History
Essay Writing Guide
History & Classics
School of Humanities
University of Tasmania
2016
HISTORY ESSAY WRITING GUIDE
HISTORY RULES AND PROCEDURES …………………………………...Page 2
1. Assessment
2. Submission of written work
3. Grading and return of work
REFERENCING……………………………………………………………...Page 5
1. Plagiarism
2. Footnotes
3. Bibliography
PREPARING WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS………………………………Page 12
1. Format of Written Work
2. Guide to Writing a History Essay
3. Use of Quotations
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HISTORY RULES AND PROCEDURES
The History discipline in the School of Humanities has some general rules and
procedures relating to assessment and the submission of written work. Unless you are
advised otherwise by the lecturer in charge, these general rules and procedures will
be deemed to apply in all history units, in all campuses, and in all modes of teachings.
1. ASSESSMENT
1.1
All written work submitted for assessment must be the student’s own work,
with all sources properly documented.
1.2
You are not permitted to resubmit work already presented for assessment in
another unit, or from a previous attempt at the same unit.
1.3 Essays are awarded the following results:
Grade
% Mark
HD High Distinction
80+
DN Distinction
70-79
CR Credit
60-69
PP
50-59
Pass
NN Failure
0-49
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2. SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN WORK
2.1
Submit assignments electronically via the unit MyLO site. Please follow
instructions provided in the MyLO Assignments submission dropbox.
2.2.1 Your assignment must include a title page containing:
your name;
the unit code:
the name of your tutor;
your tutorial group;
the essay topic;
and the number of words used (include quotations in the word count but not
the footnotes and bibliography).
2.3
You must always retain a copy of your work.
2.4
Students are expected to submit all assignments on or before the due date and
time specified in the relevant Unit Outline.
2.5
Students with special circumstances may apply for an extension.
2.6
Late submission of assignments without an approved extension will incur the
following penalties:
• 5% of the total possible mark for that piece of assessment for each
business day past the deadline and 5% of the total possible mark for that
piece of assessment for each period of consecutive non-business days
including weekends, long weekends, Easter and/or Christmas break.
• The penalty will be deducted until a penalty of 25% of the possible mark
for that piece of assessment has been applied. Beyond this point,
additional penalties and/or new conditions may be imposed at the
discretion of the unit coordinator.
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• Assignments will not be accepted after assignments have been returned to
other students, unless a prior arrangement is made with the unit coordinator.
2.8
A medical certificate or other supporting documentation is required where
extensions are requested due to illness or bereavement.
2.9
In addition to the due dates, each unit will have a deadline after which work
submitted without an extension will not receive any mark at all. Unless
advised by the lecturer otherwise, that date shall be deemed to be the end of
the study week prior to the exams.
3. GRADING AND RETURN OF WORK
3.1
All written work submitted for assessment will be assessed, carefully
appraised, and graded in conformity with the scales in 1.3. If a lateness penalty
has been imposed, the original assessment and the penalty marks deducted will
be separately indicated.
3.2
As well as making written comments on the assignment, teachers are available
for further consultation. Students wishing for additional feedback on their
work, grades or progress should seek an appointment with their tutor or the
lecturer in charge, and remember to take their essay with them.
3.3
Work that has been submitted on time will normally be returned to students
within three weeks.
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REFERENCING
Essays must be your own work, and must not contain material previously submitted
for assessment. They also need to contain appropriate and accurate referencing of any
sources (books, articles, lectures, etc) that you use.
Historians generally distinguish between:
1. primary sources – these are the raw materials of history created during the
time that is being studied. For example: diaries, letters, pamphlets,
manuscripts, newspaper articles and books published during the period.
2. secondary sources – publications by historians and other scholars such as
books, articles, and lectures. Taken together these constitute the
historiography that should be read on a given topic.
History is an ongoing discussion about the nature and significance of the past. Your
essays you should reflect analysis of primary sources and critical engagement with the
secondary source historiography of your chosen topic.
When researching an essay you should always begin with the list of suggested
readings that your lecturer may have provided for the essay topic. These will include
some of the most relevant peer reviewed academic scholarship on the topic.
You should then do further research in books and journal articles via the university
library catalogue, databases and book shelves. The publications on your unit essay
reading list will contain footnotes that point you towards other scholarly publications
on aspects of your topic. In many cases you will be able to find these in the university
library.
Your essay should be based on a critical engagement with specialist academic
publications. Academic books and articles are more reliable because they have been
through a process of anonymous peer review by experts in the field.
While you can make some additional use of ‘popular’ sources, such as websites and
encyclopedias, you should avoid relying on these.
You should aim to read the very best academic scholarship on your chosen topic.
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1. PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is not only unacceptable in the History and Classics Program, it is
also a University offence (see the University Statement on Plagiarism below). All
written work submitted for assessment must be fully referenced, and in the case
of History this is done through the use of footnotes.
University Statement on Plagiarism and Academic Integrity
Plagiarism is a form of cheating. It is taking and using someone else's thoughts,
writings or inventions and representing them as your own; for example, using an
author's words without putting them in quotation marks and citing the source, using
an author's ideas without proper acknowledgment and citation, copying another
student's work.
If you have any doubts about how to refer to the work of others in your assignments,
please consult your lecturer or tutor for relevant referencing guidelines, and the
academic integrity resources on the web at:
http://www.utas.edu.au/academic-integrity
The intentional copying of someone else’s work as one’s own is a serious offence
punishable by penalties that may range from a fine or deduction/cancellation of marks
and, in the most serious of cases, to exclusion from a unit, a course or the University.
Details of penalties that can be imposed are available in the Ordinance of Student
Discipline – Part 3 Academic Misconduct, see:
http://www.utas.edu.au/universitycouncil/legislation/
The University and any persons authorised by the University may submit your
assessable works to a plagiarism checking service, to obtain a report on possible
instances of plagiarism. Assessable works may also be included in a reference
database. It is a condition of this arrangement that the original author’s permission is
required before a work within the database can be viewed.
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2. FOOTNOTES
The primary purpose of a footnote is to provide your reader with clear information
about your sources and to enable quick access to them.
Footnote references must be provided for:
• all direct and indirect quotations
• evidence which is or might be in dispute
• other writers’ interpretations
• statistics
It is not necessary to provide a footnote for something that is common knowledge or
generally known. For example, the date of the dropping of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima – 6 August 1945 – does not require a footnote; differing accounts of the
damage caused, however, or differing views about whether the dropping of the bomb
was necessary, do need to be referenced with a footnote.
HOW TO FOOTNOTE
All written work submitted in the History discipline must be referenced using
footnotes, which are placed at the foot of the page, in the following format.
If you refer to just one page, then use ‘p.’; if you refer to two or more pages, then use
‘pp.’.
BOOKS
Name or Initials and Surname of author, Title of Book (Place and date of
publication), page or pages number. NOTE THAT PUBLISHER IS NOT
REQUIRED.
Example
Anthony Page, Britain and the Seventy Years War, 1744-1815 (London, 2015),
pp. 8-10.
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JOURNAL ARTICLES
Name or Initials and Surname of author, ‘Title of Article’, Journal Title,
volume number (year of publication), page or pages number.
Example
E. Freeman, ‘The Priory of Hampole and its Literary Culture: English
Religious Women and Books in the Age of Richard Rolle’, Parergon, 29
(2012), pp. 1-25.
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS (edited collections)
Name or initials and surname of author, ‘Title of Chapter’, in name or initials
and surname of editor (or editors), ed., Title of Book (Place and date of
publication), page or pages number.
Example
Gavin Daly, ‘Plunder on the Peninsula: British Soldiers and Local Civilians
during the Peninsular War, 1808-1813’, in Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and
Hannah Smith, eds., Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815 (Liverpool,
2012), p. 210.
ITEMS FROM YOUR UNIT READER
Cite the author and the title of the selected reading, then the full citation of
the reader (cite the reader as you would a book – though sometimes a reader
does not have an editor identified).
Example
Samuel Pepys, ‘Extracts from Samuel Pepys’s Diary’, in Making Modern
Europe (Hobart, 2016), p. 12.
Hard copy readers often have consecutive page numbers added by the
lecturer. However, sometimes electronic copies of the readings have page
numbering that re-starts at ‘1’ at the beginning of each new tutorial chapter.
In these cases provide the chapter number and page number thus: p. 2:5 (ie.
chapter 2, page 5). For example:
Colin Jones, ‘The Great Nation: France from Louis XIV to Napoleon’, in
Making Modern Europe (Hobart, 2016), p. 2:5.
If there are no page numbers added, cite the page number provided in the
reproduced original source (ie. the page number of the book or article that has
been re-published in the unit reader). If there are no page numbers either
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inserted or reproduced in the text, indicate this with ‘np’ (no page number)
where the page number would normally appear.
WEB SOURCES
Author – if identified, ‘Title of Webpage’, Publisher (date created/updated),
URL of Web page that you consulted, date accessed.
Example
Anthony Page, ‘We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for high debt and taxes’,
ABC The Drum (12 May 2016), http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-0512/page-we-wouldn't-be-here-if-it-weren't-for-high-debt-and-taxes/7407120,
accessed 21 June 2016.
SUBSEQUENT CITATIONS
Where a reference is exactly the same as the preceding one, put ‘Ibid.’ or, where it
is exactly the same as the preceding one except for the page, add the page number
(e.g. Ibid., p. 157.).
Where you refer, after some intervening references, to a work cited earlier, give
the author’s surname and an abbreviated title.
EXAMPLE FOOTNOTES
Below are some example footnotes. To a journal article.1 To two books.2 To a chapter
in a book of essays.3 To a different page in the preceding source.4 To a previously
cited source.5
1
Penny Edmonds and H. Maxwell-Stewart, ‘“The Whip Is a Very Contagious Kind of Thing”:
Flogging and Humanitarian Reform in Penal Australia', Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History, 17
(2016), p. 13.
2
S. Petrow, Going to the Mechanics: A History of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute 1842-1914
(Launceston, 1998), p. 6; M.J. Bennett, The Battle of Bosworth (Gloucester, 1985), p. 10.
3
Gavin Daly, ‘Plunder on the Peninsula: British Soldiers and Local Civilians during the Peninsular
War, 1808-1813’, in Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and Hannah Smith, eds., Civilians and War in
Europe, 1618-1815 (Liverpool, 2012), pp. 209-24.
4
Ibid., p. 213.
5
Petrow, Going to the Mechanics, p. 13.
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3. BIBLIOGRAPHY
At the end of your essay, on a separate page, you should give a list of all works that
you have used when writing your essay.
In a bibliography primary sources precede secondary sources, with each list
arranged alphabetically.
The order is:
Surname of author, Initials (this is the opposite order from footnotes), Title
(italicised), place and date of publication (in brackets).
The full information must be repeated in the bibliography even if it has already been
given in a footnote.
Sample bibliography
The following sample bibliography shows how to set out different kinds of sources.
Divide your bibliography into primary and secondary sources.
NOTE: Full pages numbers must be provided for journal articles, chapters in
books and material from unit readers. Do not reproduce the page numbers from
your footnotes.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
Gregory the Great, ‘Letter to the Emperor Maurice, c.591-92’, as cited in
Hollister, C. Warren, ed., Medieval Europe: A Short Sourcebook (New York,
1982), pp. 25-26.
Historical Records of Australia. Series III. Despatches and Papers relating to the
Settlement of the States. Vol. 1. Port Phillip, Victoria 1803-1804. Tasmania,
1803-June 1812 (Sydney, 1921).
The Diary and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boyes: Volume 1, 1820-1832, ed. G.P.R.
Chapman (Melbourne, 1985).
SECONDARY SOURCES
Daly, Gavin, ‘Plunder on the Peninsula: British Soldiers and Local Civilians
during the Peninsular War, 1808-1813’, in Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and
Hannah Smith, eds., Civilians and War in Europe, 1618-1815 (Liverpool,
2012), pp. 209-24.
Dictionary of National Biography (22 vols, London, 1921-22).
Edmonds, Penny and H. Maxwell-Stewart, ‘“The Whip Is a Very Contagious
Kind of Thing”: Flogging and Humanitarian Reform in Penal Australia',
Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History, 17 (2016), pp. 1-16.
Freeman, E., Narratives of a New Order: Cistercian Historical Writing in
England, 1150-1220 (Turnhout, 2002).
Frost, L. and H. Maxwell-Stewart, Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives
(Melbourne, 2001).
Page, Anthony, ‘We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for high debt and taxes’, ABC
The Drum (12 May 2016), http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-12/page-wewouldn't-be-here-if-it-weren't-for-high-debt-and-taxes/7407120, accessed 21
June 2016.
Smith, M., ‘Wasted Away in Drunkenness and Neglect? Clarence Plains and
Cambridge Land Grants 1810-1820’, unpublished Honours thesis, History and
Classics, University of Tasmania, 2001.
Smith, Philippa Mein, A Concise History of New Zealand (2nd ed., Cambridge,
2012).
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PREPARING WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS
1. FORMAT OF WRITTEN WORK
1.
Your assignments must have double-spaced lines of text.
2.
Each page of your essay should have a right hand margin of 5 cm. for
comments and adequate space at the bottom for footnote references.
3.
Do not use plastic binders or folders to present your essay.
4.
The essay should provide accurate and precise references in appropriate
places.
2. GUIDE TO WRITING A HISTORY ESSAY
Note that this is a guide only – there are many different ways to prepare a good
essay – but the guide should contain helpful suggestions.
1.
UNDERSTAND THE QUESTION
• Divide the question into key areas.
• Look only for these key areas when doing your reading.
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2.
BROAD READING & NOTE-TAKING
• Follow the guidelines provided by your lecturer but in general refer to your
Unit Reader and/or prescribed textbooks.
• Use general books from essay question and from ‘further’ reading, using the
titles to guide you.
• Read mainly for background – don’t get bogged down at the start on specific
details.
• Take notes just on the main broad arguments, not on specific details yet.
3.
SPECIFIC READING & NOTE TAKING
• This will vary, depending on the unit, but it will involve consulting both
primary and secondary sources.
• Use specific works from essay question list if one has been provided.
• Follow up references from your earlier readings, to find extra primary and
secondary sources.
• Use the Library catalogue, including databases, to find sources, including
journal articles (see point 5 below).
• Take notes only on essay question’s key areas.
4.
RE-ORGANISE YOUR NOTES
• Which ideas/themes keep popping up in your notes?
• Select 3-5 most common themes – these are your essay’s main paragraphs/main
themes.
• Rearrange different examples – both primary/secondary – under these themes –
these are your essay’s supporting evidence.
• Every theme must have supporting evidence.
• Go back and conduct more research/reading where needed (this re-working and
re-researching is a critical element of the entire essay process).
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5.
USING THE LIBRARY
• History Subject Guide
The Library’s website has a History Subject Guide at
http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/subj/history.html, or go to the Library
home page and click on the link to ‘Subject Guides’ under ‘Information
Resources’, then click on ‘History’. Here you will find a listing of the
university's reference sources/databases/etc that are specifically for History.
• Library Reserve
In researching your assignments in the library, make an effort not only to
access books and articles on the open shelves but also in Library Reserve.
Unit coordinators place books in Reserve to ensure that all students
have access to important scholarship.
6.
SAMPLE PARAGRAPH
This is a basic model for paragraphs in the body of the essay (i.e. not the
introduction or conclusion). In practice, don’t worry if your paragraphs tend to
diverge a bit from the model every now and then, but do try to include all 5
elements in every paragraph.
A. Topic sentence – usually will not have footnote
B. Background material, common scholarly views, possibly a few sentences
C. Example(s)
- Primary example, paraphrase and/or primary quotation – primary footnote(s)
- Another supporting primary example – primary footnote(s)
D. Analysis, your views on the significance of the primary examples and how they
confirm/deny/modify the secondary arguments – won’t have footnote
E. Summary, what has paragraph demonstrated overall? – won’t have footnote
Sample Paragraph:
MOCK QUESTION: ‘THE RISE OF THE CAROLINGIANS HAD VERY LITTLE TO DO
WITH EVENTS IN FRANCE. THE REAL CATALYSTS FOR THE EARLY
CAROLINGIANS’ SUCCESS WERE EVENTS ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE AND THE
MEDITERRANEAN WORLD. CRITICALLY ASSESS.’
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[A] A second reason for the Carolingians’ rise was the Lombard threat in Italy.
[B] Rising to prominence in the early-sixth century, thanks in part to support from the
Byzantine emperor Justinian, the Lombards had entered northern Italy in 568 and
quickly established a strong monarchy.6 By the early eighth century, Lombard
dominance in Italy was increasing even further and moving further south and southeast.7 For example, the Lombards regularly occupied Ravenna, one of the old Roman
Empire’s capital cities.8 As Lynette Olson has argued, this territorial advance worried
the papacy.9 The popes in Rome were used to running their own affairs, and they
feared that the Lombards would try to dictate church policy. In response, the popes
invited the Franks in to Italy to defeat the Lombards. [C] As the Royal Frankish
Annals report: ‘In that year [753] Pope Stephen came to King Pepin at the villa called
Quierzy advising the king that he defend the pope and the Romans against the
aggression of the Lombards.’10 Another source, the Third Continuation of Fredegar,
argues similarly.11 It reports that Pope Stephen took the trouble to visit Pepin at
Pepin’s villa, and that Stephen requested assistance against the Lombards. As the
Third Continuation has it, Stephen particularly resented having to pay tribute to the
Lombards. [D] These examples indicate that the Lombards were both a military threat
and an economic threat to the papacy, and they also suggest that the Frankish Pepin
was seen as a suitable person to solve the problem. [E] The fact that the papacy’s
appeal to the Franks appeared in multiple primary sources indicates that the Lombard
threat was seen both as a very real problem at the time and also as a key reason behind
the Carolingian Franks’ rise.
A third contributing factor to early Carolingian success was…
6
Roger Collins, Early Medieval Europe 300-1000, 2nd ed. (Houndmills and New York, 1999), ch. 12.
Ibid., ch. 13.
8
Lynette Olson, The Early Middle Ages: The Birth of Europe (Houndmills and New York, 2007), p.
85.
9
Ibid.
10
‘Royal Frankish Annals’, in Bernhard Walter Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish
Annals and Nithard's Histories (Ann Arbor, 1970), p. 40.
11
‘Third Continuation of Fredegar’, in Alexander C. Murray, From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A
Reader (Peterborough, Ont., 2000), p. 653.
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3. USE OF QUOTATIONS
You are encouraged to quote directly from primary sources in order to support a point
that you are making.
You should be selective and judicious in your use of quotations from secondary
sources. It is best to use your own words to express yourself, so avoid relying on
lengthy quotations from secondary sources.
Direct Quotations:
• Must be reproduced with complete accuracy and must be referenced with a
footnote.
• Must not stand alone – introduce them or incorporate them into a sentence.
• Short quotations must be included in the body of the text and enclosed in
single quotation marks, and followed by a footnote at the end of the sentence.
• Quotations more than three lines in length must be indented, do not require
quotation marks and are followed by a footnote.
Quoting a Quotation
• If you directly quote a quotation used by another writer (for example, a line
from Napoleon Bonaparte in a textbook on modern France), you should cite
the textbook in your footnote, not the original source provided by the author
of the textbook. Introduce the footnote with ‘Cited in...’.
Indirect Quotations
• If you paraphrase, or indirectly quote, an author, you should do so fairly:
mention in the text the author you are paraphrasing and provide a footnote to
cite your source.
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