English and Cultural Studies

Essay Style Guide

An Introduction to Basic Principles and Practices of
Quotation and Citation
Scholarly writing follows conventions, but these conventions vary according to the
disciplines studied. The ultimate arbiter of written style is usually the publisher of a work,
perhaps a journal or a publishing house. This short guide is not exhaustive, but offers some
important guidelines for the style we wish to see in the Discipline of English and Cultural
Studies at The University of Western Australia.
Style
By Style we mean, in this context, mainly two things. The first is how to quote anothers
work in your own. Because ECS is centred around the interpretation of texts, we will be
constantly referring to texts, and often wishing to show a text in its exact words. For this we
need to quote, and so we need a system for doing so. The second thing is how to reference
work that we either quote from directly, or draw from in other ways. In other words, we need
a system of referencing (citation).
The Purpose of Quoting and Citing in English and Cultural Studies
One thing that sets ECS apart is that we tend to quote and cite in a subtly different way from
other disciplines. Most disciplines quote and cite works as authorities for ideas. We do this
as well, but often we are quoting, say from a novel, not as an authority, but so as to discuss a
passage. In this sense, our quotations are often not authorities, but exhibits, a bit like in a
court of law, that we explain or interpret, or even, to stretch the analogy, as witnesses that we
will interrogate and cross-examine.
What is Quoting?
In written work it is only possible to quote words, and the term quotation is generally used
only in relation to words. In an interactive document, a website for instance, one can use a
screen to quote directly from a movie or television show by inserting a clip, but this would
generally be called something other than quotationperhaps presentation.
If quoting is confined to wordsthat is, to that which can be writtenwe know that words
themselves occur in a range of contexts that might interest us in ECS. We can, for example,
quote words that are spoken, a practice which is common in newspaper reports. In ECS, we
often want to quote dialogue from dramatic texts, such as plays, movies, or television.
More typically we will have access to a written text. Perhaps a script in the case of plays,
movies and television drama. Or, in the case of books, we have before us either prose or
poetry. Quoting prose is easysometimes too easy! We just copy the words out exactly and
put quotation marks around. In the case of poetry, we would need to be mindful of the line

breaks, as they are considered an important element in the form, and part of the ingredients of
a poems meaning.
Quoting: Rules to Follow
The first decision is really determined by the length of the material you want to quote. If it is
relatively short (less than 30 words, or less than 3 lines, are sometimes used as rules of
thumb) then you would generally try and fit the quotation into the tissue of your expository
prose. Perhaps, you could do something like this:
For Laura Mulvey, stopping a digital film evokes [for the spectator] the ghostly presence of the
individual celluloid frame that was the filmic unit of the older cinematic technology. (Mulvey 26)

The key thing here is that the quote maintains the grammar of the sentence that is hosting it.
This can sometimes be difficult and that is why there are ways of removing words (using
ellipsis, ) and adding or substituting words (using square brackets) to help massage a
quotation into grammatical consistency with the sentence of which it is now a part.
If you want to quote a longer section of writing or speech, then you should use the technique
called a block quote. Block quotes should be indented by one tab and have one line-space
above and below. Because block quotes are demarcated spatially they do not need to be
placed in quotation marks. The exception, and it is an important one for us in ECS, is that
dialogue is still placed in quotation marks. So, for the very common case in which we quote
from a novel which contains a passage of dialogue, it would look like this:
Jerry finished his beer and then mashed the can. He shrugged.
You know, he said.
Bill nodded.
Then Jerry said, How about a little run?
Sounds good to me, Bill said. Ill tell the women were going.
(Carver 50)

In this quote, notice how dialogue needs quotation marks even if a block quote as a whole
does not. Also notice how punctuation goes inside the quotation mark, that is, how the
commas and full stops are placed inside the quotation mark in this dialogue.
When discussing poetry, if your argument would be best illustrated by quoting an entire
verse, use a block quote, but if you only need to quote a couple of lines within the body of
your own writing, remember to signal any line breaks by using the forward slash "/", and
also to give line numbers to aid your reader, whom may be working from a different edition,
or commonly these days, online source.
Systems of Citation
Broadly speaking there are two systems of citation in common use, the parenthetical
systems and the footnote / endnote systems. An excellent overview of these systems is
available on the UWA Library website at http://www.is.uwa.edu.au/current-students/guides.
(This link is also promulgated through the relevant CARSCommunication and Research
Skillstutorial.)

In the librarys list, you will see all the major referencing systems. In ECS, we follow the
MLA system, as this is the dominant system for English and Literary Studies. That said, we
will accept citations that follow other systems, provided they are used clearly and
consistently.
The basic operation of the MLA system is given in a single page on the Library site, if you
click on the MLA link. There, you will see that the basis for this system, as with all
parenthetical systems, is a short in-text citation that points to a more detailed list at the end of
your document. In MLA, the in-text citation is author-page number(Johnston 35). In
other parenthetical systems, the in-text citation is author-date(Johnston 2012). MLAs
emphasis on page number shows that it is a system deriving from the practice of textual
criticism, which is often trying to point the reader directly to a page.
The in-text citation is a pointer to the full bibliographic details (author, publisher, place of
publication, date of publication) that are collected in a List of Works Cited. This is placed
at the end of your essay and is listed alphabetically by author.
Thats it!
Once you get the basic format, the further problems all relate to exceptions and twistsHow
do I cite an anonymous web-article? A poem on a vinyl record? Multiple authored essay in
an essay collection with more than one editor? Translation of a medieval Latin manuscript?
Which edition do I cite? And so onthe bulk of most hand-books, including the MLA, is a
list of examples to cope with all of these possibilities.
The down-side of the MLA system is that the hand-book is not freely available online. It
costs about $36 dollars to order it from their website and have it shipped to Australia. But
once you buy it, you also receive life-time access to their online version. Alternatively, copies
are available in the reference section of the library.
Titling
Because we are a textual discipline, we need to observe the common rules for titling works.
The basic rule of thumb here is that if its long it needs a line, if its short quotes work
fine. This corny saying should serve you well. The only trick is that a line means
underline and nowadays it is conventional to italicise instead of underlining the titles of
long works. Here are the main kinds of texts you might encounter:
Long Works
Novel: American Psycho
Anthology: The Waste Land and Other Poems
Play: Major Barbara
Feature Length Movie: The Birds
Television Series: American Dad
Website
Painting or other work of visual art
Newspaper or Journal

Short Works
Story: The Metamorphosis
Poem: Ode to a Grecian Urn
Short Play
Short Film, Music Video
Television Episode
Web-page, or item
Individual art-work in a series
Newspaper or Journal Article

List of Works Cited

Carver, Raymond. Tell the Women Were Going. What We Talk About When We Talk
About Love. London: Vintage Books, 2009 [1981]. 48-56. Print.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th Edition). New York: Modern Language
Association, 2009. Print and Online.
Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion
Books, 2006. Print.