Some Basics

Fonts

1) Font size for the main body of all text should be 12 point.

2) Though students often like to play with different fonts, for formal writing, especially writing to be sent to the IB, the fonts must be appropriate to the task. Roman times and courier are two fonts appropriate for formal writing.

Length of Work

1) Student writing is measured in words, not in pages. Four-thousand words is about ten pages typed and double spaced in 12 font; 1500 words is about two and half such pages.

Line Spacing

1) Formal writing, especially writing that needs to be graded by teachers or IB examiners, should be double spaced. This makes it easier to read and provides white-space for teacher/examiners to make comments within the text.

Underlining (Including online sources)

1) Titles of plays, books, poems published as books, magazines, newspapers, films, television programs, ballets, long musical compositions, compact discs, cassettes, records, operas, paintings, sculptures, and pamphlets, must all be underlined.

2) When citing or referring to works from online, the writer should underline the scholarly project or database name. Professional or personal site names should also be underlined.

3) Exceptions to the above rules are: The Bible, Old Testament, Genesis, Gospels, Talmud, Koran, and the Upanishads. These works should be treated like any other book, however, in the works-cited list and bibliography.

4) Additional exceptions are: Laws, Acts, and Similar Political Documents. Some examples are: Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Treaty of Trianon.

Quoting and Use of Quotation Marks (Including Online Sources)

1) Quotation marks should be used to indicate the beginning and end of a character’s speech in prose fiction.

2) Quotation marks should be used in formal writing to indicate when words, phrases or passages are taken from another person or source.

3) Quotation marks are to be used to indicate the titles of short works of poetry, titles of magazines or journal articles, short plays (one act), short stories, articles found online, and titles of songs.

4) Quotations of passages of three or more lines should not be put in quotation marks, but a line should be skipped before and after the quotation and it should be indented to separate it from the rest of the text. Parenthetical notation should also be used to indicate the page on which the quotation can be found. The following example comes from the opening two sentences of an essay.

Joyce’s startling opening to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow that was coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo (3)

often jars the readers senses as it places the reader in the mind set of a child. Faulkner found this technique so startling that he imitated when he decided to portray the thought processes of a mentally disabled person in his book The Sound and the Fury.

Contractions and Formal Writing

1) A contraction is when two words are joined by an apostrophe. Examples are: haven’t, you’re, and I’ll. Contractions should not be used in formal writing. The only exception to this is when quoting another source that uses contractions.

Sources Cited in the Body of the Paper

Parenthetical Notation

The form of source citation currently accepted at the American School is the parenthetical citation in the body of the paper. This form has taken the place of endnotes (used for larger works that contain many chapters so as to prevent any interruption of the flow of the text) and footnotes (which are used for explanatory notes that are not part of the main body of a paper). The parenthetical citation provides a simplified yet effective method of crediting sources properly. Below are examples of parenthetical citation and the different ways it changes to accommodate the more complex issues of citation.

Citation for Papers with One Source

According to Madge Poulson, "the most important factor involved in determining the correct amount of water to give a Venus Flytrap is the amount of flies eaten by the plant in one-week" (958).

Citation for Papers with more than One Source

When citing more than one work in a paper it is necessary to include the authors name in the citation to make clear which work you are referring to:

There is a sharp contrast between the Kurtz’s statement, "The horror! The horror!" (Conrad 153) and Hamlet’s statement, "The readiness is all!" (Shakespeare 67).

Citations for Papers with more than One Source by the Same Author

When citing more than one work by the same author it is necessary to use the title of the work to distinguish which work is being cited:

We can see the different tone Joyce creates by looking at the opening words of the two books; in one we get "Stately, plump, Buck Mulligan" (Ulysses 1) and in the other we get "Once upon a time, and a very good time it was" (Portrait 1).

Citations for Internet Sources

1) Use the same practice as above, however, what is more important is to be sure the Works Cited and or Bibliography pages include the complete internet address of the site from which the source was obtained. To be sure this done properly, a basic guide is given explaining the steps that need to be taken for this under the heading Sources Cited at the end of the paper that appears hereafter. A more thorough and authoritative source can be found in the school library, and that is the 1999 Publication of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Because of the various types of sources that can be found on the internet, we do not provide a generic example here. Neither do we wish to provide more than we have in that section because of the rapidly changing practices for what is accepted as a conventional approach to these citations.

The Difference Between Bibliography and Sources Cited Pages

1) A sources cited page serves as a limited Bibliography. It is a list of only those sources which are directly quoted or cited in paper, and very often it is also used as key to how each work will be cited. The Bibliography, by contrast includes works that have informed the thinking of the paper, but that may not be quoted from or directly cited in the paper itself.

More on Mechanics and Style in Formal Writing

Foreign Words

1) Foreign words in quotations must be reproduced with all accents and other marks as they would appear in the original language. If the writer does not have a keyboard or typewriter that includes these accents and symbols, the writer should add these markings by hand.

2) Foreign words included outside of quotations must also be reproduced faithfully to the original language, and should be italicized to indicate that they are from another language.

3) If the paper or essay in which foreign words appear is handwritten, it is acceptable to substitute underlining for italics.

Numbers

1) In non-scientific or mathematical papers, use of numerals should be avoided. It is okay to use numerals for fractions, decimals, and large numbers. But other numbers should be written in letters. Numerals should not appear at the beginning of sentences.

2) Other instances that numerals are acceptable in non-scientific or mathematical papers are in reference to weight, height, time, percentages, money, dates, and page numbers.

3) For large numbers it is acceptable to use a combination of numerals and words:

6.5 million.

4) Related numbers must be expressed in the same style:

8 of the 120 board members
between 1 million and 2.5 billion
approximately 50 motorcycles and 25 cars

Prepared by Robert Butcher, November, 2003.