Student Handbook - The School of Language, Linguistics and Film

Electronic Media (e.g. the Internet). As for print media, except:
i) if it is not clear which medium you are referring to, say so immediately after the
title, in square brackets;
ii) if it is not possible to establish when something was posted, write n.d. instead of
the date;
iii) on a new line, give the complete address for the Internet source you are citing,
including, where appropriate, http:// (in angled brackets < >) followed by a
comma;
iv) always give the date when you found something on the Internet, in the form
accessed 20 August 2002. E.g.:
Borrow, George (1996), The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain [online text],
Project Gutenberg
, accessed 20
August 2002.
Bowmal, Paul et al. (1999), ‘Why “Polemics: Against Cultural Studies”?’, parallax
[online journal], 5 (2): 1-2
, accessed 20 August 2002.
Luther, Martin (1996), ‘Letter to the Archbishop of Mainz, 1517’ in The Works of
Martin Luther, ed. and trans. Adolph Spaeth et al. (Philadelphia: A.J. Holman
1915) Vol. 1, pp. 25-28
, accessed 20
August 2002.
Note the capitalisation of words in English titles. In other languages, other rules apply: in
Catalan, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, the normal rules of prose apply; in French,
the first noun and all preceding words are capitalised, the remainder of the title being treated
like normal prose.
Quotation from literary texts
If the essay you are writing is a literary one based on a text or texts, refer to the text(s) you
are discussing as much as possible and quote from it when you feel it is necessary or
appropriate. Wherever possible you should quote in the original language. (Note that in an
examination it is not essential to quote the text, but if you can do so accurately, then so
much the better.)
• Titles of works should always be italicised (or underlined in a handwritten essay). Many
novels or plays are named after a character within them (e.g. Don Quijote, Madame
Bovary, Tristana), and italics/underlining makes clear when you are talking about the
text, as distinct from the character.
• Use single inverted commas for sections of works, and for individual poems, essays or
chapters of books.
• Do not give the titles of foreign-language works in English. Likewise, give names of
characters as they occur in the text, not in their English forms.
• When you quote from a text, say where in a text you are quoting from. There are various
ways to do this, depending on the type of text:
Poems: give line numbers, if possible,, e.g. abbreviated to 'l.' or 'll.': e.g. l. 8, ll. 23-26.
Plays: these are usually divided into acts and/or scenes. Give the number of the act in
Roman capitals, that of the scene in Arabic: thus Act Four, Scene Two is written
'IV.2'.
Novels: these may be divided into parts or chapters or both: give the reference as 'Part
II, ch. 9' (or simply II.9, if you think that will be clear enough). Add the page
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