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How to write Essay?Essays and their references and citations
These notes describe the structure and formal requirements for the longer
essays written on the MA Design for Interactive Media.
The target length for these essays is 4,500 words in Semester Two, and 6,500
words in Semester Three (15,000 for those taking the theory-only module.
Submissions over 50% longer than the target are frowned on, since such length
would imply a lack of selectivity! The criteria for assessment can be found in the
programme handbook on the intranet. All work is assessed separately by at
least two markers. All essays must be submitted in triplicate on paper. Selected
students will also be asked to provide a digital archive of their essay for use by
future students.
Essays
Essays must comprise the following elements
1 Title page
2 Abstract (approx 150 words)
3 Declarations
4 Acknowledgements (if any)
5 List of Contents
6 List of Appendices (if any)
7 Main body of text
8 Bibliography
9 Appendices (if any)
These are now described in more detail.
1 Title page
The words ‘Middlesex University’
Your name
The title
The words ‘submitted in partial fulfilment of module ELAxxxx of the MA Design
for Interactive Media.’ The module number will be 4120, 4130 or 4131 as
appropriate. Note that there is only one l in the middle of ‘fulfilment’.
The date
2 Abstract
This gives a brief summary of what the essay is about. You may want to
write this first, in order to clarify to yourself what the key issues are. Papers
for academic journals are usually also expected to carry up to 10 keywords
which indicate the essential themes, for example:
user interface management systems, concurrency, event-based
integration, artists, GUI construction, design
While keywords are not a requirement for your essay, you may still want to
list some, again in order to help you work out which themes are most
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important.
This is an example abstract from a volume of conference proceedings:
The aim of this paper is to explore some ways of linking ethnographic
studies of work in context with the design of CSCW systems. It uses
examples from an interdisciplinary collaborative project on air traffic
control. Ethnographic methods are introduced, and applied to identifying
the social organisation of this cooperative work, and the use of
instruments within it. On this basis some metaphors for the electronic
representation of current manual practices are presented, and their
possibilities and limitations discussed.
3 Declaration
Comprises the words:
I declare that all the work in this essay is my own and all sources have#p#分页标题#e#
been acknowledged.
followed by your signature, your name and the date.
4 Acknowledgements
Where necessary, indicate briefly how you are indebted to individuals or
institutions, for example in other faculties of the University or in external
organisations. Do not use this to make an Oscar-style speech thanking
everyone in your life. Do not thank any members of CEA staff, since in
theory this could prejudice the impartiality of the marking!
5 List of Contents
A standard table of contents, preferably indicating the numbers of the pages
on which the sections start. For the HTML version, please make these hot
links to the relevant sections.
6 List of Appendices
If any. Can be appended to the list of Contents.
7 Main body of text
The logical sequence for presenting your argument is as follows:
7.1Introduction
Normally written last—when you know what it is going to introduce. Here
you summarise briefly the main content of your essay so that, by reading
this alone, a person could get a clear idea of what it is you want to say.
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7.2Presentation and analysis of subject and evidence
In this part you put down the details of your research, setting it in the
context of the work of others. This is the main part of the essay and may
have several sections. Dividing your ideas into sections may help you to
keep the structure of your arguments clear.
Explain what you have discovered, devised or concluded; analyse the results
and justify your arguments. It is not necessary, however, to deal with every
piece of background material you used; so that in, say, an essay about design
you can put down something like,
Although there are many competing theories of perception which might
have suited my purpose (see, for example, the comprehensive list in
Mappin and Webb, 1987), I have based the work here on the ideas of
Fanshaw (1928, 1932) and her pupil, Edwardes (1939).
A sentence or so will obviate the need to justify the underlying theory. Of
course, if this essay had perception as its main subject, you would have to
describe the background fully. There should be no unsupported assertions in
your writing, even if you suspect that the reader will agree with you
anyway. For example, you cannot simply say that ‘Design is important in
multimedia,’ without supporting this statement, either (1) by providing
references to other authors who have given this opinion or (2) arguing the
case yourself. See References and Citations below. Incidentally, in the case of
that assertion, you would of course need to clarify to whom design is
important and in what way—social, cultural, commercial...? (‘Important’ is#p#分页标题#e#
too vague a word on its own).
7.3Description of approach to project or research
As appropriate to your essay and practical work, this section may be subsumed into
the previous section—Presentation and analysis of subject and evidence. Here you
outline the way in which you tackled the subject, what tools you used and
what led you to your conclusions. Explain what areas you found particularly
fruitful. Here too is a useful place to suggest further developments of your
research which others might tackle (or you yourself could take on to PhD
level).
7.4Summary and conclusions
In this part you bring together your arguments and list your conclusions. Do
not introduce things here that are not raised elsewhere in the essay. This part
should be capable of standing alone as a clear summary of what you have
learnt and achieved. It is not necessary to produce some perfectly pat
answers if you believe you have discovered that there really are no answers
to some of the issues you have raised. It would be perfectly acceptable to
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propose a number of questions as part of your conclusions, provided they
did not seem to be ones which you ought to have answered yourself!
8 Bibliography—references and citations
It is essential to make comprehensive and complete references to the work of
others. By doing this you will indicate your knowledge of the field and be able
to set your work in the context of other research. However this does not mean
the more references, the better. Only references which are pertinent should be
included. Irrelevant references should not be cited even if they have been
consulted in the course of the study. References are given to support the
arguments you make; to indicate views different from your own; and to cover
items with which you do not deal in detail.
References consist of two parts: a full reference in a list at the end of the work,
and a brief citation in the text, referring the reader to it. Never put the full
reference into the main text.
References listed at the end of the work will normally be either to books or to
articles in journals. In the event of there being a reference to more than one
publication in any year by an author, it is necessary to introduce a letter after
the date to distinguish the different publications. The way you should list
references at the end of the essay is as follows:
Books
Author(s), year of publication, title, publisher, place of publication
For example
Brown HJ (1973) Computational Geometry, McGraw—Hill, New York
Brown HJ (1973a) Studies in Geometry, Prentice Hall, London
Evans QW, Bigley RT and Cowley FGR (1988) Innovation, Penguin Books,#p#分页标题#e#
Harmondsworth
Johnstone G (1983) A philosophical study of creativity in art, Unpublished MA
thesis, Department of Design Research, Royal College of Art, London
Articles
Author(s): year of publication: title: periodical name: volume number: issue
number (or date): page numbers
Examples
Lawton S (1986) ‘Another VT2000 clone?’ Hardcopy (6) 6 pp130-132
Milliun J, Reardon J and Smart P (1978) ‘Life with your computer’
Communications of the PC Society, May Special Issue, 5, pp45-50
Always give these full forms of reference to allow readers to follow up the
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information if they wish. Note that in the case of books, the book title is set in
italics, and, in the case of articles, it is the journal name that is italicised.
The list of references is normally in alphabetical order. You may separate the list
of books from that of journals, but this is not compulsory.
References to non-paper media
You may cite non-paper media, for example, information found on the Internet.
The format should be:
Author(s), date of publication, title, URL, date accessed
If there is a date of publication (such as ‘last updated xxx’) on the site, this
should appear in brackets after the author name. It is helpful if you also indicate
the month and year in which you accessed the site.
For example..
Cameron, A (1993) Dissimulations, http://www.media.wmin.ac.uk (May,
2000)
Where the author is not known, use the short name of the URL instead.
Making the citations
In the main body of the essay there will be two basic forms of citation: one
where the reference is cited as part of the sentence, with the date in parenthesis;
and the other where the citation is itself in parenthesis.
Making the citation within the sentence (date in parenthesis)
Brown and Wiltshire (1983) have shown that this method gives the most
accurate general results although Freeman, Hardy and Willis (1985) have
argued differently.
Making the citation in parenthesis
It is not absolutely clear whether this method gives the most accurate
results and different authorities have expressed different degrees of
confidence in it (Brown and Wiltshire 1983, Freeman, Hardy and Willis
1985).
Quotations
If you have to quote from someone else’s work, again two possibilities arise.
Either a few words of quotation are set within the sentence, or a fairly extensive
passage is included (note however that the reader does not primarily want to
know what someone else thought, but what you thought; so quote only when
some special advantage is gained).
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The quotation must be absolutely accurate even to the inclusion of errors or
variant spellings if these occur (they must be indicated with the Latin word sic
in brackets, meaning thus). If it is necessary to abridge a quotation or to add
words in order for the quotation to fit your sentence, the fact that this is done
must be clearly indicated. Finally, the source of the quotation must be
referenced including the page numbers on which the quotation occurs.
Short quotation
As Angell (1981 p81) aptly says, ‘Perspective projections are all very well
but unfortunately (or fortunately) we have two eyes.’
Long quotation
The role of the image has become central to modern theory (Eco 1987,
1987a). Barthes in particular has some interesting things to say and
these are difficult to paraphrase:http://www.ukassignment.org/daixieEssay/
What is the filmic image (including the sound)? A lure. This word
must be taken in its analytical sense [...] The image is there
before me, for me: [...] I hurl myself at it like an animal at a
‘lifelike’ rag waved in front of it; and of course the image
perpetuates in the subject I believe I am the misunderstanding
attached to the self and to the Imaginary.
Barthes 1975 p106
Note the use of the ellipsis in square brackets to indicate that some parts of the
original have been left out. Note also that less line spacing is required in the
quotation, that it is indented, and that optionally it may be in a slightly smaller
type size. No quotation marks are required when a quotation is set out in this
way.
Readability
The essay should use a serif face, with lines of text not too long (generous
margins) and ample space between lines.
9 Appendices
Appendices to the essay may take the form of
• Lingo scripts or other computer programs, if these are pertinent to your
arguments
• important drawings, sketches or storyboards, perhaps representing ideas which
finally were rejected for use in the project
• transcripts of interviews undertaken as part of the research
and anything else which is interesting, relevant and helps to indicate the scope
of your achievements. [END]
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