University
of Washington
Professor
James W. Harrington
STYLE MANUAL
FOR STUDENT PAPERS
Contents:
ABOUT PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is the presentation of material
written or developed by someone else as one's own
material. It is the second most serious
academic crime.
It's quite easy to plagiarize, and quite easy to
avoid plagiarizing.
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Plagiarism
|
Acceptable use of material
|
| Using ideas or information that I read
somewhere, without mentioning where I
read it. |
Using ideas or information that I read
somewhere, and making it very clear
where I read the ideas or information. |
| Copying a table, figure, or image from
somewhere, without mentioning where I
obtained it. |
Providing a clear reference to the
origin of any tables, figures, or images
that appear in my paper. |
| Writing three or more words in the
same order as I read them somewhere,
without using quotes. |
Paraphrasing
ideas
and providing a reference, OR
putting exact quotes in quotation
marks and providing the
reference and page number. |
A paper that plagiarizes is not an acceptable
paper.
Self-plagiarism is also unacceptable.
You might be surprised at how often instructors
check to see whether a student has turned in the
same material for two different assignments (we
quite often check, even across different
quarters).
CITING MATERIALS
USED
You can use any referencing system, as long as
you are consistent within a single paper.
I prefer that you use the most common system in
academic geography is the author, date (or
CSE) system.
Material
from a specific source is followed by the
author's last name and year of publication (or
year of communication, if the material is
unpublished). At the end of the text of
the paper is a list of all materials cited, in
alphabetical order by authors' last name. I
prefer square brackets, which won't be confused
with parenthesized text. I prefer to
italicize the title of separately bound
materials (like a book or a journal title, but
not chapter or article titles).
|
within the body of the
paper...
|
in the REFERENCES list of
the paper...
|
| ...The flexibility of
these arrangements has increased with
improvements and cost reductions in
computing and communications
technology, affecting the incomes,
public-infrastructure needs, and
private service requirements in
exurban and rural locations [Beyers
and Lindahl 1997a&b]. |
Beyers, W.B. and
Lindahl, D.P. 1997a.
Endogenous use of occupations and
external reliance on sectoral skills
in the producer services. paper
prepared for the RESER conference,
Roskilde, Denmark (September).
Beyers, W.B. and
Lindahl, D.P. 1997b.
Strategic behavior and development
sequences in producer service
businesses. Environment and
Planning A 29: 887-912. |
| After presenting a
range of regional systems of
employment practices across
Europe, Peck [1994: 169]
cautioned that "the social and
spatial context in general and the
regulatory milieu in particular will
have a major influence on the 'type'
of labour-market flexibility which
emerges in a region." |
Peck, J.
1994. Regulating labour.
Ch. 7 in A.Amin and N.Thrift,
eds. Globalization,
Institutions, and Regional
Development in Europe.
Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. |
| "Warehousing involves
the storage, processing and
distribution of goods, as well as some
manufacturing" [ILWU, 1997]. |
ILWU. 1997. History
of the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union.
http://www.ilwu.com/tis.htm#The
Warehouse Industry. accessed 16
Jan 1999. |
Note that:
- If the attribution is at the end of a
sentence, it comes before the period or other
punctuation.
- If you're using superscripts in the body of
the text to refer the reader to footnotes or
endnotes, and if the superscript comes at the
end of a sentence, it generally comes after
the period or other punctuation.
DATA
Secondary data, which you've gotten from
some published source, should be cited like any
other information. If you present the data
in tabular form, and if all the data in the table
are from the same source, you might write
SOURCE: Donnelley, Inc. 1998:
Table 4.
below the bottom of the table. Then, your
reference list at the end of the paper would
give a full citation for the Donnelly, Inc.
publication or website from which you got the
data.
Primary data, which you've collected by
survey, interview, measurement, or whatever,
cannot be cited, but must be explained
carefully. Within the body of the paper,
you should explain how and when you collected
the data. Fabrication of primary data is the
worst academic offense.
Imagine how much more messed up the world would
be if medical researchers or military
intelligence faked their research data.
Don't do it; don't even approach doing it.
SPELLING
In a nutshell, use spell-checking
software. If you're writing without a
computer, be careful. I'm generally pretty
lenient about misspellings in hand-written
material, but here are three kinds of errors
about which I will warn you now, and will grade
down:
Commonly misspelled words:
develop
development
tariff
Homophones
The words within each set of words below are
pronounced alike or similarly, but have different
spellings and meanings. Now that you've been
warned, don't confuse them:
"affect" and "effect"
- The word "affect" has many meanings.
The meaning that you will most commonly intend
in a paper in economic geography is "to
produce an effect upon," as in "The amount of
training and capital equipment provided to
workers greatly affects their
productivity."
- The word "effect" has many meanings.
The meaning that you will most commonly intend
in a paper in economic geography is "something
that follows a cause," as in "In many
industries, capital intensity has a large effect
on labor productivity."
"it's" and "its"
- "It's" is a contraction for "it is."
Never use this in a formal paper (or even a
written test).
- "Its" is the possessive form of "it":
in other words, "its" means "belonging to
it." There is no apostrophe in this
word.
- Therefore, when you're writing a paper and
you write "it's," ask yourself if you can
replace that with "it is." If you can,
then replace it with "it is." If you
cannot, then omit the apostrophe: the
word you want is "its."
"their," "there," and
"they're"
- "Their" is the possessive form of "them."
- "There" means (among other things) "in or at
that place or direction."
- "They're" is a contraction for "they
are." Don't use this in a formal paper.
"to," "too," and "two"
Here's a set of homophones that I know I don't
need to explain. Yet I occasionally see them
misused. Don't.
Plurals and possessives of nouns ending in a
"consonant-y"
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NOUN
|
PLURAL
|
POSSESSIVE
|
PLURAL POSSESSIVE
|
| company |
companies:
Only three companies produce overdrive
widgets in the U.S. |
company's:
The company's performance was much
better in 1997. |
companies':
All three companies' profits were up
last year. |
| country |
countries:
There are only three countries in
North America. |
country's:
The country's trade balance was
negative again in 1998. |
countries':
The EU countries' unemployment rates
are all above ten percent. |
Note:
"Industry," "industries," "industry's,"
and "industries' " are a similar set of
words that you will likely use in economic
geography.
"Company" and "country" are each
singular. When you use a pronoun for a
company or country, use "it," not "they."
- "Abacus Corp. announced plans for
substantial job cuts in 1999 and 2000.
The company suggested that it would
accomplish many of these cuts through
retirements. Its labor unions
were not satisfied with the plans presented so
far."
- "Canada's wealth lies in its
resources and skilled labor. It is
...."
TABLES AND FIGURES
A paper will generally have only three types of
content: text (divided into sections
and subsections), tables (text and/or
numbers divided into regular rows and columns,
organized in parallel fashion so that the rows and
columns have a specific meaning), and figures
(essentially, anything else: typically
graphs, charts, or images).
Text should be divided into
sections and subsections, and the title of each
section or subsection should come before the
section or subsection.
Above each table should
be a number ("Table 1") and a clear title, that
says what the cells of the table express.
Within or underneath the title should be all key
information:
- for what territorial unit(s)?
- for what time period(s)?
- in what units of measurement (thousands of
employees; millions of U.S.
dollars; etc.)?
The source for the tabulated information should be
cited beneath the table. It's better to
compose a table that presents exactly the data you
need, than to insert a photocopied table from a
publication. It is, however, a good idea to
make photocopies or print of tabular data that you
use in a paper, so you can refer back to the
original information after you've returned the
book to the library or browsed away from the
website.
Tables are numbered from 1 to however
many there are in the paper. Each table
can be inserted within the body of the paper, as
soon as possible after it is mentioned for the
first time, or all the tables can appear after
the text and references.
Below each figure should
be a number ("Figure 1") and a clear title, that
tells what the figure illustrates. Within
or underneath the title should be all key
information:
- for what territorial unit(s)?
- for what time period(s)?
- in what units of measurement (thousands of
employees; millions of U.S.
dollars; etc.)?
If the figure is a chart or diagram, the axes
should be clearly labeled.
The source for the tabulated information should be
cited beneath the figure and title. If a
published figure says exactly what you want to
say, then it's acceptable (in a term paper) to cut
and paste, with clear attribution. You
cannot publish a paper with an
already-published figure, without written
permission from the original publisher.
Figures are numbered from 1 to however
many there are in the paper. Each figure
can be inserted within the body of the paper, as
soon as possible after it is mentioned for the
first time, or all the figures can appear after
the text, references, and tables.
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