Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

2023/2024

Academic Writing Guide

 Academic Writing Guide

CONTENTS

How to use this guide 3

1. Using Sources Correctly 3
Balancing your voice and others’ 4
Correct source use – avoiding accusations of plagiarism 5
Copying your own work? 6
Understanding citation styles 6
Balancing your ideas with other peoples’ ideas 7
The real issue is what you say, not how you say it 8
Practical strategies and details 9
When to quote 11
2. Putting it all together – the reference list 13
2.1. Sample reference items 14
2.2. Online documents 15
2.3. EU documents 16
2.4. Interviews and personal communications 17
3. Main Changes in APA 7th edition 18
4. Using Tables and Figures 20
5. Formatting your papers 21
Order of components 22
Title page 22
Abstract 22
Acknowledgements 22
Table of Contents 22
Lists of tables and figures 23
Abbreviations 23
Main text 23
References 23
Appendices 24
6. APA quick checklist 25
Source use 25
Structure 25
Language and style 26
Formatting 26
7. Sample Title page 27

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HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

This academic writing guide introduces the rules and conventions of academic writing in
your first year, but you can also use it throughout your time at university, whenever you are
writing an assignment, right up to your BA or MA thesis, or even your PhD. Section 1 gives you
an idea of how and why we use sources, and some pitfalls to avoid. This section is worth reading
in detail. Section 2 explains, with examples, how to create a correctly formatted reference list,
though for more detailed and extensive advice, you should refer to the APA Publication Manual
(7th edition) in the UM library. The 7th edition was introduced in 2020, but the library still has
many copies of the 6th edition. Please use the 7th edition; there are a few small changes, which are
explained in section 3 of this guide. Section 4 discusses how to integrate tables and figures into
your paper, while section 5 shows how to format the parts of your paper, what font size, layout
and so on. These guidelines also apply to the thesis. Section 6 is a short checklist which we
recommend you use to polish and check every paper before you submit it. One member of
FASoS staff commented that students might easily increase their grade by 0.5 by using this
checklist.

1. USING SOURCES CORRECTLY

A large part of academic writing is about building on the work of others who have
published before you. A philosopher called Kenneth Burke presented it like this:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long
preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for
them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already
begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for
you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have
caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer
him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the
embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's
assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart.
And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. (Burke, 1941, The
Philosophy of Literary Form. pp. 110-111)

When you arrive at university, others, your teachers, have been on the scene much longer than
you. But even they are relatively new contributors to the (written) discussion, and each turn in

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that discussion has responded to previous publications. This makes good sense: it would be
foolish to reinvent the wheel, to ignore what others have said, or say things that they have
previously shown to be untrue. So you do the reading, you find out what the key figures in the
debate have to say. You have to understand those texts, relate them to each other, think them
through, and only then, when you have “caught the tenor of the argument” (understood how
everything connects to everything else) can you “put in your oar,” (contribute with your own
ideas in response to others). This is how the academic community works.
The academic community, like every community, has rules for how to behave. When you
enter Burke’s parlour, if you speak without listening, or ignore what has been said by others, you
annoy everyone present. They think “why does this person behave so badly? We don’t want him
here.” Similarly, when you write stuff at university, there are expectations for your written
behaviour: don’t behave as if you invented the topic, don’t just repeat what others said, don’t say
things that others said previously in ways that make it look as if it was your idea. If you want to
ignore those rules, you won’t be welcome in this community.

Balancing your voice and others’

Your judicious use of ideas from books or articles by other authors shows your authority
as someone who knows about the debate. They give you a foundation to build on; they help you
to show where there is disagreement to be resolved; and by looking at what they have covered,
you can find what they haven’t done and offer that as your own contribution. So their role is
central, and visible. Academic writing is a constant conversation between you the writer and the
other authors you are responding to. If we see an extended section which makes no reference to
others’ work (unless it’s analysis of primary data), we start wondering “Hasn’t she read anything
on this topic?” or “Is he just making this up as he goes along?”
You have to find a balance between “what do others say?” (summary) and “what do I
think about it?” (comment). It is often a good idea to start a paragraph with a statement or claim
about the topic, then refer to a source to illustrate it, discuss the source, draw on a second source,
analyse that, then make a conclusion that shows how this relates to your paper. If you don’t mark
very clearly which are your bits and which are other people’s, it quickly gets confusing. That
could be bad because the reader might think that your big idea was actually someone else’s. Pity –
no credit for original thinking. But much worse, they might assume you are claiming another
author’s ideas as your own. Then you could be in trouble.
The academic community shares a culture where to show you are honest and hard-working,
you need to follow a (rather elaborate) set of rules that indicate which ideas are yours and which
belong to others. We like students who are honest and hardworking; these are good things. But

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this means that if you are careless about using that set of rules and make mistakes, you are leaving
yourself open to being seen as dishonest and lazy. And the penalties for academic dishonesty
(known as plagiarism) can be very severe, including failing your whole degree.

Correct source use – avoiding accusations of plagiarism

A handful of students set out to earn their degree by cheating, lying and avoiding any
serious work, to get for free what everyone else has worked hard for. Plagiarism policies are
designed to nail these individuals and kick them out. Unfortunately, because these individuals
work much harder at deceiving people and protesting their innocence than they do at learning
their course material, many definitions of plagiarism, including Dutch law, which FASoS follows,
do not take into account whether or not a student actually intended to deceive. Article 5.16
(subsection 2) of the FASoS Education and Examination Regulations defines plagiarism as “the
presentation of ideas or words from one’s own or someone else’s sources without proper
acknowledgment of the sources.” In other words, whether you meant to acknowledge your
sources properly or not, you can still be accused of plagiarism.
You are vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism if you:
• quote a source and omit the quotation marks (or indentation for a block quotation)
• quote or paraphrase a source and don’t say where it came from
• put a citation after a sentence then continue to summarise the author in the next
sentence without using a pronoun (he, she, they) and a reporting verb (argues, notes,
points out, claims, suggests, shows how)
• use a source in your text and don’t include it in the reference list
• paraphrase a text closely to the original
• summarise an author over several sentences but only provide a citation in the first
sentence or the last one
• just summarise others’ texts and don’t comment on them
• use one text that summarises several other sources, then present those individual
sources as if you had read them yourself
• use ChatGPT or similar AI software to write (parts of) your paper for you.
Plagiarism is not a black-and-white issue. Copying someone else’s whole thesis, or paying
someone to write your paper for you, is enormously more serious than forgetting the quotation
marks around one short quotation. FASoS recognises this: the Board of Examiners will carefully
consider the details and circumstances of each case of suspected plagiarism and make its decision
accordingly.

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Copying your own work?

Every paper you write at FASoS should be a separate and independent piece of academic
work – you cannot receive credits twice for the same work, or for copying parts from one
assignment to another (called self-plagiarism). To check student papers for plagiarism, FASoS
uses Ouriginal – a programme that compares your work with a database of available sources on
the Internet, and other students’ work worldwide. An Ouriginal report underlines any parts of
your paper that match word for word with another source in the database, including all your own
previous papers, and gives a percentage of matching text. A match doesn’t necessarily mean that
you have plagiarised, it just means the text is identical to another source (which actually would
also happen if you quoted correctly), but it makes it much easier for tutors to check a paper
quickly and identify copied material.
To avoid self-plagiarism, be sure not to copy and paste from any of your previous papers,
as it will show up in the Ouriginal report. By all means use sources from preceding courses, and
you can study topics you have worked on before. But always approach your topic and material
from a new angle, develop an original argument, and when you are reiterating points you have
made elsewhere, write them without looking at your previous paper.1

Understanding citation styles

Different disciplines use sources in different ways: historians want to make extensive
comments on stuff they found in archives, so for them, footnotes where they can include a lot of
supplementary information are very useful. Natural scientists don’t do this: they use sources quite
sparingly and just number them, then list them at the end. Social scientists are somewhere in
between. This means that historians have their own style (Chicago), natural scientists have theirs
(Vancouver), and other disciplines also have their own. The programmes at FASoS are
interdisciplinary. So the question was whether to teach students to use a range of styles or just
concentrate on mastering one. Luckily for you, perhaps, we chose just one: APA (American
Psychological Association). APA is widely used across most social sciences in many countries. If
you plan on becoming a professional scholar, you may sooner or later have to learn Chicago,
MLA (Modern Languages Association), or Harvard, or adopt the individual style requirements of
the journals you submit to for publication, but for now the main thing is to learn one style
properly.

1 For more information, please consult the Education and Examination Regulations available through Canvas.

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APA is known as an “author-date” or “parenthetic” style because the references are put in
the text in the form of the author’s surname and the date of publication in parentheses, like this:

Right-wing groups in Germany are becoming increasingly anti-Islamic (Schmidt, 2019).

This means that the information is taken from a text that was published in 2019 by an author
whose surname is Schmidt (unlike some other styles, APA does not use first names unless two
authors have the same surname). (Schmidt, 2019) is a shorthand label that refers to that text
throughout your paper. Then you give the full details of the publication in your reference list –
the list of all the published sources you have used – at the end of your paper. This means there is
no need to give the full title of a book or paper in your text, which saves words. If you refer to a
specific page, indicate the page as well, e.g. (Schmidt, 2019, p. 49). APA say that it is not an
offence to omit page numbers when paraphrasing or summarising, but that it is highly
recommended and helpful for the reader. Most of your tutors also expect this, so please do.
There are several author-date systems, but they all differ sharply from the Chicago notes-
bibliography style. In Chicago, you would write:

Right-wing groups in Germany are becoming increasingly anti-Islamic.1

Then you give the details of the author, date of publication and so on in footnote 1 at the bottom
of the page, and then again at the end of the paper. You don’t do this in APA; footnotes are not
used for references, but only to provide extra information or explanation, and you are advised to
keep them to a minimum: they “should be included only if they strengthen the discussion” (APA,
2019, p. 40).

Balancing your ideas with other peoples’ ideas

Remember, academic writing is a mix of other peoples’ ideas and your own response to
those ideas. Other peoples’ (correctly cited) ideas are good: without them it’s not academic. Your
ideas are essential: without them, it’s just a summary, not a paper. And the rule is that you have to
mark the ideas that belong to others, not your own. That means if you don’t mark a sentence as
someone else’s, you are saying it is yours. Here’s a very simple example:

Anderson (2017) shows how the Brexit campaign was a classic example of securitisation of
migration threats by political actors (p. 234). It is, however, an example with one
fundamental difference.

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The page number at the end of the first sentence marks that idea as Anderson’s. But in
the second sentence there is no citation. This suggests it is you who realised that there is a
fundamental difference. The tutor is impressed and gives you a good mark for analysis and
perception. But what if it was actually Anderson who spotted that fundamental difference? Then
you have been given a good grade for something that wasn’t your work. Did you mean to cheat?
We don’t know. But we can imagine that if a student did mean to cheat, they would claim they
didn’t, so protesting innocence won’t help you much (see plagiarism on p. 5 above). So how
should you have done it?

Anderson shows how the Brexit campaign was a classic example of securitisation of
migration threats by political actors (2017, p. 234). He notes, however, that it is an example
with one fundamental difference.

It’s that simple. “He” cannot refer to anyone except Anderson, so we are absolutely clear that it
was Anderson, not the student who spotted the difference. We don’t actually need a second
citation – in fact putting a citation in every sentence would clutter up the text.

The real issue is what you say, not how you say it
So are copious pronouns and reporting verbs the solution to all your citation problems?
Could you write the following?

Anderson shows how the Brexit campaign was a classic example of securitisation of
migration threats by political actors (2017, p. 234). He notes, however, that it is an example
with one fundamental difference. He points out that in this case, the press played the most
important role. He shows how a media campaign set out to dictate migration as the central
feature of the campaign. He argues that this step by the media tilted the playing field
against the Bremain camp. As a result, he maintains, there was limited chance of a remain
vote being successful.

Well, on the positive side, you haven’t plagiarised by making it look as if any of the ideas
on the page are yours. But that’s exactly the problem – nothing on the page is yours. You don’t
get good grades for summarising other people’s work; good grades are for adapting, applying,
discussing, comparing, critiquing, extending, synthesising, or somehow doing something with other
people’s work, not just showing you have read it. In addition, technically, because the citation
above only has one page number, we must assume Anderson does all of this on page 234. If just
one page gets this much attention, what about all the others? And if they all get this much space,
what will be left for your own analysis and comment? And finally, by the way, the paragraph is a

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bit dull stylistically as four consecutive sentences start with “He.” So, no, this isn’t the ideal way
to do things.
Let’s have a look at an experienced researcher and writer and see how he does it
(Manners, 2006, p. 191).2 The comments on the right explain what is happening. What we see is
that experienced writers don’t just go from one source to the next, summarising what each one
says. In fact they often cite a lot and summarise little. This is easy for them because they have
read a lot, and harder for you, because you haven’t; but your long-term goal is to learn to write as
much like them as you can. Importantly, they rarely fall into the trap of plagiarism because they
spend very little time summarising and paraphrasing other authors and lots of time developing
their argument, based on the works of others.

A number of scholars have identified the ways in which the

Manners starts by showing his knowledge
EU has developed a strategic-cultural discourse of of the field. He names “a number of
militarization (Cornish & Edwards, 2001; Rynning, 2003; scholars” he could draw on to support his
Bono, 2004), but Jocelyn Mawdsley has gone furthest in argument, but shows that he has made a
conscious choice for the one who “has
identifying the 'unusual prevalence of transgovernmentalism gone furthest”, Jocelyn Mawdsley.
within ESDP' (Mawdsley, 2005, p. 15). Mawdsley has
closely scrutinized the way in which the limited equipment
Having established Mawdsley as his key
needs of the Rapid Reaction Force have been quickly source (reminding us of her authority
expanded into a quantitatively different arms dynamic by the with the phrase “closely scrutinised”),
activism of a Brussels-based transnational policy network Manners shows he has read three more
of her articles and has understood that
(Mawdsley & Quille, 2003; Mawdsley, 2004; also Mawdsley they all make the same point, which he
et al., 2004). What seems clear from Mawdsley's scrutiny is synthesises in his own words.
the way in which the pre-2001 agreements on the Petersburg
tasks and a Rapid Reaction Force were rapidly altered into Manners now expands “Mawdsley’s
post-2003 military arrangements for 'preventative scrutiny” into his own understanding or
interpretation. By using the phrase
engagement' (European Security Strategy, 2003, p. 18) by “What seems clear…” he indicates that
those who sought to gain from such a sharp turn at the he is now speaking. The reference to
“European Security Strategy” is only
crossroads. there because he is quoting their term.

Practical strategies and details

As a general rule, don’t devote multiple paragraphs to summarising one author, unless
that person provides your theoretical framework, or your whole paper is a response to that
author. If you do need to do this, use a full citation, and put that person’s name in your sentence

2 Manners’ article was published in a journal which does not use APA style. The extract has been modified to APA
style here for educational purposes. The other examples regarding Anderson and the Brexit are fictitious.

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(not just in the brackets) the first time you refer to their work. We can call this foregrounding the
author, so the attention is on them.
Anderson shows how the Brexit campaign is a classic example of securitisation of

migration threats by political actors (2016, p. 234).
Anderson (2016) shows how the Brexit campaign is a classic example of securitisation of

migration threats by political actors (p. 234).
Some scholars have suggested that the Brexit campaign is a classic example of

securitisation of migration threats by political actors.

If you quote the author’s exact words, the page number must come immediately after the
quotation, but the date must be in the sentence too, unless you provided it in the previous
sentence:
Anderson (2017) shows how the Brexit campaign is a “classic example of securitisation
of migration threats by political actors” (p. 234).
Anderson shows how the Brexit campaign is a “classic example of securitisation of
migration threats by political actors” (2017, p. 234).
Anderson (2017, p. 234) shows how the Brexit campaign is a “classic example of
securitisation of migration threats by political actors”.
Anderson shows how the Brexit campaign is a “classic example of securitisation of
? migration threats by political actors” (p. 234).
(this would only be OK if the previous sentence was also about Anderson and contained the date)

Typically, you omit the author’s name from your sentence and just put it in brackets if
that author is not important for your discussion and you just want to say where the facts came
from. We can call this backgrounding the author, because you want to put the facts or ideas in the
foreground, not the author. It is also common to background authors in brackets when you are
mentioning several works that address the same idea.
In the two youngest age groups, only 52% and 45% of those eligible to vote did so
(Gallup, 2016).
A number of scholars have identified the ways in which the EU has developed a
strategic-cultural discourse of militarization (Cornish & Edwards, 2001; Rynning, 2003;
Bono, 2004).
Cornish and Edwards (2001), Rynning (2003) and Bono (2004) have identified the ways
?in which the EU has developed a strategic-cultural discourse of militarization.
(Not wrong but clumsy).

Note that particularly in the social sciences, scholars increasingly put authors’ names in brackets,
not in the sentence. Maybe 80% of citations are in brackets and only 20% in the sentence. This

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makes it easier to write sentences that flow from each other without the problem of different
authors being the subjects of different sentences. You may, however, foreground the author if
you are going to discuss what they are saying.

Anderson suggests that the failure of young people, who may have little experience of
active democracy, to go to the polls, means that older voters, by turning out en masse,
managed to swing the result in their favour (2017, p. 230). Anderson is right that older
voters were more likely to vote leave, but his claim that young voters stayed away is
likely based on early figures which suggested 18-24 turnout was only 36%. More reliable
statistics published later (Bruter, 2019) show that in fact it was double that.

If you need to spend several sentences on one author, mark the first with a citation, then
use a pronoun (s/he, they) in subsequent sentences (with a page citation if you refer to another
page of their work), then end with a citation to remind us that all of that was someone else’s
work. However, don’t do this too often because summarising other people is not the purpose of
your paper.

When to quote
Many published articles of 5000 words or more do not contain a single quotation, even
though they may have a reference list of several pages. This is because most of the time scholars
are not responding to the words of other writers, but to their ideas; and shortening these ideas into
their own phrasing makes them flow better with their own sentences and ideas. Much of the
time, a summary or a paraphrase and a citation is the best solution. But there are times when
quoting word for word can be useful. A quotation is like a picture: it illustrates something. It’s
not there to save you from having to paraphrase the text you were reading. Having quoted your
material, you can then explain to your readers what you want them to see from your quotation:
discuss it, say what it shows, maybe highlight key phrases, and link it to your argument. And if
you quote, you must provide a page number, unless you are referring to an html file, or a video
(for videos give the time in minutes and seconds where the quote starts).
APA recognises two types of quotation: in-text (less than 40 words) and block (40 words
or more), and the two are formatted quite differently. Most of the time, when you are using
secondary sources, you will probably only quote short phrases like the example below. Wherever
possible, introduce the author/speaker before the quote (quotations fall into the 20% of citations
mentioned in the previous section where the author’s name does appear in the sentence). In the
extract below, six words are directly quoted because they are the exact way Huntington defines
The Davos Culture in his original text:

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Huntington notes that there exists an English-speaking elite of key actors from almost
every country in the world which he names The Davos Culture, an elite that shares cultural
values related to “individualism, market economies, and political democracy” (1996, p. 57).

In this short quotation, double quotation marks are place around the six quoted words, and the
citation (with page number) is placed immediately after the quotation, inside the full stop.
Block quotations of 40 or more words are rare. They are used when you need to analyse a
sustained piece of someone else’s discourse, or when a detailed definition or analysis by another
person needs to be discussed. If your method involves interviews, textual analysis, or discourse
analysis, for example, you may well want to use longer quotations. Below is an example of a
block quotation (in this case 57 words). This quotation is inserted in full because the writer wants
to analyse what the author’s self-righteous choice of words says about his underlying negative
attitude towards students. Note the sentence that introduces the quotation, and the ones after
that analyse it. Also note how this block quotation does not have quotation marks. Instead, the
whole block is indented 1.25 cm, not just the first line. The line spacing is 1.5, the same as rest of
the text.3 And the citation comes after the full stop, not before.

In a recent blog post, Seeman (2014) writes scathingly of undergraduate students:

I have learned just how skilled young students are in the ways of mosaic plagiarism. I have
learned the importance of attacking mosaic plagiarism full force. I believe in the rule of law
and the science of intellectual property law; one's words are one's own and are not to be stolen
by others wittingly. (p. 2, emphasis added)

I have italicised the words here that suggest Seeman is attempting to identify a security
threat. He identifies young students, as a group, as highly “skilled... in the ways” of plagiarism.
He refers to “ways” they have developed to perfect their deceit. This deceit is presented as a
threat to our existence because we must “attack” it “full force,” a metaphor of battle common
in signalling existential threats... (This analysis continues for another 160 words).

In cases like this, where a close analysis of words is carried out, quotations valuable and
necessary. They show the reader vividly what you want them to see. But you have to discuss the

3Note that the APA manual specifies double-line spacing throughout. FASoS differs from APA on this point and uses
1.5-line spacing, but double spacing is also OK.

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material afterwards so that the reader does indeed understand what you wanted them to (note the
analysis above is much longer than the quote).

2. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER – THE REFERENCE LIST

The references in your text only give the author’s surname and the date of publication (and
possibly a page number); this is a shorthand that refers the reader to your reference list at the end
at the end of your paper. A reference list is a list of all and only the retrievable sources you have used
in your paper (books, articles, web documents, government white papers, videos, etc.) ordered
alphabetically by surname of the author. Retrievable means readers can find your sources for
themselves using the information in your reference list. To make sure they can always provide
four pieces of information about each source, in the following order:
1) Who wrote it (author)
Many primary documents like reports do not have a human author but are authored by an
institution, such as Oxfam, or the European Parliament. Use the institution as author. If the
institution has a long name, you can place the abbreviation directly after the organisation name in
the reference and use that abbreviation in your text. If you cannot find any person or institution
behind the source, it may not be reliable to use an anonymous source. If you are convinced that it
is, use the title as author. This is also true for newspaper articles without an author. For these, the
order should be: Title. (full date) Newspaper. URL
2) When did they write it (date)
Some sources, especially websites, may not have a publication date. If you are sure your
source has no publication date, use (n.d.) which stands for “no date”. For documents issued on a
specific date (often there are many of these in the same year), such as EU directives, newspapers,
TV programmes, interviews, conference presentations, blog posts or YouTube videos, give the
full date in the format (year, month day).
3) What is it called (title)
Some documents do not have an obvious title. If there is nothing else you could use, use
the first line of text.
4) Where can the reader find it (publisher, journal or URL)
Whatever the problems of points 1-3, you must have a locator (publisher, journal, URL or
DOI). Without this the source is not retrievable, and you may not include it. If someone gave
you the source, contact that person and try to find out how to get the document. If you cannot,
you may have to treat it as a personal communication (which does not carry much weight).

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In the reference list, capitalise words as follows:

• Capitalise the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;
• Capitalise any proper nouns and certain other types of words (e.g. adjectives referring to
languages, such as “French cuisine”);
• Use lowercase for everything else.
Reference list items should not be numbered or bulleted. The APA Manual and APA online blog
give full details of what information to include in each entry, and how to format it.

2.1. Sample reference items

This section provides some examples of APA reference list entries. For more examples,
see the APA Publication manual (7th edition), which is in the UM library. The Manual also
contains some sample papers (pp. 50-67), which are useful to see how your paper and reference
list should be laid out. Various websites will also provide you with all the information you need
about APA. The most reliable is the Purdue Online Writing Lab:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide
/general_format.html

Book Book titles are in italics

Publisher. As of 7th edition, city
Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms. Polity Press. of publication is no longer used.

Initials only, maximum 2 All entries end with a full stop

Journal article except those with a URL or DOI.

Richardson, L. (2019). Culturalisation and devices: what is culture in cultural economy? Journal of
Cultural Economy, 12(3), 228-241. Journal title and volume number
in italics, issue number in
Journal article with DOI brackets. Page range without pp.

Begg, I., Bongardt, A., Nicolaïdis, K., & Torres, F. (2015). EMU and sustainable integration. Journal
of European Integration, 37, 803-816. https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2015.1079375

Second and subsequent lines DOIs, unlike URLs, never change, and are
have a hanging indent. therefore more reliable. If you have one, use it.

The title of the article comes first, and is not in italics. The italics are reserved for the journal title
– the journal in that sense is more like a book, and the article could be seen as a part, or a chapter.

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Chapter in edited volume (two authors)

Sandholtz, W., & Stone Sweet, A. (2012). Neofunctionalism and Supranational Governance. In
E. Jones, A. Menon & S. Weatherill (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the European Union
(pp. 18-33). Oxford University Press. These are the editors of the
book. Initials first, not last.
Page range of a chapter is written in brackets
and with pp., unlike the page range of an article.

2.2. Online documents

If you are using a website or a blog as a source, think carefully: is it actually a reliable
source of information? Wouldn’t an academic book or article convince your reader better, given
that anyone can put together a website and say whatever they want on it? But if you are doing an
analysis of a website or using blog posts as primary data, for example, it would be justified. Then,
like any other source we would want to know the author (the organisation that owns the
website), the date (if possible), the title, and where to find it.
If you simply want to refer to the existence of a website, not actually cite its content, just
put its name in the text with the URL in brackets. Don’t put it in the reference list.

NGO Website
Anti-Slavery. (2019). For a world free from slavery. https://www.antislavery.org/
Blog Entry

Kaufmann, E. (2016, July 7). It’s NOT the economy, stupid: Brexit as a story of personal values.
British Politics and Policy at LSE. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/71585/

For blog posts, newspapers, TV programmes, The words “Retrieved from” and date of
interviews, conference presentations, YouTube retrieval are not used, unless you refer to an
videos and EU directives give the full date. online source that is updated regularly.

Newspaper article

Boffey, D. (2018, June 22). Brexit: EU is getting ready for no-deal, says Jean-Claude Juncker. The
Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/international
For online news articles APA advises giving the link
to the homepage to avoid non-working URLs.
Newspaper article without author

Environmentalism is emerging as Europe’s new culture war. (2019, June 29). The Economist.
https://www.economist.com/europe

YouTube video
Guardian News. (2019, March 27). Guy Verhofstadt Compares Nigel Farage to Blackadder Character.
[Video file]. http: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpibnmZT8tc

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Documents in other languages

If you cite a document in a language other than English, give the original title with (your)
English translation after it in square brackets [ ]. If it’s an article in a journal, don’t translate the
title of the journal.

Greskovits, B. (2015). A kapitalizmus és demokrácia törékeny egyensúlya Kelet-Közép-Európa

„nagy átalakulásában” [The fragile balance of capitalism and democracy in the “great
transformation” of East-Central Europe]. Politikatudományi Szemle, 24(3), 7-24.

2.3. EU documents

Because APA is an American citation style, it does not anticipate the need to cite EU
documents. There is therefore no “official” way to do it, only general principles. Always try to
ensure you have the four key elements: [1] author, [2] date, [3] title, and [4] where to find it. Here
are some examples. Note that all of them contain all four elements, though in different forms.

EC Directive

European Parliament & Council of the European Union. (2008, June 11). Directive 2008/50/EC
on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe. Official Journal of the European Union, L
152/1-44.

White paper

European Commission. (2017). White paper on the future of Europe. Reflections and scenarios for the EU27
by 2025 (COM(2017)2025). Author.
When the publisher is the same as the author,
put “author” instead of the author’s name again.
Treaty

Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. (2012, October
26). Official Journal of the European Union, C326/47-390.

Online document (Eurobarometer)

TNS Opinion & Social. (2017). Special Eurobarometer 453. Humanitarian aid.
https://ec.europa.eu/echo/sites/echo-site/files/sp453_report_final_may_2017.pdf

Regulation (amendment)

European Parliament. (2009). Amendment of Regulation (EC) No 864/2007 on the law

applicable to non-contractual obligations (Rome II).
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2009/2170(I
NL)&l=en

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European case law

The European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) is used for case law in Europe. It has four parts
separated by colons: ECLI:[country code]:[court identifier]:[year of decision]:[specific identifier]

For example, ECLI:EU:C:2005:446 means a decision delivered by the European Union, Court of
Justice, 2005, which was the 446th ECLI assigned that year. Paragraphs should be referred to as
necessary. For more information on legal citations you can consult chapter 11 of the APA
Publication Manual 7th edition (in the UM library), pp. 355-368.

2.4. Interviews and personal communications

Interviews you carried out yourself don’t go in the reference list. If your method involves
interviews, the interviewees are called research participants, and these do not count as personal
communications. Present your interview data as follows:
• State in your methods section how, why, when, and how many people you interviewed.
• Provide a list of your interviewees in an annex. Include their real names only if you have
their written permission. You may wish to mention their professional status. Otherwise,
give each interviewee a pseudonym (e.g., Abdul) or an identifier (e.g. I2 for interviewee 2).
• Use their name (only if you have formal permission), pseudonym or other identifier in
your text after each quotation or paraphrase. For example: One interviewee said “I was
shocked” (Sasha).
• You do not need to append transcripts of the interviews, but keep them as under special
circumstances you might be asked to show them.
For personal communications that are not part of your research method, indicate in brackets in
the text where you refer to them, e.g. (Marie Dubois, personal communication, 4 May, 2023). Use
personal communications sparingly as they carry little authority.

The APA rules are sometimes a bit fussy and may seem eccentric, but you have three years
to work at learning them, so start now. And there is a wide range of electronic resources that can
help you to put together reference list automatically, such as Endnote, which FASoS has a
subscription to, but also Zotero and Mendeley, which are online and free. With these resources,
you simply add the sources you are using to your personal database, drop then into the text, and
create an automated reference list in any style you choose, including APA.

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3. MAIN CHANGES IN APA 7TH EDITION

FASoS uses the 7th edition of the APA manual. If you learned APA according to the 6th
edition, almost everything you learned will still apply. Below are the few small changes you will
need to make. In the examples below, strikethrough indicates words or a format that were correct
in the 6th edition but are no longer used.

1. The publisher location (city) is no longer included in the reference.

Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal
change. New York: Simon & Schuster.

2. The in-text reference for works with three or more authors is now shortened right from
the first time you refer to them. You only include the first author’s name and “et al.”.

(Taylor, Kotler, Johnson, & Parker, 2018)

(Taylor et al., 2018)

3. For online sources, URLs are no longer preceded by “Retrieved from,” unless a retrieval
date is needed. The website name is now included (unless same as author), and web
page titles are now italicized.

Walker, A. (2019, November 14). Germany avoids recession but growth remains
weak. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50419127
Walker, A. (2019, November 14). Germany avoids recession but growth remains weak. BBC
News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50419127

4. For e-books, the format, platform, or device (e.g. Kindle) is no longer included in the
reference, but the publisher is now included.

Brück, M. (2009). Women in early British and Irish astronomy: Stars and satellites [Kindle
version]. https:/doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2473-2
Brück, M. (2009). Women in early British and Irish astronomy: Stars and satellites. Springer
Nature. https:/doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2473-2

Also note that DOIs are formatted the same as URLs. The label “DOI:” is no longer
necessary.
doi: 10.1080/02626667.2018.1560449
https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2018.1560449

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5. For works with many authors, surnames and initials for up to 20 (instead of 7) should be
provided in the reference list (not in the text). This probably won’t affect you much.

Miller, T. C., Brown, M. J., Wilson, G. L., Evans, B. B., Kelly, R. S., Turner, S. T., … Lee, L. H.
(2018).
Miller, T. C., Brown, M. J., Wilson, G. L., Evans, B. B., Kelly, R. S., Turner, S. T., Lewis, F.,
Lee, L. H., Cox, G., Harris, H. L., Martin, P., Gonzalez, W. L., Hughes, W., Carter, D.,
Campbell, C., Baker, A. B., Flores, T., Gray, W. E., Green, G., … Nelson, T. P. (2018).

6. Titles for both tables and figures now go above the item.

Figure 1
Member States’ contribution to EU Budget 2000-2018
[insert figure here]

7. Singular “they” or “their” should be used as a gender-neutral pronoun. “Themself” is

permitted (even though MS Word doesn’t recognize it) but optional. You can also say
“themselves” for a single person.

If a student gets something published, he or she should consider him or herself fortunate.
If a student gets something published, they should consider themselves fortunate.

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4. USING TABLES AND FIGURES

Visual and numerical data can strengthen your argument, so long as it is integrated into
your paper. That means you comment on it in your text. Tables and figures (graphs, pie charts,
images, maps, flowcharts, etc.) are treated slightly differently when it comes to formatting, but
the general rules are the same. Introduce your graphic shortly before you comment on it if
possible, otherwise the reader will be wondering what it is and how it is connected to your text.
Discussion of the graphic can precede or follow it. Commentary on figures and tables often
contains four elements: location and summary, main point, sub-points and relevance to the
argument.

Location and summary (required)

Name the data item with its number (e.g. Figure 1) and say what it shows (e.g. “Figure 1
shows annual coffee consumption in EU countries” or “Annual coffee consumption for EU
countries is shown in Figure 1”). Table and figures should be inserted shortly after the first
mention in the text, and referred to by their number (e.g. “Table 2 shows…”) not by the page
number.

Main point (strongly recommended)

Tell us briefly what you want us to see from this figure or table (e.g. The Nordic countries
show a higher coffee consumption both for men and women.).

Sub-points (as needed)

Tell us anything else that is interesting to discuss, especially small points that might be
missed (e.g. Note that while generally women consume less coffee than men, Finnish women
consume more coffee than men in any country outside the Nordic countries).

Relevance to the argument (recommended)

Tell us why this data is relevant for your argument (e.g. These figures are in line with the
elevated levels of stomach ulcers, especially among women, in Nordic countries).

Formatting
Give each table or figure a number and a title in italics on the next line. These headings
come before, not after the table/figure. Do not indent these headings. Example:
Table 1
Growth rates for European Countries 1969-1990
Provide the source of the data immediately below the table/figure. Number tables in one sequence
throughout the paper, and figures in another.

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5. FORMATTING YOUR PAPERS

All papers must be typed, carefully proofread for spelling, grammar and lexical errors, and
conform with the following formal standards:
• Document format: Use MS Word document format (.doc) for all written papers unless
course guidelines specify otherwise. If you are using Mac Pages software or free word-
processing alternatives, you will need to deliberately ask it to save your document in MS
Word format – it will not be done automatically.
• Line spacing: 1.5 lines throughout (FASoS differs from APA).
• Text: 12-point (except footnotes or endnotes), font Garamond or Times New Roman.
Use bold typeface for all headings. Use italics to emphasise specific words, for foreign
words, for table or figure titles (see section 4 above), or for titles of published works (e.g.
books/films/articles). Do not use underlining.
• Margins: Leave 2.5 cm at the top and bottom and on both sides of the main text.
• Indentation: Indent the first line of every new paragraph 1.25 cm from the left margin,
including the first paragraph after a heading. The only exception is the abstract.
• Empty lines: Do not add empty lines between paragraphs, after headings, or before or after
quotations, tables, or figures.
• Headings: Headings should be in bold. Larger or different fonts should not be used. You
may add an empty line before a chapter heading, but not before a section or sub-section.
Do not start a chapter on a new page unless the old chapter finishes within 5 lines of the
bottom of a page. Ensure that headings are not separated from their following text. In
MS Word you can use the “Keep with next” command to do this.
• Indent block quotations (40+ words) 1.25 cm from the left margin (not just the first line
but every line). If your paragraph continues after a block quotation, the next line of the
paragraph is not indented.
• Page numbers: Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) for numbering all pages starting from the
introduction.
• Running header: A running header (title at the top of every page) is not used in student
papers.
• Hyphenation: Turn off your word processor’s automatic hyphenation feature.

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Order of components
Typically, a shorter paper consists of a title page, a table of contents, the main text and a
list of references. A longer paper or thesis may include a list of figures and a list of abbreviations
and maybe some annexes. These components should be arranged in the following order:

Title page
Always use a title or cover page. Centre the title approximately 5 cm from the top.
According to APA, in the title of your paper or of a section:
• Capitalise the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;
• Capitalise all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the
title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-
Report not Self-report);
• Capitalise all words of four letters or more.

You title should not be your research question. Titles should also not normally be sentences, and
thus do not end in a full stop. If you have a two-part title, use a colon to separate the two parts.

Wrong: How has the Bonnefanten Museum used its website to attract new visitors?

Wrong: The Bonnefanten Museum has used its website effectively to attract new visitors.

Correct: Using website techniques to attract visitors: The case of the Bonnefanten Museum

In the lower right-hand corner of the title page, list the following items: your name, your ID
number, your email address, date, name of the course and the course code, and if applicable,
name of the course assignment and group number. Put the tutor/supervisor’s name in the lower
left-hand corner (see Annex 1).

Abstract
Only some assignments require an abstract. Check the course requirements. If needed, an
abstract comes before the table of contents. It is a single paragraph of about 100-150 words that
outlines the aim, methods and findings of the research. It does not have a first line indent.

Acknowledgements
In a thesis you may, if you wish, briefly thank those people who have supported you in
writing the thesis. This section is optional, and is placed after the abstract.

Table of Contents
A table of contents is normally only required for longer papers; check the requirements of
the assignment. If it is required, use a separate page for the table of contents. This page is not

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numbered. (This means you will need to insert a section break after the table of contents and
number the section after only, starting from 1.) It contains (a) a list of all parts of the text except
the title page and the contents page; (b) the title of each chapter or section; (c) the number of the
first page of each part. Most word-processing programmes will generate a table of contents for
you. In MS Word it is in the References tab on the ribbon.

Lists of tables and figures

Include a separate “List of Figures” and/or “List of Tables” as necessary. These pages
come after the “Contents” page and are not numbered. Each entry should contain the number of
the figure/table, its title, and the number of the page it is on.

Abbreviations
If you use abbreviations, particularly any that are not widely known, list them on a
separate page called “Abbreviations.” Do not abbreviate any phrase you use less than three times.
After first use of the abbreviation, provide the full title in brackets, e.g., SOAS (The School of
Oriental and African Studies). Abbreviations that can be found in the dictionary (e.g., NATO,
UNICEF) do not need to be spelled out. List the abbreviations, followed by the abbreviated
phrase written in full. Because many unfamiliar abbreviations make the text hard to read, try to
replace them with the key word of the title (often the last). So instead of the EC, you can say the
Commission; or instead of the ECHR, the Convention. The list of abbreviations is not a
numbered page, and follows the list(s) of figures/tables.

Main text
The main text consists of an introduction, body sections, and conclusion. The
introduction and conclusion are usually not considered chapters, and are therefore not
numbered. You may number your introduction so long as you also number your conclusion. You
may choose whether to call the principle parts of your thesis chapters or sections (but not both)
– for a paper they are called sections. Chapters/sections should have headings and be numbered
using Arabic numerals only (e.g.: Chapter 1, section 1.1, subsection 1.1.1). Chapter headings
should be centred; section headings should be left-aligned. All headings should be bold. Page
numbering in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) starts with the first page of the main text.

References
At the end, provide a list of all and only the sources referred to in the text (including
sources in footnotes, if you use them). It is called “Reference List,” not “Bibliography,” and is
not numbered as a heading. All primary and secondary sources should be in a single list,
alphabetically ordered by author surname, unless you have been specifically advised otherwise by

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your supervisor. Interviews you have carried out should not be in the reference list as they are
not retrievable (see p. 17).

Appendices
Figures and tables are often better included in the body of the text so the reader can see
them while reading. Large tables (a page or more), interview or survey questions, lists of
interviewees, or similar information should be included as an annex. If you have more than one
annex, they should be lettered: A, B, C. Annexes may contain subheadings. When in doubt,
discuss this with your tutor or supervisor.

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6. APA QUICK CHECKLIST

Things to check before you submit. Do this with time to spare: there is sure to be stuff you still
need to work on!
Source use

 In the text, have you used author surname and date in parentheses ( ) the first time you refer
to that author in each paragraph?
 Wherever you used another author’s words, have you put them in double quotation marks “”
and provided a reference with surname, year and page number after the quotation?
 For quotations 40 words long or over, have you used a block quotation (separate paragraph, left
indented 1.25 cm, no quotation marks, full stop before the citation, not after)?
 Have you avoided excessive quotation, as well as quotations that are not introduced or
discussed? If quotations make up more than 20-30 words per page (except in sections that do
verbal data analysis), that is probably too much.
 Wherever you have paraphrased or summarised an author, have you provided a reference to
that person’s work to avoid plagiarism?
 Have you included all sources you cited in the text in your reference list?
 Have you removed from your reference list any sources you didn’t cite in the final text?
 Have you made sure you have not cited any authors you have not actually read in the
original? (Cite the author who quoted them, not the original you didn’t read.)
 For all internet sources you cite, have you provided the author, date, title, URL or DOI in the
reference list, and for URLs checked that the link still works?
 Have you limited footnotes or endnotes to those that are necessary for the discussion?
 Have you ordered the surnames in your reference list alphabetically, using a hanging indent
for each new item?
Structure

 Have you used headings wherever helpful to divide your paper sensibly into sections?
 Have you made sure that your hierarchy of headings makes sense? If you divided a section,
does it have at least two subsections?
 Have you introduced each section of the paper with at least a sentence, and concluded it with
at least a sentence before moving to the next section?
 Have you checked that your paragraphs and sections flow smoothly and logical from each
other without sudden jumps?
 Have you checked that your findings in your conclusion match what you said you would do
in the introduction, (i.e. your goals have not shifted in writing the paper)?
 If an abstract is required, have you included one (max 100-150 words)?
 If a table of contents is required, have you included it, with page numbers, and does it match
the reality of your sections?

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Language and style

 Have you checked through carefully for typos, grammar errors, and punctuation mistakes?
 Have you avoided informal language, jargon, excessive abbreviations, and contractions?
 Have you avoided sentences of three lines or more unless these sentences are clear and easy
to understand on first reading?
 Have you read through your work aloud to see if it sounds clear and comprehensible?
 Have you used gender-neutral, unbiased language?
Formatting

 Have you included a cover page with all the relevant information (your name, title of the
paper, course title, etc.?)
 Have you used Garamond or Times 12 point, 1.5 line spaced, on A4 paper with 2.5 cm
margins?
 Have you indented all paragraphs 1.25 cm and not left empty lines between paragraphs?

 Have you labelled all tables, figures etc. with Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3), using separate
numbering for tables and for figures, and discussed them in the text?

And, before you submit… is this the best you can do? If not, work on it some more. Don’t submit work you know
is not your best effort. And that means giving yourself time to revise and polish.

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7. SAMPLE TITLE PAGE

Deep Fakes and Gender-based Violence:

Making the Internet an Unsafe Space for Women

Supervisor: Student name here

Supervisor name here Student ID here
your [email protected]
21 June 2023
Bachelor Thesis (course code here)

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