SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY

STYLE GUIDE FOR ESSAYS AND DISSERTATIONS

Note: The main text of this guide is in Arial, and examples are indented and in
Times New Roman.

1. Settings

All submitted work must be word-processed, with the following settings:

Font: Times New Roman

Font size: 12-point for body text (indented quotations may be 11-point,
and footnotes 10-point)
Font colour: black
Alignment: left
Margins: left and right, 3cm; top and bottom, 2.5cm (for the first page, a
top margin of 1.5cm is preferable)
Line spacing: single (unless otherwise specified by your tutor)
Paragraphing: either indented first line and no blank line between
paragraphs, or no indentation and a blank line between paragraphs
(preferably the former)
Pagination: every page (except the first page) numbered in the centre of
the header
Printing: single-sided

2. Title

Level 1:

Do not include a separate title page. On the first page, put your name and
student ID number in the top right corner, and below it the name of the module
(which may be abbreviated). Then write out the title of the essay with the exact
wording as set, and make it bold and centred. For example,

John Smith 123456789

Kant‘s Critical Philosophy

What does Kant mean by claiming to have brought about a

‘Copernican’ revolution in philosophy? How far do you consider his
claim to be justified?

You are required to submit one copy of all assessed work. Complete and staple
an essay submission form to the front of the essay.
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Levels 2 & 3 and Taught Postgraduate:

Except for dissertations, do not include a separate title page. On the first page,
put your student ID number in the top right corner, and below it the name of the
module (which may be abbreviated). Then write out the title of the essay with
the exact wording as set, and make it bold and centred. For example,

123456789
Kant‘s Critical Philosophy

What does Kant mean by claiming to have brought about a

‘Copernican’ revolution in philosophy? How far do you consider his
claim to be justified?

You are required to submit two copies of all assessed work. Complete and
staple an essay submission form to the front of one copy of the essay, staple
the pages of the second copy together, and attach the two together with a
paperclip.

3. Quotations

Short quotations of one sentence or less should be enclosed in quotation

marks. Longer quotations should be indented to left and right, with a blank line
before and after. In this case, do not use quotation marks, and you may use a
slightly smaller font size (e.g. 11pt). For example:

Shanks says: ―in the process of becoming creation science, natural theology
has mutated and evolved into a grim parody of itself.‖

Shanks says:

[I]n the process of becoming creation science, natural theology has

mutated and evolved into a grim parody of itself. Where the natural
theologians of old [. . .] saw the Book of Nature as a supplementary
volume to the Book of God, the contemporary creation scientist feels
compelled to substitute for the Book of Nature as we now know it a
grotesque work of science fiction and fantasy, so that consistency may
be maintained between preferred interpretations of the two books.

Here he makes a stark contrast between the theologians of an earlier age,

and the anti-scientific attitude of modern creationists . . .

Note that if you alter the text in any way, you must enclose your alterations in
square brackets (as with changing the lower-case ‘i’ to an upper-case ‘I’ in the
above example). Again, if you leave anything out, you must indicate this with a
‘[. . .]’. If you emphasise anything which was not emphasised in the original by
putting it in italics, insert ‘(emphases added)’ at the end of the quotation. Do not
write quotations in italics.
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4. References

Whenever you quote a passage directly, or paraphrase it, or summarise it, or

use the ideas it contains, you must include an appropriate reference—either in
brackets in the body of the essay or (optionally, in history of science) in a
footnote—together with a full reference to the work in a bibliography at the end.
The approved method for ordinary purposes is to give the author’s name, the
year of publication of the edition you use, and the page number or numbers. If
the reference immediately follows the name of the author, it isn’t necessary to
repeat the name. For example:

Shanks (2004, p.3) says:

Shanks says: ―in the process of becoming creation science, natural theology
has mutated and evolved into a grim parody of itself‖ (Shanks 2004, p.3).

It has been noted that modern creationists are more hostile to science than
theologians in earlier periods (Shanks 2004, pp.3–4).

The standard abbreviation for ‘page’ is ‘p.’, not ‘pg.’.

Bear in mind that course hand-outs, lectures, discussions in class, and any help
you get from fellow students should all be acknowledged. It is not always easy
to do so in the above format, and you will have to use your common sense as to
how much you put in brackets in the text, and how much you leave to the
bibliography. Here are some examples:

Jones stresses that, despite Wittgenstein‘s scientism, there is a strong

element of mysticism in his thought (course hand-out for week 3, p.2.).

It is essential to be clear about the difference between determinism and

fatalism, since the latter presupposes that the universe is not governed by
universal causal laws (seminar in week 4).

Although Kant may have derived the concept of a noumenon from Plato, it
is important to remember that Plato was thinking primarily of entities such
as the forms and perfect mathematical objects, whereas Kant was thinking
of things in themselves, which have no place in Plato‘s ontology
(MacDonald Ross, personal communication).

In order to understand Descartes‘ account of material objects, it‘s useful to

think of them as like lumps of ice in water — they consist of the same
substance, but they are differentiated from the water by the fact that their
particles hold together (I owe this analogy to my friend Samantha Brown).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to my fellow student Robin Goodfellow for reading a draft of

this essay, and helping me to improve its grammar and punctuation, and to
clarify a number of passages.
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5. Bibliography

Every piece of written work you submit must have a bibliography at the end,
even if it contains only a set text and course materials. You should include all
those and only those sources you have referred to in the body of the essay. If
you feel that this understates the amount of reading you have actually done,
you need to make a greater number of explicit references to your reading in the
essay itself.

Sources should be listed in alphabetical order of the (first) author’s surname,

using the following formats:

Book:

Shanks, Niall, God, the Devil, and Darwin (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004).

(Where more than one place of publication is listed, just use the first.)

Contribution to edited volume:

Hodge, M.J.S., ―Origins and Species before and after Darwin‖, in Olby,
R.C., Cantor, G.N., Christie, J.R.R., Hodge, M.J.S. (eds), Companion to the
History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1990), 374–395.

(If you don’t know the forenames of authors or editors, initials are equally
acceptable.)

Article

Morgan, Seiriol, ‗Sex in the Head‘, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 20/1,

2003, 1–16.

(‘20/1’ means the first issue of the 20th volume. If you don’t know which issue it
is, it doesn’t matter, because page numbers carry on from the previous issue.
N.B. Issue numbers are not used in history of science.)

Review

Christie, John, ―Contrarian with an Air of Reason‖, review of Schofield,

Robert E., The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Works
from 1773 to 1804 (University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2004), in The Times Higher Education Supplement, 05 May 2005, 24.

Web Page

MacDonald Ross, George, ―Plagiarism in Philosophy: Prevention Better

than Cure‖: http://www.prs-ltsn.leeds.ac.uk/plagiarism/gmrphilplag.html
(last modified 08.01.04, last accessed 05.05.05).
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(The website may not provide the date at which the document was last
modified, in which case you will have to omit this information. Other details may
also be missing. There is also the problem that page numbers have no meaning
in HTML files, although they do in Word or PDF files. You will have to find some
other way of identifying the passage you refer to, such as an internal heading,
or the approximate position in terms of the bar on the right.)

Course handout

Jones, Ieuan, Coursepack for Module on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (2005,

unpublished).

Further information

The referencing system outlined here is one among many approved methods
of referencing essays. There are further details of the different standards and
associated training materials at

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/training/referencing/

Remember at all times that the keynotes of referencing are clarity (will this work
as a source of information to recover the printed item?) and consistency (am I
recording the information in the same way each time?).

References in history of science are sometimes more complex than in

philosophy, and historians often use MHRA style to deal with such complexities.
There is an MHRA style tutorial at

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/ilt/mhra.htm

and in printable form at

http://161.112.232.42/perl/printunit.pl?unit=1073&folio=32&id=904034e802c66a
fcd772423c56ead7d8.

The MHRA Style Guide is freely available at

http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/StyleGuideV1.pdf.

6. Endnotes and footnotes

Don’t use endnotes at all, because busy examiners don’t have the time to find
them. Footnotes are better, but they shouldn’t be necessary (except sometimes
with complex references in history of science). Page references can be included
in the body of the essay in brackets, and if anything else is worth saying, it is
normally worth including in the essay itself. Don’t make life difficult for your
examiners by trying to impress them with the number of footnotes in your work.
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7. Word count

If there is a word limit on your assignment, you should use the facility in Word
(Tools, Word Count) to count the words, and specify the total at the end of your
essay. Remember to check the box ‘include footnotes and endnotes’, because
these count towards the total. The bibliography is not included in the word
count. If the length of the assignment is specified in terms of sides of A4, you
will be given full details by your module leader.

8. Summary of structure

Personal details and title

Body of essay
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Word count (if applicable)