciplinary action being initiated. Work undertaken for our courses is designed to help you develop your knowledge and understanding, and your own powers of analysis and argument. Essays, exams and exam essays assess these skills. Plagiarism therefore undermines the whole purpose of the academic study of literature. For all work for the department’s courses, it is important to be aware of, and to acknowledge the sources of arguments and words. This applies to material drawn from critical books and lectures, but also from the work of other students (including tutorial or seminar discussions) and from the internet and other electronic sources. Lectures, tutorials and seminars must not be recorded or otherwise transmitted, unless there is special dispensation relating to disability (endorsed by the Disability Office). Tutors will check web-based material, as well as other sources, where they have reason to suspect that the writing a student submits does not represent their own ideas, words and arguments. While deliberate plagiarism involves an intention to deceive and is easy to avoid, it is possible to fall unawares into practices which could be mistaken for plagiarism if you are not familiar with the proper means of using and acknowledging material from other writers. Inadequate referencing and inappropriate use of others' material could inadvertently lay you open to charges of plagiarism. Since different subjects involve different uses of material, and may have different conventions about how it should be acknowledged, it is important that in each of their subjects students consult departmental guidelines about the purpose and presentation of written work in that discipline. 17 GRADE DESCRIPTORS All written work you submit is marked in relation to the grade descriptors set out below. The numerical mark you receive should be understood in relation to these descriptors, which itemise for you not only the different aspects of your performance that are being assessed but also what you need to achieve in order to attain a particular class of mark. We assess what you achieve in your written work with reference to four broad areas: Knowledge, Argument and Analysis, Language and Expression, and Scholarly Apparatus. Knowledge covers the extent and depth of your knowledge and understanding of the primary texts, your grasp of the conceptual, formal and historical issues and frameworks relevant to their analysis in this context, and your understanding of the scholarly and critical debates and analyses that bear upon the texts and topic. Argument and Analysis addresses what you manage to do with the knowledge you’ve accumulated – how far you construct a logically clear and coherent argument in response to the question posed, how alert that argument is to textual and conceptual nuance, how wide-ranging your claim, and how aware you are of possible counterarguments that you might need to address. In addition, we’re assessing whether you’ve been able to support your argument convincingly and thoroughly in referring to the primary texts under discussion, so that there’s sufficient evidence cited, and it is sufficiently telling, to ensure that your argument gains purchase on those texts. Finally, we’re looking here to assess how far you’ve managed to make your argument your own, or whether it is too substantially dependent either on lectures, tutorial and seminar discussions, or your reading in the secondary material. Language and Expression focuses on how you say what you say – whether your spelling is good and you write in a grammatically correct fashion, certainly, but also the extent to which your writing is clear and your vocabulary and tone appropriate to the task. We’re also looking here to see how far your sentence and paragraph structure help to support and convey the argument you’re looking to make. Scholarly Apparatus – have you provided references for all cited work, and is it completely and properly clear when you are speaking in your own words, and when you are paraphrasing or borrowing another’s? Is the risk of plagiarism successfully avoided? Are your references in the appropriate format? Is your Works Cited list consistent with the references in your text? These four components are all important, and all related to each other, so we cannot give a fixed and single figure for the proportion of marks available for each one. However, it is fair to say that Knowledge and Argument and Analysis are clearly fundamental, and the balance of strengths and weaknesses in these areas will have a big impact on your overall mark. Some weaknesses in Language and Expression have a more serious impact than others: poor spelling is a problem, and needs to be addressed 18 where possible, but significant problems in sentence and paragraph structure are likely to result in more serious impairment of your work. The descriptors are the same for all years of undergraduate study, but we assume that your work should develop in terms of depth, sophistication and range substantially during your four years of study with us. Consequently, the application of assessment criteria takes account of the year of study in which work has been completed, and expectations are more stringent for Honours assessment. 19