NOTE: THE PRESENTATION BELOW IS A SUMMARY OF A LONGER ACADEMIC

COURSE BELONGING TO PROF. BROWN, UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST,

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

TYPES OF ACADEMIC ESSAY/ARTICLE

Your assignment is to write a

 - discussion / analytical essay/article (deal with you own and/or some critics’ reasoned,
impersonal, detached and logical opinions on a controversial topic).

Your purpose:
- Read critically, with a purpose, a certain amount of materials;
- Analyse, argue and interpret the collected materials;
- Be original;
- Organize your material in a logical order
Presentation
You should consider the following rules in academic writing:

Associate Professor Dr. Magda Teodorescu

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Referring to Sources

You don’t need reference to sources when your essay/article contains either original ideas or
that kind of information you can find in any book. Otherwise, you should use one of the four
methods of citation. The first two are the commonest, namely, the MLA (Modern Languages
Association) and the Oxford and Cambridge style.

The MLA style recommends in-text citation. You need it when you quote, paraphrase or use
the information from certain sources. Here is an example:
The Interviewer looked and at last saw the butterfly though he failed to see the cat (Wolf, 195).
If you continue to use this source, in the next quotation you don’t need to mention the author
anymore, the page of the book will do:
According to Virginia Wolf, Roger Fry showed him a chair, saying that was a ‘conversational
chair’ (195).
If you quote from several books of the same author, then you need to mention the title of the
book you are quoting from:
Most writers, to hear them talk, believe in the existence of a spirit, according to the age they live
in, the Muse, Genius, and Inspiration (Wolf, Captain’s Death Bed, 3).
If you refer to more than one author, give their surnames. For example: Frampton and Koetter,
5). If there are more than three authors, give the surname of the first followed by “et al” (Latin:
and others).
If you refer to a source found in a book quoted by the author of that book, one that you didn’t
actually read, you mention in brackets like this: qtd. in Wolf, 195.
This style of citation replaces the footnotes. However, you can use footnotes for
your own remarks.

Works cited (Bibliography)

I. Books
a)
Surname, First name. Title of Book. Place of publication:
Publisher’s name, Year

b) A book with an editor

Briggs, Katharine, ed. British Folk-tales and Legends. London: Routledge, 1977
c) A book with two or three authors/editors:
Gent, Lucy and Nigel Llewellyn, eds. Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in
English Culture c. 1540-1660. London: Reaktion, 1990
d) A book with more than three authors/editors
Carrithers, M., et al. The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History.
Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1985.
e) A translation
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. A.D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986
(Brown, 2011)

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II. Articles
a) For an article in a book:

Surname, First name. “Article Title.” Book Title. Ed. First name Surname.
Place of publication: Publisher’s name, Year. pages

b) For an article in a journal:

Surname, First Name. “Article Title.” Journal Title Volume Number: Issue
(Year): pages

III. Electronic sources

a) CD-roms:

Title. CD. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of issue

b) Websites:

Author’s surname, name. “Title of article”. The overall title of the

website/ or Home Page if there is no title. Date of publication or last
updated information (if any). Name of institution sponsoring the
website (if any). Date you accessed the site < http: // www. etc

IV. Referring to unpublished work

This addresses lecture notes taken during your courses. For example:

Teodorescu, Magda. Lecture. Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, 2014

The Oxford and Cambridge Style

This style is mainly used in English-speaking countries and is given various names, such as:
the numbered-note style, the footnote/endnote style or, the running notes style.

Basically, whenever you quote a book, paraphrase an opinion in a book you place the
information in footnotes/endnotes. Preferably, endnotes are used in longer essays, such as
dissertations, books, etc.

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 Surname, Name/Initials. Title. Number of edition if not the first. Place of
publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Page number(s)

In many occasions, you have to quote the same source several times. To spare yourself the effort
of repeating the same footnote, you can use this:

- Op. cit. which in Latin means: opere citato, that is ‘quoted work’.

- Ibid. which is ibidem, meaning “in the same place”. You can use it when you refer to
exactly the same book cited in a previous footnote or endnote.

- Passim, meaning “scattered”; you use it if the content can be found in various parts of
the book/article.

Works cited (Bibliography)

It isn’t difficult at all to do an alphabetical list of the works you used in your essay/article. You
simply use the footnotes/endnotes without mentioning the page number. For example:

Surname, Name/Initials. Title. Number of edition if not the first. Place of

publication: Publisher, Year of Publication

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is defined by many academic institutions which make their mission to punish any
attempt at plagiarism. Here is the definition given by the University of London:

Plagiarism is defined as the presentation of another person's thoughts or words or artefacts or software as
though they were a student's own. Any quotation from the published or unpublished works of other
persons must, therefore, be clearly identified as such by being placed inside quotation marks, and
students should identify their sources as accurately and fully as possible. A series of short quotations from
several different sources, if not clearly identified as such, constitutes plagiarism just as much as does a
single unacknowledged long quotation from a single source. Equally, if a student summarises another
person's ideas, judgements, figures, software or diagrams, a reference to that person in the text must be
made and the work referred to must be included in the bibliography.

Now, what should you do in order to avoid charges of plagiarism? First of all, use your own brain to
elaborate an essay/article. In many cases, students think that if they replace a word or two, they will
definitely avoid it, which is far from being true. So, first of all, here are some rules (qtd. in Brown,
Daniela. Lecture. 2011)

1./ Putting quotation marks whenever you give quotations and mentioning the
source at the end of the paragraph
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 2./ Mentioning the source at the end of the paragraph whenever you borrow
(paraphrase) some critic’s idea
3./ Mentioning the source, even if ownership of the idea goes to a seminar or
course teacher. Remember the MLA convention for referring to unpublished
courses.
4./ Starting your sentence with (Some) critics say that… or Critics are of the
opinion that… if you know it is not your idea, but you simply cannot remember
who said that, in what book or article.
5./ NOT copying some critic’s words changing only a few “paramount” terms
like

Published critic Smart student

“One important consideration…” It is important to consider…
DO It is relevant to consider…
NOT “Finally, it is worth mentioning…” One last element worth
mentioning…
DO
“The character is thinking of…” The character is thinking
IT about…1

Acceptable and unacceptable paraphrase (Brown 20)

ORIGINAL TEXT: Joyce Williams et al. Lizzie Borden: A Case Book of Family and Crime in
the 1890s, p.1:

“The rise of industry, the growth of cities, and the expansion of the population were the three
great developments of late nineteenth century American history. As new, larger, steam-powered
factories became a feature of the American landscape in the East, they transformed farm hands
into industrial laborers, and provided jobs for a rising tide of immigrants. With industry came
urbanization the growth of large cities (like Fall River, Massachusetts, where the Bordens lived)
which became the centers of production as well as of commerce and trade.”

UNACCEPRABLE ACCEPTABLE PARAPHRASE

PARAPHRASE/PLAGIARISM
The increase of industry, the growth of cities, and the
explosion of the population were three large factors of
1
Fall River, where the Borden family
lived, was typical of northeastern
industrial cities of the nineteenth

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nineteenth century America. As steam-driven
companies became more visible in the eastern part of
the country, they changed farm hands into factory
workers and provided jobs for the large wave of
immigrants. With industry came the growth of large
cities like Fall River where the Bordens lived which
turned into centers of commerce and trade as well as
production.
PLAGIARISM because:
Only a few words are
changed from the original
(see them in red)
The source is not
mentioned
century. Steam-powered production
had shifted labor from agriculture to
manufacturing, and as immigrants
arrived in the US, they found work in
these new factories. As a result,
populations grew, and large urban
areas arose. Fall River was one of these
manufacturing and commercial
centers (Williams 1).
ACCEPTABLE because:
The student uses his/her
own words to transmit the
information in the original
text
The source is mentioned
e student uses hi