SPIR Coursework Formatting and Referencing Guide

1. Introduction

All coursework submitted in SPIR must be formatted using the “Harvard style”, as described
below. Failing to conform to these guidelines will result in lower marks for the
“representation of sources” and “presentation” criteria of assessment (see the SPIR
Undergraduate Handbook section 4.9). Furthermore, inaccurate or incomplete references
could be instances of plagiarism, a serious assessment offence (see SPIR Undergraduate
Handbook sections 5.4, 5.5 and appendix D). For further help see the QMUL Library’s
resources on research and referencing

2. General Format

 All coursework must be word-processed.

 Use a clear font like Times New Roman or Arial in at least size 11.
 Type MUST be double-spaced throughout, with normal margins, to give markers
space to add comments.
 The title must be written at the top of your work. It does not count towards the word
limit.
 Paragraphs should be clearly separated, either by adding an empty line between them
or indenting each paragraph’s first line (except the very first one).
 Acronyms must be spelled out in full on their first usage followed by the abbreviation
in brackets, which may be used thereafter. E.g. “The North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO)”.
 Do NOT use informal or colloquial terms, or contractions (e.g. don’t, isn’t) in formal
academic writing. Equally, do not use fancy or complicated language merely to make
your work “look better”. Write formally, but clearly and simply. For guidance, see
George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language”:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit.
 All sources cited in your work MUST be listed in the bibliography. Do not include
works you have not cited in your bibliography.
 Pages must be numbered.
 Your work must always be accompanied by a completed coversheet. Ensure you
correctly identify your student number and seminar tutor: this is critical for assigning
the work to the correct marker. Your name should NEVER appear on assessed work
to enable anonymised marking.
 ALWAYS proof-read your work before submission to remove typographical errors
and ensure the presentation is fully consistent with this guide.

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3. Citations

As stated in the guidance on plagiarism (SPIR Undergraduate handbook sections 5.4, 5.5), all
of the words and ideas contained in your coursework must either be: (a) your own, or (b)
someone else’s, in which case a citation to the original source is ESSENTIAL. See sections
5.4 and 5.5, and Appendix D, for guidance on when you need to cite sources.

Whenever you use an idea or a quotation from another author, you MUST ALWAYS insert
an in-text citation, REGARDLESS OF THE TYPE OF SOURCE. This includes websites.
Every citation must identify: a) the author; b) the year of the publication; and c) where
available/applicable, the page number. This is called the “Harvard” system of referencing.
The format should always be as follows: (Author, Year: Pages). The pages you cite should be
those that contain the ideas, information or text you are using. You do not need to include
page numbers if you wish to cite the entire source.

For example, say you want to quote a sentence from page 167 of Andrew Heywood’s book,
Political Ideas and Concepts: An Introduction, published in 1994. You would do this is as
follows:

“The term democracy and the classical conception of democratic rule are firmly rooted in
Ancient Greece” (Heywood, 1994: 167).

Note that the in-text citation ALWAYS comes BEFORE punctuation (here, the full stop),
NOT after it; nor is there an extra full stop before the citation. Also note the citation is
ALWAYS in-text, NOT in a footnote.

You can also insert the citation next to the name of the author in your text, and omit their
name in your citation:

As Heywood (1994: 167) notes, “democracy and the classical conception of democratic rule
are firmly rooted in Ancient Greece”.

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You can abbreviate quotations by using an ellipse (…), and you can alter quotations to
improve the flow by adding text in square brackets [ ], though take care that by so doing you
do not misrepresent the source. E.g.:

As is well known, the idea of “democracy… [is] firmly rooted in Ancient Greece” (Heywood,
1994: 167).

If you need to cite several pages, you can separate numbers with commas, e.g. (Heywood,
1994: 123, 89). To indicate a range of pages, use a hyphen, e.g. (Heywood, 1994: 123-133).

Regardless of whether the source is a book, journal article, webpage or whatever, the format
is ALWAYS the same: Author, Year: Page(s). If a work lacks a clear author, use the term
“Anonymous”. If there is no year, use “n.d.” (no date). If page numbers do not exist, e.g. on a
webpage, you may omit them.

If you quote directly from a source, you must ALWAYS surround the quoted text using
quotation marks: “like this”. Failing to do so is technical plagiarism, even if you include a
citation!

ALWAYS use double quotation marks (“ ”) to identify the start and end of quotations. Do
NOT use “ ” and ‘ ’ interchangeably. Use single quotation marks ONLY to identify
quotations within quotations. For example, we might want to quote a textbook by Smith that
discusses and quotes the work of Thomas Hobbes. We might write:

In a state of anarchy, “Hobbes argued that life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short’, and many real-world examples like Somalia support this claim” (Smith, 2000: 11).

Here, the whole sentence from “Hobbes” to “claim” comes from Smith’s book, and so it is
surrounded by “ ”. But Smith herself is also quoting from Hobbes – the ‘ ’ identifies that part.
By using different quotation marks, we clearly identify which text is which.

If you want to directly quote an author whose work is cited by another author, you do so as
follows:
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Hobbes characterised life without government as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”
(Hobbes 1651, cited in Smith, 2000: 11).

This tells your reader that you have not read the original source by Hobbes – you have only
read it as quoted in a secondary source. Do not quote the original directly unless you have
actually read that source.

Very occasionally, you may need to cite multiple texts by the same author, published in the
same year. In this case, add a letter “a” to the year of the first citation, a “b” to the second,
and so on. E.g.:

It is simple to cite authors who publish a lot of articles in one year (Smith, 2000a). You
simply add letters to the year (Smith, 2000b). You can go on like this forever (Smith, 2000c).

In your bibliography, you will need to identify which source is a, b, c, etc, by adding the
letter to the year there, too.

Even more rarely, you might need to cite different authors with identical surnames who have
published work in the same year! In order to clarify which one you are citing, add the
author’s first initial. For example, imagine two articles published in 2015 by Mark Smith and
Jane Smith:

You would just add the initial of the author to make it clear which one you are citing (M.
Smith, 2015: 1). Add a different initial for the second one (J. Smith, 2015: 59). If the year is
different, you do not need to include the author’s initial (Smith 2000: 12).

4. Footnotes

Note that, as the name suggests, in-text citations should ALWAYS appear in the text itself;
they should NOT be placed in footnotes. Footnotes should be used ONLY to provide
additional information that is important to include, yet is somewhat peripheral and might
interrupt the argumentative flow if included in the main body of the essay. For example, you
might consider it important to identify the members of an international organisation, but
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adding a sentence on this would disrupt the flow of your argument. You could therefore put
this information in a footnote. If a citation is required to support what you write in the
footnote, you should add it in the normal way. This is the ONLY time in-text citations should
appear in footnotes. E.g.:

The contribution of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to regional order is
hotly disputed among realist and constructivist authors.1 While realists see ASEAN
contributing little, with balance-of-power politics predominating, constructivists are more
positive, citing processes of normative socialisation.

______

1. ASEAN was founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the
Philippines. Brunei joined in 1984, followed by Myanmar and Laos in 1997 and
Cambodia in 1999 (Acharya, 2001: 59).

Footnotes are included in towards your word limit, so use them very sparingly! Do NOT use
endnotes: they are inconvenient for the reader.

5. Bibliography

Every piece of assessed work MUST include a full bibliography listing ALL of the sources
cited in your work, even if you have only cited one text. The purpose of the bibliography is to
allow the reader to identify (and possibly consult) the work cited in your essay. It should
therefore include ONLY those sources cited, not just a list of everything you have read. The
bibliography is NOT included in the word count.

General Pointers:

 Different sources require different presentational formatting, but EVERY entry begins
as follows:

Author Surname, Author First Name (Year)

 The bibliography should be sorted alphabetically according to author surname. If you

have multiple sources by the same author, sort those according to year, starting with
the earliest one.
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  If you have cited multiple sources by the same author published in the same year, do
not forget to add a letter to the year and ensure this matches your citations.
 The authors and editors for each item should be listed in the order given in the
original source.
 If multiple places of publication are listed, just include the first one. Ensure you
identify a CITY, not a county, state, country, etc.
 If data required is unavailable (which is rare), make that clear. E.g. if no author is
identifiable, substitute “Anonymous”. If the date is not known, write “n.d.” (no date).
If there are no page numbers, omit them.
 ALWAYS proof-read your bibliography prior to submission to ensure it conforms to
the style guide below.

Examples

Publication Format Example

Type

Books and Author Surname, Author FirstHeywood, Andrew (1994) Political

Reports Name (Year) Title, edition (Place ofIdeas and Concepts: An
(Monographs) Publication: Publisher). Introduction, 1st edition
(Basingstoke: Macmillan).

Note: Book/report titles are ALWAYS

italicised. Page numbers/chapters areWorld Bank (2015) The World
NOT included, even if you only read Bank Annual Report 2015
certain pages/chapters: because the(Washington, DC: World Bank).
book is a coherent whole, written
entirely by one author or group, the
ENTIRE book is the source. If the
edition is not given by the source,
exclude it.
Chapters in Author Surname, Author FirstKoslowski, Rey and Wiener,
Edited Books Name (Year) “Title of Chapter”, inAntje (2002) “Practising
Editor(s) (ed.)/ (eds.) Title of EditedDemocracy Transnationally”, in
Book, edition (Place of Publication:Ferguson, Yale H. and Jones, R.J.
Publisher), Pages. Barry (eds.) Political Space:
Frontiers of Change and
Governance in a Globalizing World
(New York: SUNY Press), 281-
Note: Unlike monographs, edited296.
volumes contain several chapters by
DIFFERENT authors on DIFFERENT
topics. If you only cite the editors and
book title, the reader cannot know
exactly where you took ideas/
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 quotations from. Thus, you MUST
give the FULL details of the specific
part you have read and cited. Note that
the book chapter is in quotation marks
while the title of the edited volume as
a whole is italicised. Use “ed.” for one
editor, and “eds.” where there is more
than one.

Journal Author Surname, Author FirstOrbell, John M. and Rutherford,

Articles Name (Year) “Title of Article”,Brent M. (1973) “Can Leviathan
Journal Name Volume-Make the Life of Man Less
Number(Issue-Number): Pages. Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and
Short?”, British Journal of Political
Science 3(4): 383-407.

Note: As with chapters in edited

volumes, the article title is in quotation
marks while the volume in which it is
contained (the name of the journal) is
italicised. The logic is similar: journals
are divided into volumes (one for each
year), with volumes further subdivided
into issues, and issues divided into
separate articles by different authors.
Again, the full information is required
so the reader can locate the article you
are actually citing. Note that you do
NOT include details of the editor,
publisher, etc. NEVER include a URL,
even if you accessed the journal using
the Internet.

Newspapers Author Surname, Author FirstHopkins, Katie (2015) “On the Art
Name (Year) “Title of Article”,of Trolling”, Daily Mail, 2
Newspaper Name, Date ofFebruary, 14.
Publication.

Webpages Author Surname, Author First NameMarcus, Jonathan (2014)

(Year) “Title of Webpage”, Name of“Pentagon Ex-Head Gates
Website, Date of Creation, accessed atCriticises Obama’s Afghan
URL, Date of Access. Tactics”, BBC News, 8 January,
accessed at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-

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 politics-34980504, 2 December
Because webpages can change, you2015.
must describe the date of the source
itself AND report where and when you
accessed it. Webpages vary hugely in
quality and reliability and so should be
used with discernment. E.g. never cite
Wikipedia pages: since they are
editable by anyone, they are unreliable.

Official Author Surname, Author First NameSmith, John (1979) “Afghanistan:

Documents (Year) “Title of Document”, SourceSoviet Troops Massing on Border”,
of Document, Date of Document. Cable from the British Embassy in
Moscow to the Foreign Office,
FCO 17/450/1, 21 December.

Official documents (e.g. internal

governmental or organisational
documents found in archives), vary
enormously. The key is to: include as
full a reference as possible, such that
anyone wishing to locate the item could
do so; and present it in a format
consistent with the rest of your
bibliography. The relevant repository
(e.g. the National Archive), will often
provide helpful advice on how to cite
their material.

Example Bibliography

Heywood, Andrew (1994) Political Ideas and Concepts: An Introduction, 1st edition
(Basingstoke: Macmillan).

Hopkins, Katie (2015) “On the Art of Trolling”, Daily Mail, 2 February, 14.

Koslowski, Rey and Wiener, Antje (2002) “Practising Democracy Transnationally”, in

Ferguson, Yale H. and Jones, R.J. Barry (eds.) Political Space: Frontiers of Change and
Governance in a Globalizing World (New York: SUNY Press), 281-296.

Marcus, Jonathan (2014a) “Pentagon Ex-Head Gates Criticises Obama’s Afghan Tactics”,
BBC News, 8 January, accessed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34980504, 2
December 2015.

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Marcus, Jonathan (2014b) “An Example to Show Multiple Sources by the Same Author in
the Same Year”, BBC News, 12 January, accessed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/madeupreference,
2 December 2015.

Orbell, John M. and Rutherford, Brent M. (1973) “Can Leviathan Make the Life of Man Less
Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short?”, British Journal of Political Science 3(4): 383-407.

Smith, John (1979) “Afghanistan: Soviet Troops Massing on Border”, Cable from the British
Embassy in Moscow to the Foreign Office, FCO 17/450/1, 21 December.

World Bank (2015) The World Bank Annual Report 2015 (Washington, DC: World Bank).

6. Reference Management Software

The labour involved in presenting and formatting references and bibliographies can be
reduced by using free reference management software like Mendeley
(http://www.mendeley.com) and Zotero (http://www.zotero.org). These are cloud-based
databases that store all your sources and have plug-ins for word processors that allow you to
insert citations and will automatically write your bibliography. You can add reference data
manually, and some programmes have a web-browser plug-in that allows you to add a
reference (e.g. the webpage of a journal article) to your database with one click. See the
websites of these applications for full details. They are quite user-friendly and time-saving.
However, if you do use them, you MUST ensure that you select a citation and bibliography
style consistent with the guidance above. Other styles are not acceptable; they often miss out
key information or add irrelevant data like the word “Web” or “Print”. Likewise, ensure that
all the correct information is given in full; sometimes, particularly if data is added
automatically using the web plug-in, some key data may be missing. ALWAYS proof-read
your work prior to submission to ensure it conforms to the style guide above.