Presentation of assignments

• Presentation of assignments
• Documenting sources
• Documenting sources for literary essays
• Citation from an internet source
• General requirements for linguistics essays

Presentation of assignments

All assignments must be labelled with your full name (given name and surname) and year (and group if applicable). Essays must have a title page and the other pages should be numbered. You should keep a copy of all assignments.

If you use a typewriter or word-processing program, you must not use single spacing (1.5 line spacing is ideal) and you must always leave 3.5cm on the left hand side of your page for comments. All accents must be shown correctly.

You must not omit the Umlaut or replace it with ae, oe or ue ; if necessary you should write it in by hand. On Microsoft Word, the Umlaut is produced by ‘option + u’ followed by a, o, or u and the ß by ‘option + s’. It is permissible to replace ß with ss if your machine does not have this symbol (do not use B). The recent spelling reform has restricted the use of ß to words in which it indicates a long preceding vowel or diphthong (muss - with a short u - will replace muß but Maß continues to be spelt with the ß because the a is long).

Handwritten assignments must be legible. Staff may refuse to accept or to mark illegible work. Use a good quality pen, not a pencil, and good paper. The Umlaut must be clearly formed with two strokes (rather than dots) and the ß correctly used. For translation and composition assignments you should use good quality lined A4 paper and write on alternate lines to allow space for corrections and comments. If you use more than one page you must staple or pin the pages together.

Care should be taken when quoting German within an English sentence to ensure that it fits syntactically. You must not translate quotations from the text into English but the mixing of English and German in one sentence can present problems: for instance, with cases and adjective endings. There are various ways of dealing with this. If possible, quote the whole sentence rather than a section of it. If you quote a noun with an accompanying adjective, it is usually best to include the determiner (usually the definite article), and to use the nominative case. For example: ‘Kleist speaks of die große Erderschütterung vom Jahre 1647’ is preferable to ‘Kleist speaks of the großen Erderschütterung vom Jahre 1647 ’ in spite of the fact that the noun is in the dative in Kleist’s text. The inclusion of the article avoids oddities such as ‘the Tote’ which could mean ‘the dead man’ (der Tote), ‘the dead woman’ (die Tote) or ‘dead people’ (Tote / die Toten)!

Essays and examination answers must be written in complete sentences, not in note or heading form. Avoid hyphenating German words unless you know the rules for hyphenation. Where English is used in your assignments, we expect clarity of expression and correct grammar and spelling. Allowance will be made for students whose first language is not English.

Documenting sources

Assignments must be your own unaided work, unless a degree of collaboration with other students has been expressly sanctioned. Any outside help must be explicitly and specifically acknowledged.

There are a number of styles used for documenting sources. For instance for literary essays written in English, the MLA (Modern Language Association of America) style is recommended. For essays on linguistics, the Harvard system should be used. Whichever style of documentation is used, students should be consistent (and not use a mixture).

The following is a summary of pages 675 - 713 of: DiYanni, Robert and Pat C. Hoy II. The Scribner Handbook for Writers. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.

Documenting sources for literary essays

MLA Style - for literary essays in English

Citations in the text - MLA style uses two methods:

1. The author and the page number are identified immediately following the borrowed material.
   Example:
   'Recent interpretations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest consider the play’s racist implications' (Takaki 52; Greenblatt 121). (Note the books or articles by Takaki and Greenblatt would be fully described in the Bibliography [Works Cited] which is placed at the end of the essay.)
2. The author is identified in the text and the page reference is given immediately following the borrowed material. In-text citations guide readers to the appropriate source in the Bibliography with full bibliographic information.
   Example:
   'Herzog notes that there are more protests against experiments on domestic animals like cats and dogs than against research involving animals like snakes (349).' (Note the reader can find out the title of Herzog’s book or article in the Bibliography).

Explanatory notes and reference notes (footnotes)

Use a superscript Arabic number in the text which directs the reader to a footnote. MLA recommends a list of notes placed at the end of the essay or paper; however modern word-processing software makes it easy to place footnotes on the same page which is more convenient for the reader. The Scribner Handbook advises against the overuse of explanatory footnotes because they distract from the main text of the essay.
Example:
'Mark Twain was convinced that the novels of Sir Walter Scott had infected the South with false romantic notions.' (See the bottom of the page for the footnote.)

Bibliography (works cited)

All the sources cited or used in a paper should be listed at the end of the paper. Arrange the citation entries in alphabetical order by author’s last names. If a source is anonymous, alphabetise it by the first major word in the title (not a, an or the).

A standard MLA entry for a book consists of three elements: author, title, and publication information. These three elements are separated from another by a period [= full stop] and two spaces. The entry concludes with a period. (The italicised title may be shown as underlined instead if you are using a word-processing program).
Example;
Benton, Janetta Rebold. The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages. New York: Abbeville, 1992.

Publication information has been a problem for our students - please note the following principles:

• The publication information can be found on the title and copyright pages.
• If more than one city is listed on the title page, cite the first one only. Abbreviate and shorten names of publishers by dropping articles and words such as Press and abbreviations such as Co. ('Bantam Books', Inc. becomes 'Bantam'), using only the last names of persons ('Charles Scribner’s Sons' becomes 'Scribner’s'), and by using only the first in a string of last names ('Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.' becomes 'Harcourt'). Abbreviate 'University Press so that it reads 'UP'.
• The publisher’s name is followed by a comma, one space and the most recent year of publication. (Older German books sometimes do not have the year of publication; this is shown by n.d. (i.e. no date given). Most modern German books have on the reverse of the title page the ‘CIP Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek’ which gives full bibliographical information, but in a different style from that of the MLA).
• For books published before 1900, omit the publisher from the citation.
  Example:
  Kennedy, J. P. Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendancy. Rev. ed. Philadelphia, 1865.
• Republished book. This occurs frequently in literary essays. Give the year of original publication immediately after the title, followed by a period. Then give the publication information for the edition used.
  Example:
  Austen, Jane. Emma. 1816. New York: Penguin, 1986.
• Preface, foreword, introduction or afterword. This occurs frequently in literary essays. First identify the author and then the name of the item being cited (Preface, Foreword [Vorwort], Introduction [Einführung], or Afterword [Nachwort]). Follow with the title of the book and the book’s author preceded by the word By. Inclusive page numbers are included at the end of the publication information.
  Example:
  Monette, Paul. Foreword. A Rock and a Hard Place. One Boy’s Triumphant Story. By Anthony Godby Johnson. New York: Crown-Random. 1993. xiii-xvii.

Periodicals. (scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers)

A basic bibliographical entry consists of three elements: author, title and publication information. The title should be in italics or quotation marks. The periodical title (copied from its cover, with articles deleted) should be italicised. If appropriate, give the volume and issue numbers; the year of publication in parentheses, followed by a colon. For magazines and newspapers, list the day and month (abbreviated except for May, June and July) and year of publication. End the entry with inclusive page numbers of the entire article (do not use ‘p’ or ‘pp’).
Examples:
Howard, Bill. "Portable Computing Power within the Pounds". PC Magazine Aug. 1993: 125-129.
Williams, Adelia. "Jean Tardieu: The Painterly Poem." Foreign Language Studies 18 (1991): 114-25.
(for an anonymous article:)
"Democracy and Mega Scandal". New Yorker 27 Sept. 1993: 6-8.

Film

Begin with the film’s title followed by the director, producer, major performers, distributor and year. But if citing an individual’s work within that film, begin your entry with that person’s name and title.
Example:
The Age of Innocence. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Prod. Barbara DeFina. With Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder. Columbia, 1993. Based on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.

Footnotes in older MLA style

Before 1954, MLA recommended a footnote system for references which is still preferred in some disciplines, instead of the in-text method recommended above. This method of citation is similar to the footnotes reproduced earlier (note that the given names precede the surname in this method and the publishing information is shown in brackets). Where an author is quoted more than once, the author’s name only and a page number are shown. (MLA style whether old or new does not use ‘op.cit.’, ‘loc.cit.’ and ‘ibid’ at all.)

German style - for essays in German

This style should be used for essays written in the German language. Full details of German academic style can be found in Bangen, Georg. Die schriftliche Form germanistischer Arbeiten. 9. Auflage. Stuttgart: Metzler. 1990.

The recommended styles differ from the MLA style. It is not regarded as always necessary to give the publisher, and as with MLA the publisher’s name should be abbreviated.

The basic system for books is (including the punctuation shown, and with no underlining or italics):
Familienname, Vorname(n) des Verfassers:
Sachtitel.
(gegebenenfalls) Untertitel. Herausgeber. Auflage. Bandangabe.
(ferner unbedingt) Ort und Jahr.
(bzw. besser) Ort: Verlag Jahr.
(gegebenfalls) Reihentitel.

Examples of books or monographs:
Brentano, Clemens: Die lustigen Musikanten. Singspiel. - Frankfurt a. M.: Körner 1803.
Kayser, Wolfgang: Das sprachliche Kunstwerk. Eine Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft. 19. Aufl. - Bern u. München: Francke (1983). ('Francke' replaces the full publisher’s name 'A. Francke AG. Verlag' on the title page. The bracketed [1983] means that the year appears not on the title page but somewhere else in the book.)

Example of citation from a journal:
Anger, Alfred: Landschaftsstil des Rokoko. - In: Euphorion 51 (1957) S. 151-191.

Citation from an internet source

Melvin E. Page, History Department, University of Natal at Durban, has produced a guide which can be found at: <http://www.h-net.org/-africa/citation.html>.
Note that the pointed bracket symbols < > are used to enclose the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address. In simple citations the URL should be preceded by the author and title and followed by the date. For more complex citations, consult the examples in Professor Page’s article.

General requirements for linguistics essays

Some of the conventions for writing essays and papers on linguistic topics differ from those applying to literature essays.

Setting out

• It is preferred that essays and papers be produced using a word processor. If you use an Apple Macintosh computer, we can supply you with a phonetic font to allow you to include phonetic transcriptions in your essay where desirable. If you handwrite the paper, make sure it is clearly written and easily legible.
• Include a title page containing your name, the course number and name (e.g. GRMN2940 'Deutsch: Vergangenheit, Gegenwart, Zukunft'), the title or topic of the essay or paper and the date on which it was submitted.
• Always leave at least a ruler-width (3.5 cm) margin on the left-hand side of your page so that the marker has somewhere to jot down comments for you.
• Notes may be given as footnotes or endnotes, but should not be used for merely giving references, for which see referencing below.

Citing forms and meanings

There is a long-established convention for citing word forms and giving meanings in linguistic writing. Cited forms in English or a foreign language are underlined or, if you are using a word processor, may be italicised. This applies also to phrases, sentences or whole series of sentences that you may be citing as primary material within your text. (In the case of a long sentence or a series of sentences you should indent these from your own text as if they were a separate indented paragraph. Meanings are set between single quotation marks.
Example:
The German word Keks ‘biscuit' is derived from the English plural form cakes and like trampen, 'to hitchhike', shows phonological, morphological and semantic integration. However, unlike trampen, it has also undergone considerable orthographic integration.

Referencing (Harvard system)

As in the social sciences, the Harvard system of referencing is preferred in writings on linguistics. References to secondary literature within your essay are to be given in brackets and should include:

Setting out your bibliography

The reader of your essay can find out from your bibliography exactly where to check up on your reference, if need be. The entries in your bibliography are to be set out in alphabetical order according to the author’s surname and should include in the following:

Books (Monographs):

1. author’s surname followed by a comma and his/her first name or initials. (If there is more than one author, the name of the others should be in the order: first name/initials followed by surname in capitals, then a comma before the next author if more than two. The last author’s name should be preceded by "and".);
2. year of publication, followed by a fullstop;
3. title of the book underlined (or in italics) followed by a fullstop;
4. place (or places) of publication followed by a colon and the publisher’s name. The place of publication is almost always a city. Where there are two or more cities of the same name they are usually distinguished either by the state being added ('Rochester NY', 'London Ontario') or by the local river. In the latter case this river name is best put in brackets following the town, thus Frankfurt (Main). The country of publication is normally not stated if it is obvious ('London and New York' is enough but it might be necessary to state the country of a book published in Yamoussoukro.
   Examples:
   Kohler, Klaus J., 1977. Einführung in die Phonetik des Deutschen. Berlin: Erich Schmitt.
   Lühr, Rosemarie, 1986. Neuhochdeutsch. München: Wilhelm Fink (= UTB 1349).
   Meinhold, Gottfried and Eberhard Stock, 1982. Phonologie der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Leipzig: Bibliogra-phisches Institut.

Chapters:

1. author’s name and year of publication as above;
2. title of the chapter or article (not underlined or italicised) followed by a comma;
3. the word 'in' followed by a colon;
4. name(s) of the editor(s) with initial(s) preceding the surname, followed in brackets by (ed.) or (ed.s) [in German: (Hrsg.), short for ‘Herausgeber’];
5. title of the book underlined or italicised;
6. place of publication followed by a colon;
7. publisher’s name followed by a fullstop;
8. the number of the first and the last page of the chapter followed by a fullstop.
   Examples:
   Clyne, M.G., 1987. Zur Lage der Einwanderersprachen in Australien, in: W.Weber (Hrsg.), Einwanderungsland Australien. Frankfurt/Main: Athenäum. 133-152.
   Pienemann, M., 1985. Learnability and syllabus construction, in: K.Hyltenstam and M.Pienemann (eds), Modelling and assessing second language development. Clevedon (Avon): Multilingual matters. 72-109.
   Taylor, B.A., 1989. American, British and other foreign influences on Australian English since World War II, in: P.Collins, D.Blair (eds), Australian English: The language of a new society, St Lucia, Q.: Queensland University Press. 225-254.

Articles:

1. author’s name and year of publication as above;
2. title of the chapter or article (not underlined or italicised) followed by a comma;
3. name of the journal it comes from underlined or italicised;
4. issue number (German: ‘Jahrgang’), not underlined;
5. if applicable, the number of the part (German: ‘Heft’) in brackets after it, followed by a fullstop;
6. pagination followed by a fullstop.
   Examples:
   Clyne, M.G., 1982a. Die deutsche Sprache in Australien, Germanistische Mitteilungen 15. 59-86
   Clyne, M.G., 1982b. English and German, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 3. 38¬-49
   Quinn, Terry, 1976. The study of grammar and the teaching of languages, Babel 12(2). 7-9.
   Sharwood-Smith, M., 1981. Consciousness raising and the second language learner, Applied Linguistics 2(3). 159-168.

Primary literature

If you use primary literature as a source of Belege in your paper you can either refer to it in footnotes/endnotes or else treat it like the secondary literature above - especially if you are only using one or two sources. Alternatively, you can give an abbreviated reference after each Beleg and point the reader to a List of Sources at the end of your paper which is separate from your Bibliography and give full bibliographical details of your source material there.