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UNIT ONE: TECHNICALITIES OF WRITING A BA

PROJECT - STYLE SHEET
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Contents:
1.1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 9
1.2. Competences ............................................................................................................ 9
1.3. Font and font size ................................................................................................... 10
1.4. Justification 10
1.5. Bold and Italic 10
1.6. Margins and line spacing 11
1.7. Page numbers and notes 11
1.8. Other bits and pieces 11
1.10. Referencing 12
1.11. References in the text 13
1.12. Reference list 14
1.13. Front page 16
1.14. Summary ............................................................................................................... 16
1.15. End of unit task 16

1.1. Introduction
The emphasis in this session is on the technical aspects of the project and on your
looking at existing BA projects for purposes of comparison. Mention need be
made that the style sheet you will be introduced to in this session, and therefore
advised to use in your project, has been agreed upon by members of the
department staff (your supervisors being among them). There are at least two
reasons for which the department has made such a decision: first, there seems to be
a need for standardisation of all BA projects and second, (but not less important,
for that matter), reader friendliness should be the concept which underlies all
your efforts to produce a good project.

All the information about the technical aspects of writing your BA project starts
from the assumption that you are able to use a computer or that you can instruct
the person who will do the word processing for you, which is going to make your
task somewhat harder.

1.2. Competences
On completion of UNIT ONE students will be able to identify and operate with
basic concepts related to writing scholarly/academic pieces of non-fiction, from a
 stylistic and technical point of view.

Study time for UNIT ONE: 2 hours

1.3. Font and font size

You are advised to use Times New Roman in your choice of font and 12 for font
size. For reasons of comparison you may want to look at the materials in this course
which are written with Times New Roman 12 points.

1.4. Justification
Full justification, blocked paragraphs (not indented) and a blank line between
paragraphs are recommended. Again, if you want an example, these materials abide
by these instructions.

Justification for: Chapter titles = centred

Section/subsection titles = left

1.5. Bold and Italic

a) Bold
Use it for: - the front page of your project

- the contents page of your project

- chapter, section and subsection titles
- names of authors in the reference list
- bold italic may be used in the text for special emphasis
b) Italic
Use it for: - unassimilated borrowings, and for Latin, French, German formulae
(e.g. status quo, ad hoc, comme il faut, Zeitgeist)

- isolated Romanian words in otherwise English sentences

- for emphasis, i.e. when you are especially attracting your reader’s attention
to one or several words. If these words belong to a quotation and they are
not in italics in the original text, do not forget to put: (my
emphasis/emphasis added)
 e.g.: ‘The pronunciation may also be heard, […], from natives of Southern
England […]. (Jones, 1974: xvii) (my emphasis)

- titles of books in the reference list

1.6. Margins and line spacing

Leave a wider left margin because your project needs to be bound. ‘Wider’ means 3
centimetres or 3,5 if your computer ‘says’ otherwise. Use 1,5 line spacing. Reader
friendliness is what makes this spacing important; less than 1,5 spacing makes your
text uncomfortable to read and more than that makes the reader suspicious that you
are just trying to fill the required number of pages.

1.7. Page numbers and notes

Number each page of your project. The position of the page numbers must be at the
bottom of the page and their alignment at the centre of the page. It is, however,
advisable to keep your document without page numbers while you are working on it
and give it page numbers when you think (and your supervisor agrees!) it is ready for
submission.

Use end of chapter notes or footnotes with numbers in the text and a numbered list at
the end of each chapter or at the bottom of the page. Do not forget to check the
existence of the numbers in the text, they tend to disappear in the process of writing
and give the reader a hard time making sense of your work.

1.8. Other bits and pieces

a). Headed sections must be numbered, thus 4. Analysis. NOT 4.0. One or two
decimal numbers for sub-section numbers may be used if desired (e.g. 4.1./4.1.2.) but
not more (e.g. not 4.1.2.1.).

b). For short items listed after bullets or numbers use the bullets/numbers icon and no
punctuation at line ends. Use either capitals or low case after bullets.
c). Appendices (if any) must be placed at the end of the project, after the list of
references (see below), with Appendix One and (after a blank line) the appendix
heading, if applicable.

d) Chapter numbers must be written as letters, e.g. Chapter One; section numbers
must be figures, e.g. 1.1.

e) Use capitals for No 2, Question 5 or Q 5, Item 8, Appendix Two, (but ‘in

appendix’/’see appendix’ when you tell your reader where to find the information),
and lower case for page 4 or p. 4, section 6.

f) For numbers in text (but not page or question references, measures or tabulated
numbers), write numbers up to ten as words (e.g. ‘ten’) and numbers from 11 on in
figures (e.g. ‘11’).

g) Use full-stops after: etc. and for e.g. i.e. (do not use suspension points ‘…’ = three
dots)

h) Use single spaces between sentences, i.e. do not double space after a full-stop,
question mark, etc.

Let’s remember
So far you have learnt about the use of:
font and font size, justification, bold and italic, margins and line spacing, page
numbers and notes, other bits and pieces

Example
See Appendix One for an example of the use of the above.

Now that you have some knowledge of the style sheet, look at the example
in Appendix One and decide whether it meets the aforementioned
requirements.

1.10. Referencing
One of the things you have to do in academic writing is to show how your ideas relate
to the ideas of other writers whose work you have read. Exactly which other writers to
refer to and how to do it is the most difficult part of this kind of writing. In this last
section of session two we will just deal with the practicalities: how to physically
present the evidence of your reading in your writing. Once you know what you are
expected to put in your project and in the reference list at the end of it, you will be
able to see what sorts of things you need to keep a record of as you read.

We will here look at two aspects of referencing:

1.11. References in the text

There are several ways an authority can be cited in a paper. Most people use the
following system:

- direct quotation:

Example
Valdman (1973: 15) suggests that ‘…perfectly controlled research that
answers significant and relevant questions in second-language learning is
an illusion’.

- paraphrase of the author’s words:

Example
Valdman claims that it is highly difficult to do research that answers
relevant questions in the area of second-language learning for reasons
which (etc.) (1993:15)

- in both cases it is useful to give the year of publication and the page
number of the book/journal you got your information from. It is in the
reference list that the reader can trace the title and all the other details.
- references in the body of your text should be ordered either alphabetically
or chronologically:

Example
Faerch and Kasper (1981), Godfrey (1980), Schachter (1974) and
Schachter and Celce-Murcia (1977) have all pointed to ‘avoidance
strategies’ as another form of covert grammatical error.
 Schachter (1974), Schachter and Celce-Murcia (1977), Godfrey (1980)
and Faerch and Kasper (1981) have all pointed to ‘avoidance strategies’
as another form of covert grammatical error.

- if you take a quotation from a source other than the original, (secondary
quotation) show where you got it from:

Example
According to Skehan (1978) (quoted/cited in Ellis, 1994) ‘……….’.

It is however somewhat dangerous to quote something that is already

quoted where you quote it from and, in such cases, it is advisable to go
after the original source. The practice is yet, not unknown. Do not use it
excessively and always indicate the fact that you are not quoting the
original. Views vary whether in this case Skehan (1978) (in the example
above) has to go in the reference list. To make sure you do not get
criticised for that, you should put such secondary references in the list at
the end of your project.

1.12. Reference list

A BA project ends with a reference list, not a bibliography (see materials for the
Academic Writing course - IInd year). When doing library research, it is useful to
make notes about the content of the work you read but it is highly important for you
not to forget to write down the bibliographical details of the works which will have to
go in your reference list. This will save you the time and effort of chasing after your
sources again at the end of your work on your project and will spare you the reader’s
doubt about whether you have actually read and used the books and papers you refer
to.

In the reference list therefore, you have to give the following information about:

- a book: (one author)- author’s family name (in bold)

 - author’s first name (initials) (in bold)
- the year of publication (in brackets)
- the title of the book, the edition you have used (if it is not the first/only
edition) (in italic)
- the city of publication and the publisher. (Many publishers have offices in
more than one city (like London and New York: Longman) In your
reference list give only the first. (In the case of smaller US cities, the state
is also given.))

Example
Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford.
OUP

- a book: (two authors)- authors’ family name

- first author’s first name (initials); when you write the second author start
with the initial
- the year of publication (in brackets)
- the title of the book, the edition you have used (if it is not the first/only
edition) (in italics)
- the city of publication and the publisher.

Example
Schumann, J. and N. Stenson. (eds.) (1974) New Frontiers in Second
Language Learning. Rowley, Mass. Newbury House.

NB: 1. If the author(s) of the book is/are the editor(s), write (ed(s.)) after the names.

2. If an item in the reference list takes up more than one line, indent the second line
(one tab)
- an article in a journal: - author’s family name (in bold)

- author’s first name (initials) (in bold)

- the year of publication (in brackets)
- the title of the article, NOT in italics
- name and volume number of journal (in italics)
- page references
 Example
Schumann, J. (1993). Some problems with falsification: an illustration
from SLA research. Applied Linguistics 14: 295-306.

- an article in an edited book: - author’s family name (in bold)

- author’s first name (initials) (in bold)

- the year of publication (in brackets)
- the title of the article, NOT in italics
- name(s) of editor(s)of the book in which it appears (NOT in bold)
- year of publication
- title of the book (in italics)
- page references
- place of publication
- name of publisher

Example

Lightbown, P. (1983). Exploring relationships between developmental

and instructional sequences in L2 acquisition. In Seliger, H. and M.
Long. (eds.) (1983). Classroom-oriented Research in Second Language
Acquisition. Rowley Mass. Newbury House.

Look at the example in Appendix One and decide whether it meets the
requirements about referencing.

1.13. Front page

Your project will have to have a cover (information written in Romanian) and a
front/first page (information written in English). The two pages in Appendix Two
are examples of what your cover and first page should look like.

1.14. Summary:
The focus in Unit ONE was on the technicalities of word-processing your BA
project.
 1.15. End of UNIT TASK
After a thorough reading of the information detailed in this UNIT, take
some time to answer this question:
What new things have you learnt about the way in which your BA project needs to be
word processed?
List them here: