Style Guide for History Essays
Formatting
• 12 point font
• Double or one-and-a-half spaced
When to Use Quotations
There are two main reasons to use a quote.
1) Provide a quote to supply a really important
piece of evidence (generally from a primary
source) that you will then explain and draw
conclusions from.
2) Provide a quote to show your argument is
drawing on the work of an expert authority (and
therefore has credibility).
How to Quote
When a quote is less than two lines long, simply place
it in quotation marks and include a reference as in this
example.
Italics are not necessary.
How to Quote
When quotes are more than two lines long:
* leave a line
* indent on left and right
* make the quote a smaller font than the rest of the
paragraph
* leave a line before continuing
When you have done this, quotation marks are
unnecessary.
How to Quote
Here is an example for when
the quote is more than two lines long.
When to Provide an In-Text Reference
You need to provide a reference 1) whenever you quote
another author or 2) whenever you use another author's
idea (where that idea is specific and/or debatable).
If you simply state, for example, that the French Revolution
was in 1789, you don't need to reference the claim.
Everybody knows this, nobody in particular authored this
idea and nobody contests it.
However, if you stated that 40,000 people died in the
Terror, you would need to provide a reference. This claim is
sufficiently specific that there could be different
perspectives and debate about it.
Why you need to provide references
Honesty
It's about honestly acknowledging who is
the original author of the idea being
presented. If you don’t correctly reference
another author’s work, you could be
accused of plagiarism.
Verifiability
A reference is like a hyperlink to a more
detailed, more primary or more authoritative
expression of the idea. If you stated that
40,000 people died in the Terror, the reader
would be entitled to ask 'how do you know?'
By pointing the reader to an expert or a
decisive piece of evidence on the topic, the
reference provides an answer.
Authority
By referencing, you show that you are
acquainted with relevant scholarship in the
field.
Enabling research
By providing a reference, you are showing
the reader where they could find out more
about the topic.
Referencing a book (single author)
Referencing a journal article
Referencing a source from the web
Referencing a secondary source
Referencing other items
Please use the Harvard Referencing Guide at
our Essay Resources page to find out how to
appropriately reference other items.
Citing Ancient Sources
Citing ancient sources: Because of the nature of classical texts, as works that
were composed long before printed editions (and even "pages"), they have a
specialised format.
[Author], [Title] [Book/Section.(Poem, if applicable)].[Line #s cited]
For example:
Cicero, First Catilinarian 14.2.
Plato, Symposium 215a3-218b7.
If an author wrote only one work, you may omit the name of the work; for
example: Herodotus 9.1; rather than Herodotus, Histories 9.1. If you are
generically citing a specific book in a work, capitalize both elements (Book
Eighteen or Book 18 or Book XVIII); generic references, such as “several books in
the Iliad,” should not be capitalized. If you are including a parenthetical citation
at the end of a sentence – e.g. (Homer, Odyssey 1.1-3) – the full-stop should
always follows the citation.
Example of Citing an Ancient Source
Using ‘ibid’
Ibid. is an abbreviation of the Latin word ibidem
which means "in the same place".
If your reference is from the same page of the same
source as the reference immediately before this
one, simply put ibid. in brackets; (ibid.). If you're
referencing the same source as you have just done
but a different page put, for example, (ibid. p. 73).
Bibliographies (a.k.a Reference Lists)
A bibliography is an alphabetical list of the sources - books,
magazines, newspapers, CD-ROMs, Internet, interviews, etc. - that
you have used to prepare a piece of work.
The purpose of bibliographies is to: acknowledge sources; give
readers information to identify and consult sources; make sure our
information is accurate.
Create different sections for different source types, ie. literary
sources and electronic sources.
For an annotated bibliography, annotate each of the items in your
bibliography. In a sentence (or two, at most), explain 1) how the
source was useful in researching your essay and 2) provide an
evaluation of its reliability.
Example Essays
These essays all employ referencing conventions
well and have correctly formatted annotated
bibliographies.
The Appeal of Hamas, Ursula Cliff
The Genius of Hannibal, Jack Herring
The Birth of the Roman Navy, Pat Quinn Quirke