[Closed] academic essays...

As long as you put it into your own words and reference the journal it should be fine.

Quite a lot of refs, I used to use a max of 20 for 1500-2500 word essays as my lectures always looked up the papers.

Plagiarism-be warned.

Hope your essays read well too-I know people who wrote many refs and still wrote crap.

Anyway stop worrying and get on with it.

ok. so where do it put ther reference brackets? in the middle of the text (and then have an 'ibid' at the end), or just put a single reference at the end of the text?

(i'm referring to the (bowland, 2004) type thing here)

aye, i realise its too many, guess i just need to cut it all down.
getting it started is the difficult thing. i'm not really interested in the topic any more, and everytime i think about it i just see 7000 words to be written in 4 days.

bah 😥

Hello - long term academic (physical sciences) here...

So long as you reference appropriately then it doesnt matter how much you use from one source. However, you should always re-word what is being said and dont do it in big chunks. Many universities use plagarism software which picks this up!

Reference in any way appropriate e.g. Writing academic essays takes a long time (bloggs et al, 1998), which is why you should start early (Rush, 2004; Quick, 2008).

If you are in doubt regarding how to reference then look at how the papers you are reading do it. Also, if you are taking text verbatim (i.e. quoting) then make sure you put it in quotes!

Regarding number of references - 100 is not excessive! However, you dont necessarily need that many - perhaps half that? Also - if you cant read the whole papers, use the abstract - they should tell you the thrust of things to help you write quickly to start with. You can then delve deeper to get the detail as you flesh out the essay.

Remember that 7000 words will be a MAXIMUM, you dont HAVE to write that many words (i.e. it is not a target, it is a limit)...

Good luck...

Also does your univeristy have an online guide on how to ref?

Lots of journals I have read are badly ref'd.

Personally I find who was going to mark it and give them teh essay they want.

Try looking up the Havard guide to refs and you can't go wrong.

thanks guys.
i know how to reference, using harvard, its just how much i can reference from one place, in one go, that i'm worried about.

i'm writing the essay on carbon zero housing, and, for example, i've got a letter send from an association of surveyors to the government, on the subject. this letter covers one of the major points of my essay. this section of the essay could easily be around 500 words. because this letter makes most of the points i want to say, i guess i'm just worried that if i just use this source, i'll get pulled up for plagarism...

i guess i just need to get my head down and start writing something... i just can't be arsed.

You can use the information in the letter. Just re-word it and perhaps intersperse it with other information from other references. I.e. you can expand the letter by adding from other sources. Since this is a scientific sounding essay, I would reference the letter (e.g. Association of Surveyors, 2009) and then take the salient points and reword them. That way you get round plagiarism. Simply copying the letter would be plagiarism. Rewording it and referencing it will be OK.

When I have marked essays I would want to make sure that numerous sources are being used though, not just one... Like I said - 40+ references for 7000 words. That is probably still fewer references than you would find in a journal paper...

Reference whatever you use but include your own commentary on what it says rather than just reporting it as fact. a bit of critical evaluation of others' opinions goes a long way IMO

That letter presumably quotes other sources - have a look at some of the major ones. Is it quoting correctly, in context and representative of the original author's conclusions or are they being naughty ?

thanks guys, i'll bear all this in mind.
got really rather frustrated with it, and went home a couple of hours ago - a new bike arrived today, so decided to sort that out 😉

may have another look tonight, my girlfriend has said she'll help with a brainstorm tonight too.

fortunately i had been told the wrong date for the piece of work, i've actually got an extra 3 days to work on in, which is nice.

i'm looking at about 80 for my 12000 dissertation

If the letter makes points - what information is their opinion based on? Or are they reporting fact? If you agree with their opinion - maybe also reference a source for the facts this is based on. If they are reporting fact - can you back it up from somewhere else? Or if it's the case they make points that you agree with - can you find references for an opposing view point?

Try thinking of things the other way round, even if it's obviously "wrong" - it's not always, and other people may have thought the same thing. This can help you find references - be objective.

the refs thing depends on house rules. when i did my MA it had to conform to this
[url] http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/index.html [/url]

But there are hundreds of different style guides, i think most newspapers have there own style if that helps explain the problem.

Whatever style you choose, be consistent.

As for the content of references. Make them relevant and make them contribute to your argument. Don't just name drop, and never copy text without attributing it, worse case scenario is you get kicked out.

One other thing i found that helped was a proper referencing application, plug the names in and it made sure the references/footnotes/endnotes came out correctly formatted

A guy on my MSc course used 30+ references for a 1700 worder. He got 95% partly because the marker had never seen such a level of research for such an essay. I think he said 10 - 15 would have done it.

I hate to think how many I'll need for 20k :/

for my MA, 20k word dissertation, i used c100 references. At the end of the day there is only so much you can read about a subject, and including references just because you can may not help your argument. In fact if you are not very careful you may destroy the readability of your argument.

awesome, thanks guys. i've noted down about 20 relevant articles etc, and printed off abstracts from another 2 papers, so will try to work with what i have, and add relevant things if i need to.

chilled out a bit now, but i'm sure by tomorrow afternoon i'll be all frustrated again!!

1 only had 40 for my 8000 dissertation - got a 1st for it too, so i guess more isn't always better. I must say hungry monkey my way of working was like yours, kinda gives you a kick into the conclusion bit i reckon as it all sort of falls into place. God i'm glad i'm old and will never have to write anything ever again besides postcards.

Not sure I used 100 references in my PhD thesis so would imagine for a 7000 word essay it might be a bit much.