School of History

School of History Guidelines for Authors of MLitt, MPhil and PhD Dissertations

1. Introduction
2. Writing Style
3. Plagiarism, copyright and acknowledgements
4. Abbreviations
5. Quotations
6. Checking your work
7. Footnotes and References
8. Bibliography
9. Use of material from the Internet
10. Classical and Biblical References
11. Illustrations
12. Maps and Tables

1. Introduction

These guidelines have been drawn up by members of the School of History to assist postgraduate students writing theses in the School of History, though the principles they embody also apply to the kind of long essays which are produced as part of taught masters' degrees. They are neither comprehensive nor intended to be prescriptive. The advice and conventions which they embody will not apply in every case, and postgraduates should always be guided by the advice of their supervisor as to what is appropriate for them.

Three different kinds of thesis can be written in the University:

MLitt [One year full-time study], 15,000 words in length, this must be submitted by 31 August of the academic year during which a student is matriculated. It is principally researched and written during the period after the coursework for the Graduate Diploma is successfully completed.
MPhil 40,000 words. This can either be written in the fifteen months between successfully completing the Graduate Diploma and the end of the two years allowed for study or [where direct admission to second year is allowed, with either full-time or part-time status] during the twelve months full- time/twenty-four months part-time after first matriculation.
PhD [3 years' full-time or 6 years' part-time study] 80,000 words. This is normally produced at the end of the prescribed period of study, whether three years (in the case of full-time study) or six (in the case of part-time study), or shortly after it. Grant-giving bodies in the United Kingdom are increasingly concerned with completion rates and it is likely that pressure on all full-time postgraduates to complete within three or, at most, four years will increase over the next few years.

The word-lengths for particular degrees given above are maximum figures. In all cases they include all text, footnotes, and any appendix/appendices which form part of the thesis, but exclude the bibliography. Students are advised that the prescribed word-lengths must be rigorously observed, except in the very few cases where an extension to the limit has been granted in advance by the Pro-Dean of Graduate Studies (Arts and Divinity). This will only be done where the nature of the thesis makes the prescribed limit unrealistic, eg for the edition of a text or other documents.

Read, and conform to, the University guidelines concerning the submission of your work. These can be found at the back of the present guidelines, and cover such matters as the number of copies to be presented, the form of the title page and declaration, abstracts, bibliography, textual references, forms of abbreviation, and page format, including line spacing and margins. Make sure that you understand what is required from the beginning. Your supervisor will always be glad to clarify any points of difficulty.

The University has a Code of Practice for Supervisors and Students in Taught Postgraduate Programmes and a Code of Practice for Supervisors and Students in Research Postgraduate Programmes which should be consulted for detailed information.

Guidance on Style and content of a thesis can be found in two established manuals:

The Chicago Manual of Style (many editions)

Kate L Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations (London, 1982 ed)

though it should be remembered that both were drawn up with the rather different requirements of North American Universities in mind.

2. Writing Style

The basic purpose of academic writing is to present an argument clearly and persuasively. This is crucial and must always be borne in mind.

Determine your personal 'house style' and stick to it. Consistency is extremely important. Decide, for example, which numbers to write as words and which as figures (it is usual to write one to ten as words, 11 and upwards as figures); which words to begin with a capital letter; whether to spell place names in their original, anglicised, or modern forms. It is conventional to anglicise foreign place names where there is an established English form: thus, 'Cologne' not 'Köln', 'The Hague' not 'Den Haag'; 'Brittany' not 'Bretagne'; 'Vienna' not 'Wien'. The conventions which you are following should be indicated at the beginning of your thesis. If you do not get these things sorted out at the start, the 'find and replace' facility of a word processor is invaluable for changing words or checking for consistency.

Whereas an essay should be written as a continuous text, a dissertation must be divided into chapters, and the use of sub-headings may be helpful in certain circumstances. Bullet points, however, and other such devices designed for writing reports, should not normally be used in academic writing. Similarly you should not use bold type or italics for emphasis, and should avoid the use of exclamation marks or slang. Italics are of course appropriate for foreign words which are used in the text of your thesis.

Try not to use unnecessary words, and avoid flowery or emotive prose. Adjectives and superlatives can often be redundant, as can adverbs. The first person should normally be avoided in any thesis as unnecessary, since if it is not your opinion you should not be saying it. It may be appropriate in the 'Introduction', where your working method is being explained, but not otherwise. Long words and over- elaborate sentences detract from the clarity of an argument. Try splitting long sentences into two or more shorter ones. Varying sentences and paragraph lengths can often improve your writing. As a general guide, paragraphs should be around 200 words in length, but this is not an invariable rule. Each paragraph should address a single point in your argument, and a new paragraph should begin when you move on to the next point. The recognition of where paragraph breaks should come is important. Finally, remember that correct grammar is not pedantic. It means no more - and no less - than writing in a precise and unambiguous manner. Plan the structure of your topic and progress logically through it, establishing and building upon arguments as you go along.

3. Academic misconduct, copyright and acknowledgements

Plagiarism is defined by the University in various ways, including the unacknowledged and extensive appropriation of material which is not original to the student, and the re-use of material submitted by the student as part of their coursework. Where you wish to reproduce material you have read, you can either paraphrase it in your own words, or quote it directly (using quotation marks - see below). In either case, you must acknowledge your use of it by employing a footnote or other form of reference. Failure to acknowledge someone else's words or ideas is plagiarism, whether this omission is accidental or deliberate. In order to be sure you are never guilty of plagiarism, even by accident, you need to be aware of the potential problem when you are taking notes, and make it clear to yourself where you have summarised material and where you have directly copied text.

Please familiarise yourself with the University definitions of plagiarism/academic misconduct.

The laws of copyright, particularly where they concern illustrative and manuscript material, may be relevant to your thesis. Neither purchase of a copy nor permission to reproduce it gives you copyright over an image. Copyright on printed works lapses 70 years after the death of the author, but copyright on unpublished works has no limit and remains permanently with the original author. In every case you should ensure you have any permission to reproduce which is necessary.

Do not forget to acknowledge formally any help you have received from others, or any permission granted to make use of copyright material in your thesis.

4. Abbreviations

Abbreviations should not be employed in your main text, but may be appropriate in footnotes. A list of abbreviations and what they stand for must be included at the beginning of your thesis, and employed consistently and according to accepted usage thereafter. If in doubt, write in full. Most dictionaries contain lists of 'standard' abbreviations. Once again, you must be completely consistent in any abbreviations you employ

5. Quotations

Quotations, from original sources or from the work of other scholars, can be included in your text and may make a point more effectively or succinctly than you can do as author. But remember: the greater the number of quotations, the less impact they will have. So be sparing in the number of occasions on which you quote, and do so only where the quotation makes a point with particular effect.

Quotations of four lines or less should be incorporated within the main text, using inverted commas (usually single). Quotations of more than four lines should be separated from the main text by being further indented, and usually single-spaced if the text is double-spaced. In this case, you do not need quotation marks. For example:

Both men submitted bills for their time, travel and other expenses. Durham's version was that:

If I recollect right being one day in Mr Carstairs' office in London he mentioned to me that there were two Coupar Writers in Town who were very anxious to find a Candidate for the Eastern District of Fife Burghs and begged to know if I had any thoughts of becoming a Candidate. I said that I certainly had not but that it depended upon what Prospect of Success I had and what Influence they had.

Both men of course assured him that 'they had great interest and was sure of carrying the Ellection [sic]'.

'Sic' is inserted within square brackets, as in this example, in quotations from original material, to call attention to spelling or grammar which is at variance from modern English usage.

In quoting from original sources it is usual to retain the original spelling. If you are modernising the spelling, you should do so consistently and make it clear that you are doing so in the 'conventions' at the beginning of your thesis.

If you choose to omit words from within the block of text which you are quoting, then the missing words should be represented by three dots, separated from the adjacent words by a space. You may also need to add one or more words in square brackets to make your new sentence grammatically correct. For example:

'If you choose to omit words ... [they] should be represented by three dots'.

Or you may prefer to split the quotations in two, with your own words in between. It is not necessary to add three dots at the beginning or end of every quotation, though you may wish to do so occasionally to emphasise the incompleteness of the material you are quoting, or where the beginning of a quotation is not also the beginning of a sentence.

The question of quotations in foreign languages can cause difficulties. Here there are no hard-and-fast rules. Too lengthy quotations should be avoided, for the reasons set out above. One established solution is to provide an English-language direct translation or paraphrase in the text, with the foreign language quotation in a footnote. Once again, the key is consistency throughout the thesis. Both in quotations and from foreign languages and in citing books and articles in foreign languages, be careful to follow any specific rules of capitalization in these languages (eg in German the first letter of any noun is capitalized) and to include all accents.

6. Checking your work

This vital process will almost certainly take more time than you expect. A thesis should go through several drafts, each improving both the tightness and flow of the argument and its presentation.

Spell checkers are excellent tools and you should make use of them. But they cannot:

Tell you whether a word makes sense in its context.
Pick up typing errors which are correct words, but not what you intended, eg an for and, or for of, it's for its.
Tell you that you are being inconsistent. If you can build up on your own Custom Dictionary, make sure that you do not enter more than one version of a word, especially proper names.
Tell you that you are using a correctly spelled word but have misunderstood the meaning.
Deal with words in foreign languages; indeed it may render them incorrectly into English ones.

If in doubt, consult an old-fashioned dictionary, such as The Concise Oxford Dictionary

7. Footnotes and References

The purpose of any referencing system is to support your argument by referring to relevant sources and secondary literature. The guiding principles are clarity and user- friendliness. You must aim always to provide sufficient information to allow the reader to find the original source accurately and quickly. Only cite sources which you have actually consulted. Never cite references you have not actually consulted, unless you make this quite clear, for example: 'as cited in Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783-1793 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 109'. In History theses it is preferable to give references in this full form or as an abbreviation (Black, British Foreign Policy, p. 109) rather than in the Harvard Social Science System, in which the above would be cited as Black (1994), p. 109.

Keep precise notes of all your references as you are doing your research, otherwise you will waste a great deal of time subsequently, tracking down missing citations or page numbers. One of the advantages of using a word processor is that you can build up a bibliography and/or insert your footnotes as you go along. This is a valuable facility - use it. But you should note that you will have to be careful to keep track of where, in the finished thesis, you make first use of a work (see below).

Footnotes are the referencing system normally employed by historians. In addition to providing references to your sources or secondary literature, they also enable you to include supportive or critical source analysis, or to add comments relevant to the subject but inappropriate to the flow of the text. Be careful not to use such asides to excess. Footnotes should normally be located at the bottom of the page of the text to which they refer, something which modern word-processing has made much easier, and not at the end of the chapter or thesis. They may be numbered either consecutively throughout the chapter, 1, 2 ..... 73, 74; or 1, 2, 3 on each page.

The footnote number is normally inserted at the end of the relevant sentence, immediately after the full stop, even if this means citing two or more references in one footnote. Difficulties can arise over the way in which secondary studies, printed documents and manuscript sources are cited. There are several different conventions over the style of footnotes; that given here is the most commonly used by historians, but it is not the only possible one. The golden rule is that you should be consistent: the same form of referencing must be used in every chapter of your thesis. Conventions vary as to whether you need to include 'p.'/'pp.' to designate page(s) cited; once again the key is consistency. In what follows, examples are given of the most common types of material which you will need to cite.

Books

On the first mention in each chapter, a book would be cited as follows:

Martin Aurell, La noblesse en Occident (Ve- XVe siècle) (Paris, 1996), p. 62.

Note: it is not conventional in British practice to give the publisher or ISBN number when citing a book.

Where there is a sub-title, as in this example, it is separated from the main title by a colon(:) or semi-colon(;).

On second and subsequent occasions in each chapter, this would be cited as:

Aurell, La noblesse en Occident, pp. 133-46.

Or it might be cited as:

Aurell, Noblesse, pp. 133-46.

The title of the book may be underlined (as above) or can be italicised, using this facility of a word-processor:

Aurell, La noblesse en Occident, pp. 133-46.

Books which have been translated from their original language should be so described:

Otto Brunner, 'Land' and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Mediaeval Austria, translated by Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton (Philadelphia, 1992; originally published in German in 1938), pp. xiii-ixi.

On second and subsequent citations in the same chapter, it would be referred to as:

Brunner, 'Land' and Lordship, pp. 294-364.

Books by more than one author are dealt with in exactly the same way:

A J S Gibson and T C Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland 1550-1780 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 117.

On second and subsequent occasions when this is cited in the same chapter, this would be:

Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, p. 67.

Gibson and Smout, Prices, p. 67.

Articles in Periodicals:

First Mention in Any Chapter:

Jean-Pierre Devroey, 'Men and Women in Early Medieval Serfdom: The Ninth-century North Frankish Evidence', Past and Present, 166 (2000), 1-30.

On second and subsequent mention in any chapter; this would be abbreviated to:

Devroey, 'Men and Women in Early Medieval Serfdom', 23-4.

That is to say, the journal title, number and year of publication would all be dropped.

Past and Present is in any case unusual in numbering individual issues and not whole volumes, as in the following, more usual example:

Ian Kershaw, 'Improvised Genocide? The Emergence of the "Final Solution" in the "Warthegau"', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series 2 (1992), 51-78.

On second and subsequent mentions, this would be abbreviated to:

Kershaw, 'Improvised Genocide?', 62-71.

Notice, when citing articles in periodicals: the title of the article is placed within single inverted commas; the title of the periodical is underlined or italicised, [exactly as for book titles, above]; while the year of publication is placed within round brackets, preceded by the volume number, which can either be given in Arabic numerals, as in the examples given above, or in Roman numerals: XLI (1962). In citing articles in periodicals, it is less common - though in no sense wrong - to use 'p.' or 'pp.' before the page reference.

Articles in Edited Collections:

First Mention:

George Hay, 'The Architecture of Scottish Collegiate Churches', in G W S Barrow, ed, The Scottish Tradition: Essays in Honour of Ronald Gordon Cant (Edinburgh, 1974), pp. 56-70.

Second or subsequent mentions in any chapter:

Hay, 'Architecture of Scottish Collegiate Churches', p. 65.

The case of multi-volume works:

First Mention:

Philippe Contamine, 'La segmentation féodale, début du Xe - milieu du XIIe siècle', in André Corvisier, ed, Histoire militaire de la France (4 vols; Paris, 1992), i. 43-76.

vol 1, pp. 43-76.

Second and subsequent mention:

Contamine, 'La segmentation féodale', 55.

Printed Sources

The same basic principles apply:

First mention in any chapter:

Richard Dietrich, ed, Die politischen Testamente der Hohenzollern (Cologne and Vienna, 1986), pp. 82-91.

Second and subsequent mention:

Dietrich, ed, Die politischen Testamente, p. 642.

Multi-volume Sources:

First mention:

J R N Macphail, ed, Highland Papers (Scottish History Society, 2nd series 5, 12 and 20; 3rd series, 22; 4 vols; Edinburgh, 1914-34), iii. 211.

Second and subsequent mentions:

Macphail, ed, Highland Papers, iv. 26.

Sometimes the nature of the source being cited is given:

'Mémoire justificatif présenté au Roi par Choiseul en 1765', printed in F Calmettes, ed, Mémoires du duc de Choiseul 1719-1785 (Paris, 1904), pp. 382-414, at p. 389.

Secondary studies and printed sources which are referred to in several chapters can be identified by a short title throughout; this would then be included in the list of abbreviations at the beginning of the thesis.

Manuscript Sources:

Here it is conventional to give the archive where the manuscript is located (often identified by an abbreviation), the archival reference to the document and, if a letter, the names of the sender and recipient, together with as precise a date as is known. In footnotes (but not in the text) dates may, if you wish, be abbreviated as '20 Dec 1689'.

The order in which the above information is given varies according to different practices, but once again the key is consistency throughout the thesis.

Examples of references to manuscript material would be:

PRO, C61/72, m 9.

Bodleian MS Ashmole 764, fo. 11.

Yorke to Hardwicke, 27 Feb 1756, BL Add Mss 35357, fos. 11-12.

Unpublished Dissertations

First Mention:

Patrick Collinson, 'The Puritan Classical Movement in the Reign of Elizabeth I', (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1957), pp. 107-23.

Second and subsequent mentions:

Collinson, 'Puritan Classical Movement', pp. 82- 95.

For the correct use and form of footnotes consult previous theses written at St Andrews, or published examples. A few examples are given below.

Basic factual information about Cupar grammar school and its masters can be found in Beale, Burgh and Parochial Schools of Fife, and Bain, Patterns of Error.
Tranter, 'Schooling and Literacy in Early Nineteenth Century Scotland', p. 20.
StAUL B13/14/4, 13 January, 28 January, 28 July 1729; 10 and 19 October 1730; 31 March 1731.
NAS JC26/294. I am grateful to Dr R Harris for bringing this to my attention.
StAUL B13/18/3 passim 1795 onwards. The various book-keeping methods of different treasurers make comparisons between the years difficult.

In the case of the documents listed in note 3, the individual pages in the manuscripts are not numbered, so the date is the only way by which one can refer to a specific entry. Some manuscripts are numbered not by page but by folio (ie the physical page as opposed to the written page). The first side you read can be referred to as recto (abbreviated: r) the back as verso (abbreviated: v). Alternatively you may simply refer to fos. 5-8. Do not forget to use the full reference when citing folios. For example: PRO B51/203, fos. 5-8 OR fos. 5v-8r.

8. Bibliography

This should be divided into:

Manuscript Sources
Printed Sources
Secondary Studies, ie Books and Articles
Unpublished Theses

Within the bibliography, authors and editors should be listed alphabetically, and multiple works by one author listed alphabetically either in terms of the first word of the title, excluding the definite or indefinite article, or in chronological or publication order. In the bibliography (unlike the practice in footnotes), an author's initials or first name are placed after her/his surname:

Aurell, Martin, La noblesse en Occident (Ve- XVe siècle) (Paris, 1996).

However it is laid out, a bibliography entry must include:

Author(s) and/or editor(s), title, place of publication, year of publication. (It is not customary in British practice to include the name of the publisher or the ISBN number). For articles the precise pages should also be given.

This should be set out according to a standard format, though slight variations in practice may be noted. Remember two golden rules. Make sure that your usages throughout your thesis are scrupulously consistent and, if you are submitting an article to an outlet which has an established house style, secure an example and follow it exactly. Most academic journals include Notes for contributors.

Primary sources should be listed alphabetically by archive, and alphabetically or numerically within each archive. For example:

St Andrews University Library (StAUL)
Cupar Burgh Records, town council minutes (B13/14)
Session Minutes of Boston U P Church, 1803-1825 (CH3/66/1)
Account of Lady Betty Anstruther (ms CS479.A8)

9. Use of material from the Internet

Increasingly students are turning to the internet for information. First of all, always remember 'garbage in, garbage out'. Computers are only as good as the information fed into them. While databases are getting better and better, they will never cover really specialist topics, such as local history. Articles are listed by title, and you may have to wade through a great deal of irrelevant material. When looking up articles on fishing, for example, you will find a number whose titles include 'a fish out of water', but whose content is nothing to do with fishing. It may be a better use of your time to talk to librarians and archivists, and to use electronic search aids within archives.

If you refer to a website in a footnote or bibliography, always remember that, as with any printed information, the point is to allow your reader to check it, if he or she wishes, and refer to it accordingly. Anything really ephemeral is of limited use, and should be avoided. And always remember that material on the internet, just like printed material, is the copyright of the author.

10. Classical and Biblical References

The conventions of scholarship still assume a general familiarity with the ancient authors and the Bible. This should cause no great problem. The rules are quite simple. Authors are usually referred to with a single generally-accepted name (eg Caesar, Tacitus, Herodotus, Josephus), while their works are known by abbreviated titles (eg Josephus, Bellum Judaicum [usually further abbreviated to Bell Jud]). Classical texts are usually known only as mediaeval copies which have been refined and textually ordered by modern scholars into chapters and sections. Modern standard texts, usually with translations, are readily available. A typical example of a citation would be:

Tacitus, Agricola, 35.1

For Biblical reference, indicate the book, chapter, and verse(s):

Acts, 27.9.44. (This refers to St Paul's celebrated shipwreck.)

Remember, to use the established English spellings for books of the Bible, for which standard abbreviations may also be employed.

11. Illustrations

The purpose of any illustrative material, whether photographs, drawings, maps, or computer-generated graphics, is to add to or elucidate your argument. All visual matter must be technically sound, and executed according to the appropriate conventions. Lettering and captioning are particularly important. Acknowledge and provide a source, and ensure you have permission from the copyright holder before you reproduce any illustration. Finally, never include illustrations simply because you are proud of them or think they will look impressive. You can secure invaluable advice on illustrative material from the University's Reprographic Services Department. They are now able to provide a digitised version on CD of virtually any original you supply.