Please can anyone advise me what to do in an essay where I've used a lot of the ideas from a book but no direct quote (in this particular paragraph)?

How do I go about showing recognition for this?

Also, for where I have quoted and need to give each a number and list them at the end, how do I make the numbers small?

Thankyou

This might be a bit messy but could you not do something like 'According to 'Book', blah de blah etc'?

You are right to be concerned about this as you do not want to be accused of plagiarism.

There are two ways of doing this


1) You can include it in a sentence
According to Bloggs (2007) the following ideas etc or
The influence of Bloggs (2007) can be seen in etc

2) You make a statement and put the name of the person after it
The moon is made of green cheese (Bloggs 2007)

With both of these you will have a reference list at the end that gives the detail of the book, chapter or article according to the way that is required by your school/uni. If you want to use the number system use either of the examples above and then add the number (1). Start the numbers with the first in the essay - if you go back to that same reference again, refer to (1) again. Then the reference list will start with (1) and give all the details.

To make number small - use superscript in your word processing programme - you should be able to reduce the size of the number to font 7 and then and the system will put it up a bit.

Incidentally - using quotes in an essay tells me you can read - it does not tell me you can examine ideas and link them with others. When I was marking (university) writing I was much more impressed with something like

"There are a number of authors who report that the moon is made of green cheese (for instance, Bloggs, 2007 and Snooks 2006) but this idea has been challenged by those who have landed on the moon (NASA). "

That tells me that you have read more than Bloggs and Snooks, that you do not necessarily agree with the argument and that you are prepared to find information that gives a different viewpoint.

Good look with your essay writing

Thankyou for your help and advise. I'm finding it so hard to make the essay "flow" with quotes in it. I am trying to include both modern and slightly older writers to show I've read a range of books but, as you say, they don't all agree. This part is taking so much longer than writing the essay did in the first place!

Good luck Muddy Paws. As a teacher who has been really sickened by the way in which essay writing has so often been replaced by multiple choice questions I was really cheered up by your intelligent approach to the problem.

I can't add to the good advice given above except to say try to in addition to sorting out the way you want to reference your quotations, to write a coherent and interesting introduction and conclusion.

Hope you get a good mark.

Can I be nosey and ask what subject you're writing about?

Haha! - I reckon you're going to be a great essay writer, since, at the same time, you want to include a wide range of opinions, and you recognise that they don't agree. That is one of the fundamentals of academic debate!

I've never understood why essay-writers might be tempted not to cite their sources. If you're arguing a point, you will be judged, partly, on your breadth of reading, and the best way to prove that is by quoting, and accurately referencing, several other thinkers on your subject. Why quote a source and then not cite it??? If you've got a major source, with which you strongly agree or disagree, why not put a quote at the head of the essay, and then prove its strength or demolish its premise?

My own method is to read as many articles or books on the subject as I can, picking up quotes that spring off the page as either reinforcing my prejudice or disagreeing with it. I then manually type these quotes into a document (complete with a proper reference at the end of each quote). During this process, my thinking on the subject might change, but I start to see the flow of the argument.

Then I write my argument, inserting the appropriate quote at the right point in the essay, to reinforce my argument. In that way, I hope to end up with a good 'flow', but with the necessary academic conventions.

If you'd like to see a random sample of an essay of mine, to see what I mean, please do send me a PM!

Brian

This is fairly straightforward, if you're using Word. Click on 'Insert', then 'footnote' or 'endnote', depending on what convention you need to comply with. I'm sure that there's an equivalent if you're using Open Office. It should be fairly simple, whatever system you're on.

Sorry, but I have a history teacher from America who actually said to me the other day "I really can't understand why you Brits insist on writing essays all the time. In the good old USA we use multiple choice tests right up til college!"

It kind of makes me doubt his ability to teach an A Level class. Is it possibly true that in American schools they don't write essays?

To the person who originally asked the question, I probably can't help really, I'm not a teacher, just nosing around on this forum, but I'd say that no wonder you dislike putting quotes in if you do it after you have already written the essay. You'll find it much easier if you integrate all your quotes etc at the same time as you write.

Yes and getting the references section together can take an age. I agree with you though - paraphrasing and summarising an argument can make eferything hang together much better, and you can insert your own and others' evaluations into the piece much better. The hard part is finding a balance between getting enough detail into the account without just seeming to rehearse a lot of stuff your reader/ marker is overly familiar with already.

BachPensioner's advice is all absolutely on the money. I would just add to this that if this is the first essay you have prepared for this faculty (or even this individual...) then do treat it as a learning experience and be open minded about any feedback you have. Conventions do vary - I found social sciences, masters level at the OU had very different expectations to undergraduate arts degree at college - and I had to learn those by trial and error.

Good luck and try to enjoy the process as much as possible!

H

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Sorry, but I have a history teacher from America who actually said to me the other day "I really can't understand why you Brits insist on writing essays all the time. In the good old USA we use multiple choice tests right up til college!"

It kind of makes me doubt his ability to teach an A Level class. Is it possibly true that in American schools they don't write essays?

To the person who originally asked the question, I probably can't help really, I'm not a teacher, just nosing around on this forum, but I'd say that no wonder you dislike putting quotes in if you do it after you have already written the essay. You'll find it much easier if you integrate all your quotes etc at the same time as you write.
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I had a (very intelligent friend) just complete a semester abroad at an American University as part of the second year of her degree and she said they were working at roughly A-level standard. Makes you wonder about the supposed most powerful country in the world doesn't it?!

In response to the original question, I'd analyse what you've written and see where you have directly paraphrased (ie. written out the author's ideas in your own words) and then footnote it with a reference: 'see Bloggs, p. 12-13.' As for quotes, see what the argument is you're trying to make and use quotes appropriately to illustrate your point. My university tutor told me that if I could say something in my own words, it was preferable to quoting and that quotes should only be used when you cannot communicate the information any other way. It shows you've really understood and processed what you've read.
Good luck!

Thankyou Aquarelle, what a nice kind topic replyer you are.

To John S, it is an essay on how I go about introducing a new piece to a student.

I know I'm going about it in rather a cackhanded way, but I'd already read the books before I decided which title to choose for the essay, I then went back through the books and picked out some quotes, I then thought about where in the essay each one could go, which meant I had to change quite a lot of it....

Basicly, it's Paul Harris's ideas about "Simultaneous Learning" that I've used quite heavily. Although it all makes a lot of sense and it is possible I could have thought of it myself, as I've quoted from him, they are going to know I've read the book, so I wanted to know the best way to acknowledge his work.

Now I'm not even sure if half of what I've written is actualy relevant to answering the question!