Answer one of the following 4 questions. 1Discuss the long term social impacts of the printing press 2How did the emergence of the ‘penny press’ transform the newspaper industry? 3Discuss the relationship between the telegraph and political power. 4Discuss the impact of the gramophone on the music industry ________________________________________________ Essays should be 3000 words long, printed in 12pt font with 1.5 line spacing Please be careful to reference all sources and to include a bibliography ________________________________________________ SELECTING A TITLE Pay close attention to the wording of the question or title you select – your essay should be a direct response to it Everything in your essay should be related to the title – every section should help move your argument forward to your final statement on the topic You can’t just decide to write your own topic – you have to engage with the titles which have chosen ________________________________________________ Parts of an essay Cover sheet, with your name, student number, date, name of the course, my name, and the title of the essay (people often forget the last one) An introduction, explaining your topic and outlining the approach you will be taking to the essay The main body of the essay, containing the arguments and supporting evidence. This can be divided into several subsections using subheadings depending on the content A conclusion, tying the strands of your argument together and relating it to the essay title References for all of the books and other sources you have quoted from A bibliography containing full references to all the books, websites etc. you have referred to Pages should be numbered ________________________________________________ Writing references Within an essay, it’s very important to let the reader know when you’re taking information and ideas from books and articles Even if you’re not quoting directly from one of these sources, you need to let the reader know if ideas or information are not your own If you don’t do this, you might be accused of plagiarism – copying or stealing ideas from other people To avoid plagiarism, make sure you give complete references for all the books, articles and websites you have taken ideas and information from There are two main ways to give references: Footnotes In text references ________________________________________________ The Bibliography Every essay should include a short bibliography listing all of the sources you have used – books, articles, websites, newspapers Sometimes called the ‘works cited’ or ‘references’ sections List all of the sources alphabetically, by surname of the author You need to include the author, the title, the publisher, the place of publication the date of publication Web address, if necessary Because you are listing the whole book not just a page from it, you don’t need to write page numbers Otherwise the information is the same as footnote references _______________________________________________ OTHER CITATION STYLES Harvard style http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm MLA style https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ APA style http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/apa These are all in-text referencing styles The faculty has a citation guide which you can download from the course Moodle The Wikipedia citation method is not an official style, so don’t use it ____________________________________________ QUOTING SOURCES As well as giving references, you should also make it clear that the words are not your own by using quote marks If you copy 3 or more words verbatim (word for word) from a source, you must use quotes around those words and immediately reference the source The distinction between your own writing and the writing of another source should be immediately clear It’s a good idea to mention the name of the author before the quote, for example As Davies argues, ‘blah blah blah’ According to Zoloft, ‘blah blah blah’ In his article on television Haines suggests that ‘blah blah blah’ If there is no author given, it might not be a good source to use If the quote is more that 2 or 3 lines long it is normal to present it as an indented paragraph If the quote is longer than 4 or 5 lines it might be too long to be a quote – consider quoting a shorter portion of it and paraphrasing the rest, or paraphrasing the whole thing ____________________________________________ PARAPHRASING To paraphrase is to include the ideas or information from an original source in your paper by rephrasing those ideas or information in your own words. If you are paraphrasing a source, it is still essential to give a reference in exactly the same way as you would with a direct quote A good essay will consist of references to a wide range of sources, but you are not simply compiling the words of others on a given topic – you are creating something new A good essay will engage with the sources being cited, not simply repeat them without question or comment A good essay uses research to build an original argument; everything in the essay should help to develop the argument and bring it to a conclusion ____________________________________________ Using quotations Comment on the quotation – do you agree with it? Why do you think it is important? How does it fit into your own arguments? For example: According to Maria Wyke, the representation of ancient Rome in the cinema has functioned ‘as a mechanism for the display of cinema itself – its technical capacities and its cultural value’. Often at the forefront of Hollywood’s global operations, historical films might thus be regarded as ambassadors for the medium, a spectacular showcase for its potential both in terms of cultural status and technological accomplishment. In this way you are building your own words around the quote while still making the distinction between your words and the quote clear ____________________________________________ TURNITIN AND ITHENTICATE Most lecturers use a program called iThenticate or Turnitin to check for plagiarism It checks the content of essays against a huge database of websites and other sources to detect potential plagiarism It’s generally easy to see plagiarised work without the program, but this just makes it easier ____________________________________________ USING THE INTERNET FOR RESEARCH Obviously, you can find a lot of useful information on the internet But you also need to question the quality of information you find before you can use it in your research. Unlike a library, there are no librarians to arrange the information in a logical way. It's also much easier to publish something on the web than in print, and as a result much of the information is not reliable. An good researcher will make judgements based on the content of the site, and the credibility of the source of the information. ____________________________________________ GENERAL ADVICE FOR INTERNET RESEARCH Be sceptical about the information you find. Don't take it at face value, try and find out who posted the information and why. This isn’t always true, but in many cases the larger and more traditional the organisation is, the more reliable the information Always try to confirm information by finding another source which says the same thing Keep records of the addresses (URLs) and dates of the web pages you visit Don't rely only on the Internet for your research. Use the Internet as an additional source of information, if you quote only web sources in your essay then it will not be a rounded piece of research. ______________________________________ USING WIKIPEDIA Unlike other encyclopaedias, anyone can create or edit a Wikipedia page. For this reason it's important to be careful when using Wikipedia for your research. All of Wikipedia's millions of entries have been created by its users, most of whom are anonymous. Sometimes these users are experts in their fields. But sometimes they are biased, joking, or just not very knowledgeable about the subject they're writing about. Wikipedia's broad coverage means it can be a useful place to get an overview of your topic. But you should verify facts you've retrieved from Wikipedia elsewhere. You can follow the footnotes in Wikipedia articles to check where the information comes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu But the Wikipedia citation method is not an official style ______________________________________ ______________________________________ .