BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

TITLES

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

Although the basic course bibliography will provide you with

READING PRIMARY SOURCES

all the necessary information to write your PECs, you may

WRITING A FIRST DRAFT

want to use other sources, such as books, journal articles,

USING SECONDARY SOURCES

and web sites.

PARAPHRASING AND QUOTING

Plagiarism consists in presenting somebody elses words or

WRITING THE FINAL VERSIONS OF YOUR PECS

ideas as though they were your own. This is unacceptable in

CONTENT NOTES

academic writing (such as a PEC or a paper) and one of the

DOCUMENTING SOURCES

course objectives is to make students aware of the necessity

9.1

to document sources if used.

PARENTHETICAL DOCUMENTATION

9.1.1

BOOKS AND JOURNAL ARTICLES

This guide contains basic instructions for academic writing,

9.1.2

ONLINE SOURCES

including citing and referencing conventions.

9.1.3

TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

9.2

THE LIST OF WORKS CITED

Titles

9.2.1

MONOGRAPHIC BOOKS

Underline or italicise the titles of books, plays, poems

9.2.2

ANTHOLOGIES AND COLLECTIONS

published independently, journals, web sites, films, TV

9.2.3

JOURNAL ARTICLES

programmes, musical and sound recordings and works of art

9.2.4

ONLINE SOURCES

in general (e.g. a symphony or a painting). If the title of a

9.2.5

FILMS AND TV PROGRAMMES

work appears within another title, you can either not

9.2.6

MUSIC AND SPOKEN-WORD RECORDINGS

underline or italicise it, or write it between double quotation

9.2.7

LECTURES

marks. For example:

9.2.8

A SAMPLE LIST OF WORKS CITED. FORMAT ASPECTS

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

10 FINAL NOTE
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

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Use double quotation marks ( ) for works that are part of a

Reading Primary Sources

PECs will require you to write short texts on set topics:

larger work, such as poems or short stories in a collection or

typically, to analyze how an aspect of literary theory is used

articles in journals. Single quotation marks ( ) are used for titles

in literary texts by at least two different authors. It is

within titles:

important to have a clear idea of what the topic requires and

Poes Use of Macbeth in The Masque of the Red Death

plan the reading and writing accordingly. Ideally, the primary

Note that, in English, all words in titles are capitalised, with the

source should be read at least twice: a first reading for a

exception of articles, prepositions and conjunctions (this is not

general impression and a second reading, more focused and

the case with most Romance languages, which follow other

active. This is easy to do in our course, since the set

conventions).

readings are poems, short stories or extracts from longer

narrative texts.

Primary and Secondary Sources

Take notes as you read and select specific verse lines,

In literature research, the literary texts that are analysed, those

stanzas or paragraphs that seem especially relevant and that

which are the basic focus of attention, are called primary

you can refer to in your PECs to exemplify your points. This

sources. On the other hand, books and articles on literary texts

is the most important stage in the process: it is essential that

(literary criticism on the primary sources) are called secondary

your careful reading of the primary texts shows through. Do

sources or secondary literature. For example, in a text on Henry

not attempt to write PECs on texts that you have not read!

James, Daisy Miller is a primary source, whereas Daniel Mark

Fogels Daisy Miller: A Dark Comedy of Manners is a

Writing a First Draft

secondary source.

You should begin by organizing your reading notes. Once

you have a list of ideas to write on, consider whether these
can be associated, compared or contrasted. Structure these
ideas in the most suitable way, depending on the topic.
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

Decide which of these ideas should or could be illustrated with

written.

Conversely,

including

abundant

specific references to the primary sources. Although you may

references will not grant you a good mark.

bibliographic

need to make changes to it, your original plan will make the
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writing process a lot easier.

Paraphrasing and Quoting

If you paraphrase, you express what another person has

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Using Secondary Sources

written in your own words. You still need to acknowledge

In general, it is a good idea to read secondary literature after

authorship, because the idea you chose to paraphrase is

reading the primary source (when you have your own ideas

somebody elses (see Documenting Sources below).

about it) and after writing the first draft of your text. Your draft

If you quote, you reproduce what another person has written

may be complemented and enriched by references to what critics

verbatim, i.e. word per word. Use double quotation marks

and scholars have said about the primary source.

and, if necessary, single quotation marks within double

Since PECs are short, you will need to be very selective with

quotation marks.

bibliography. Although the WWW is an invaluable, readily

Prose quotations of four lines or shorter, and verse

accessible resource, do not rely exclusively on it and consider

quotations of three lines or shorter can be incorporated to the

whether the information provided by certain web sites is

main text using quotation marks (separation of verse lines

authoritative enough (the online course contains links to useful,

should be marked by a slash [/]). In word processed texts,

prestigious web sites).

dramatic dialogue, verse quotations longer than three lines

You may refer to secondary literature by paraphrasing or

and prose quotations longer than four lines are set off from

quoting. Do not feel, however, that you have to refer to other

the main text and not enclosed by quotation marks. All

sources: make your bibliographic references if any relevant

quotations of this length should be indented 2.5 cm from the

and functional. PECs without any bibliographic references will be

left margin.

given a good mark, as long as they are well structured and

To indicate an ellipsis in a quoted text (either in the middle of

a sentence / paragraph / poem, or at the end) the easiest
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

thing is to type three periods in square brackets, with spaces

discuss your drafts with fellow students, to give and receive

between them. The following is a quotation from A Narrative of

constructive feedback.

the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, with an

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ellipsis in the middle:

I carried the knife in, and my master asked to give it him, and I was
not a little glad that I had anything he would accept of, and be
pleased with. [. . .]. My son being now about a mile from me, I
asked liberty to go and see him; they bade me go, and away I went;
but quickly lost myself, traveling over hills and through swamps,
and could not find the way to him.

Content Notes

Do not use footnotes or endnotes to document sources: the

best thing is to use parentheses in the main text (see 9.1
below). Footnotes and endnotes are meant to provide
additional information, or to clarify certain points. They
should appear only if the information they provide is relevant,

Writing the Final Versions of Your PECs

but cannot be easily included in the main text. Examples:

Even in texts as short as those of PECs, it is a good idea to

include a clear introduction and conclusion. In your introduction,

The edition of Uncle Toms Cabin used contains the

original illustrations by Hammatt Billings.

you may briefly refer to the theoretical concept at hand: rhetorical

Quotations of Emily Dickinsons poems reproduce

the printing type, spacing and indentation of the edition
used.

strategies, characterization, binary oppositions, and so on. In

your conclusion, you may summarise the content of the text and /
or insist on its main idea.

If you touch on various aspects, make sure that the final version

Documenting Sources

Both if you paraphrase or quote, your sources must be

of your text is coherent and cohesive: avoid contradictions,

properly documented, for two reasons: it is only fair to

establish connections between ideas and do not deviate from the

acknowledge somebody elses work and also, your reader

main point. If you include quotations from secondary sources,

may be interested in the sources that you use or in the

these should be inserted in your text naturally and effectively.

specific references or quotes.

Revise your PECs for grammar and spelling mistakes. The

All the details about the sources used must appear at the

student forum in the online course will give you an opportunity to

end of your text, in a list of Works Cited. In the text, these

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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

sources can be identified through information provided between

If the authors name appears in your sentence, you will only

parentheses.

need to specify the page number (this applies to all kinds of

paginated sources):

9.1

PARENTHETICAL DOCUMENTATION

Lawrence Buell has referred to the contemporary

parodies of Emersons imaging himself as an animated
transparent eyeball (92).

9.1.1 Books and Journal Articles

According to Lawrence Buell, the transparent eyeball
image is regularly taken as the quintessence of
Emersonianism (92).

It is generally enough to provide the authors family name and

the page number, with no punctuation between them. A
reference

to

Charles

Child

Walcutts

American

Literary

All parenthetical references correspond to entries in the list

Naturalism should be given as in the example:

of works cited, so that bibliographic information about the

Stephen Crane can be considered to have introduced pure

naturalism into American fiction (Child Walcutt 250).

sources cited is readily available.

If you refer to a book by several authors, list their names using

9.1.2 Online Sources

commas (if more than two) or the conjunction and:

If you refer to a signed online article with page numbers,

Anne Bradstreets sense of isolation as a female poet has

been connected with the difficulties experienced by
Charlotte Bront and Emily Dickinson in pursuing their
literary careers (Hedges and Wendt 79-80).

follow the guidelines in the preceding section. Less often,

online sources have numbered paragraphs, in which case
you should provide the paragraph number preceded by the

Follow the same rule for articles appearing in periodicals or

abbreviation par.. If your online source does not specify

volumes by collective authors:

authorship and if it has neither page nor paragraph numbers,

The Twain scholar defined T. S. Eliot as a writer who is as

different from Mark Twain as it is possible for one
Missourian to be from another (Trilling 83).

you should identify your paraphrased or quoted source in the

text. For example:
The W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. web site ranks
Frederick Douglasss narrative as one among the
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

9.2

classics of nineteenth-century American autobiography.

THE LIST OF WORKS CITED

(For instructions on how to include web sites in a list of works

If readers are interested in the complete bibliographic details

cited, see 9.2.4.)

of the works referred to, quoted or paraphrased in your text

(and identified through parenthetical documentation) they will
find them in the list of works cited. The following are

9.1.3 Two or More Works by the Same Author

examples of the most common kinds of sources.

If you have used more than one source by the same author, you
will need to distinguish sources in order to avoid confusion.
Either in the main text or in parentheses, include the works title

9.2.1 Monographic Books

(if short) or an abbreviated version of it. If the works title

The information needed is: authors family and first name,

(complete or abbreviated) appears in parentheses, place it

books title, place of publication, publisher and year of

between the authors name and the page numbers (the authors

publication. These details should appear in this order and

name and the works title must be separated by a comma). In an

punctuated as follows:
Child Walcutt, Charles. American Literary Naturalism,
a Divided Stream. Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Archive
Editions, 1956.

academic text that cites The Educated Imagination and The

Great Code. The Bible and Literature (both by Northrop Frye),
we could find the following parenthetical references:

If the book is by several authors, their names must appear in

In The Great Code, Frye distinguishes between demonic

and apocalyptic imagery (139-140).

the same order as they appear on the title page. The entry
begins with the first authors family name, with the other

It has been argued that the teaching of literature should

begin at the Bible and classical mythology (Frye, Educated
Imagination 110-112).

authors names following (first their name and then their

family name). Names are separated by commas and linked
by the conjunction and, as follows:
Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle and James Arthur
Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900.
New York: Twayne, 1993.
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

page sequence follow. The year of publication appears in
parentheses after the issue/volume number and the page

9.2.2 Anthologies and Collections

sequence, preceded by a colon.

If your reference is to the entire work, the entry in the list of

In some academic journals, issues are instalments of an

works cited should begin with the editors name, followed by the

annual volume and their pages are numbered continuously.

abbreviation ed.:

In this case, specifying the volume number is enough:

Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2007.

Lee, Jee Yoon. The Rude Contact of Some Actual

Circumstance: Hawthorne and Salems East India
Marine Museum. ELH 73 (2006): 949-73.

(Specific details about the edition, such as 7th ed. or Rev. ed.,

If the issues are numbered and have an independent

must be placed after the works title.)

pagination, it is useful to indicate both the issue and the

If your reference is to a specific work or section of the anthology,

volume (or year) number, separated by a period:

the entry begins with the authors name and the title of that

Kirk Thomas, Heather. Kate Chopin: A Primary

Bibliography, Alphabetically Arranged. American
Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 2. 28 (1996): 71-88.

particular work or section (in quotation marks or italicised; see 1

above). The editors name follows the title of the anthology and
the page sequence where the specific work appears is given at
the end. Example:

9.2.4 Online Sources

Irving, Washington. Legend of Don Munio Sancho de

Hinojosa. American Literature to 1900. Ed. Teresa Gibert.
2nd ed. Madrid: Ramn Areces, 2009. 149-154.

For online articles that have not appeared in print, after the
authors name and the title, add the date when the article

9.2.3 Journal Articles

was posted (if specified), the date when you accessed it

These entries begin with the authors name (as above) and the

(preceded by the abbreviation Web) and finally, the URL

articles title in quotation marks. The name of the journal, volume

between the symbols <>. For example:

Al-Shalabi, Nazmi. Nathaniel Hawthorne as an Artist: The
Use of Color in The House of the Seven Gables. American

number and/or issue number, the year of publication and the

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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

Studies Today Online. 26 May 2010. Web. 3 Oct 2010
<http://www.americansc.org.uk/Online/Gablecol.html>.

9.2.6 Music and Spoken-Word Recordings

If you refer to an entire web site include, after its name, the name

These entries begin with the name of the artist (for musical

of the organization or institution that hosts it, the year when it

recordings) or the name of the narrator (for spoken-word

was last updated and the date of access, as follows:

recordings) followed by the abbreviation narr.. The title of

Atlantis Online. AEDEAN (The Spanish Association of

Anglo-American Studies). 2010. Web. 03 October 2010
<http://www.atlantisjournal.org/>.

the recording, the name of the company or publisher and the

year follow. These two examples can be taken as models:
Britten, Benjamin. Billy Budd. Virgin Classics, 2008.
Fleetwood,
Harry,
narr.
Henry
Wadsworth
Longfellows The Song of Hiawatha.. Saland
Publishing, 2008.

9.2.5 Films and TV Programmes

Most film entries contain the following information, in this order:
title (italics or underlined), scriptwriter (if relevant), director, main

9.2.7 Lectures

performers (optional), distributor and year. Example:

Begin with the speakers name, followed by the title of the

The Last of the Mohicans. Screenplay by Christopher

Crowe and Michael Mann. Dir. Michael Mann. Perf. Daniel
Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Morgan Creek
Productions, 1992.

lecture. If the lecture is part of a conference or symposium,

state its title and the name of the organizing institution,
separated by periods. Include also the place where the

A standard entry for a TV programme would include the following

lecture was delivered and the date. For instance:

information, in this order: the name of the episode or specific

Sder, Hans-Peter. Marginalizing the Canon: National

Literature in the Age of Globalization. New
Literatures of Old. Dialogues of Tradition and
Innovation in the Literatures in English. Universitat
Jaume I de Castell. Facultat de Cincies Humanes i
Socials. 25th Nov. 2006.

broadcast (quotation marks), the name of the program (italics or

underlined), the directors name (if relevant), the name of the
channel and the broadcast date.
Edgar Allan Poe. Programacin UNED. La 2 de TVE. 05
June 2009.
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

Buell, Lawrence. Emerson. Cambridge, MA: The
Harvard UP, 2003.
Chandran, Narayana. Poes Use of Macbeth in The
Masque of the Red Death. Papers on Language
and Literature 29. 2 (1993): 236.
Child Walcutt, Charles. American Literary Naturalism,
a Divided Stream. Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota
Archive Editions, 1956.
Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle and James Arthur
Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative, 15501900. New York: Twayne, 1993.
Edgar Allan Poe. Programacin UNED. La 2 de
TVE. 05 June 2009.
Fleetwood,
Harry,
narr.
Henry
Wadsworth
Longfellows The Song of Hiawatha. Saland
Publishing, 2008.
Fogel, Daniel Mark. Daisy Miller: A Dark Comedy
of Manners. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Frye,
Northrop. The Educated
Imagination.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964.
---. The Great Code. The Bible and Literature. San
Diego: Hartcourt Brace, 1982.
Gibert, Teresa. American Literature to 1900. 2nd ed.
Madrid: Ramn Areces, 2009.
Hedges, Elaine and Ingrid Wendt. In her Own Image.
New York: The Feminist Press, 1980.
James, Henry. Daisy Miller, A Study. The Norton
Anthology of American Literature. Vol. II. Ed.
Nina Baym, 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1994. 277315.
Kirk Thomas, Heather. Kate Chopin: A Primary
Bibliography, Alphabetically Arranged. American
Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 2. 28 (1996): 71-88.

9.2.8 A Sample List of Works Cited. Format Aspects

The list must appear following the main text, on a separate sheet
titled Works Cited this title must be centred. All entries are
ordered alphabetically, taking the authors family name or if
there is no author the first word of the entry, ignoring articles.
Hanging indention must be used for entries longer than one line.
If there is more than one entry for the same author, write the
name only in the first entry. In the other entries, the authors
name is replaced by three hyphens and a period (---.). (See
Frye below.)
The following list includes most sources referred to in the
preceding sections:

Works Cited
Al-Shalabi, Nazmi. Nathaniel Hawthorne as an Artist: The
Use of Color in The House of the Seven Gables.
American Studies Today Online. 26 May 2010. Web. 3
October 2010
<http://www.americansc.org.uk/Online/Gablecol.html>.
Atlantis Online. AEDEAN (The Spanish Association of
Anglo-American Studies). 2010. Web. 03 October
2010 <http://www.atlantisjournal.org/>.
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American
Literature. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2007.
Bloom, Harold. Herman Melvilles Moby Dick. New York:
Infobase Publishing, 2007.
Britten, Benjamin. Billy Budd. Virgin Classics, 2008.
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BASIC GUIDELINES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING

The Last of the Mohicans. Screenplay by Christopher
Crowe and Michael Mann. Dir. Michael Mann. Perf.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Morgan
Creek Productions, 1992.
Lee, Jee Yoon. The Rude Contact of Some Actual
Circumstance: Hawthorne and Salems East India
Marine Museum. ELH 73 (2006): 949-973.
Sder, Hans-Peter. Marginalizing the Canon: National
Literature in the Age of Globalization. New
Literatures of Old. Dialogues of Tradition and
Innovation in the Literatures in English. Universitat
Jaume I de Castell. Facultat de Cincies Humanes i
Socials. 25th Nov. 2006.
Trilling, Lionel. The Greatness of Huckleberry Finn.
Huck Finn Among the Critics. A Centennial Selection.
Ed. M. Thomas Inge. Frederick, MD: University
Publications of America, 1985. 81-92.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2010. Web. 03 October
2010 <http://books.wwnorton.com/books/>.

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Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of

Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: MLA, 2009.
Of course, the general guidelines included here must be
adapted to the characteristics of the text you are asked to
produce and to the specific requirements of your teacher.

Final Note

Accurate and consistent referencing will improve the quality of

your written texts. There are several, widely used citation
systems. The guidelines set forth in this document conform to
those contained in the seventh edition of the MLA Handbook,
which you should use if you require more detailed information
and examples, or help on referring to other kinds of sources:

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