DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MODERN LANGUAGES

BA and MA Theses Formatting and Style Guidelines

Our standard is the latest (7th) edition of the MLA, Modern Language
Association Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, the style Bible for
most college students, available at
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/ ,
http://www.mlahandbook.org/
Format:
- Times New Roman Font 12 pt (for all parts of the paper), 11 pt for long
quotes.
- Line spacing 1.5. throughout (all of main text, including appendices,
works cited and bibliography list, and all other material).
- Except the opening paragraph, all paragraphs must be indented.
- All Tabs: 1.27 cm / 0.5 inch.
- Text: justified.
- Emphasis: only Italics are accepted.
- Page numbering: consecutive, centred at foot; use roman numbers
format i, ii, iii for Introduction and 1, 2, 3 number format throughout
(including works cited and bibliography list, and all appendices).
Citation and Documentation of Sources:

- In academic writing, all citation of ideas and work by ones peers,

whether direct or indirect, needs to be acknowledged and
documented accurately and in full. For the documenting of sources,
MLA recommends the use of parenthetical references accompanied by an
alphabetically arranged list of Works Cited. The source information
required in a parenthetical citation depends: (1) upon the source medium
(e.g. Print, Web, electronic, DVD) and (2) upon the sources entry on the
Works Cited (bibliography) page.
- The list of Works Cited must feature ALL the works cited in the paper,
both directly and indirectly.
- A list of Bibliography should accompany the list of Works Cited. This
must be arranged alphabetically, according to Primary Readings and
Reference Works, including the electronic sources, as the case may be.
- Any source information that you provide in brackets in-text must
correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page.
- Quotations longer than four lines of prose or two lines of verse must be
indented by 1.27 cm, on the left side only, and separated from the main
body of the text.
Keep the parenthetical references brief and minimal e.g. authors
surname (when not given in or following from the body text), year (when
several works by the same author figure on the Works Cited list) and
page no. Lists of general bibliography alone are unacceptable.
Direct Citation:

Following is a series of main cases of citation. For further specifics, see

the MLA Handbook:
(1) Short, in-text quotation (for elliptical or short quotations under 3
lines):
In his discussion of The Pathology of Language in Consciousness
and the Acquisition of Language, Merleau-Ponty canvasses the
depersonalisation of the subject who no longer has the impression
that he coincides with his own speech. He writes that this is the
germ of the illusion of a speech which is foreign to him (1979: 67).
Works Cited entry:
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language.
Trans. Hugh J. Silverman. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1979.
(2) Long quotation, name of author(s) given in body text:
Discussing the overlappings and dissimilarities between the critical
theory of the Frankfurt School, and postmodern theory, Best and Kellner
remark that:

The polemics have often obscured some interesting similarities, in

addition to important differences. Both critical theory and much
postmodern theory agree in important ways in their critiques of
traditional philosophy and social theory. Both attack the academic
division of labour which establishes fixed boundaries between

regions

of

social

reality,

and

both

utilize

supradisciplinary

discourses. (1991: 215)

Works Cited entry:

Kellner, D. and Steven Best. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations.

New York: Guilford Press, 1991.

(3) Long quotation, name of author(s) not given in the body text:

The infelicitous condition of postmodern theory and practice, of

both embodying and representing the desert of reality, the always
already of the present moment, is what makes for Postmodernisms entry
into its own obsolescence:

This act of self-reflection is unstable, as all autobiographies must

be which try to understand a life in the very process of living, it
must be unstable --and this is the essence of the second difficulty I
mentioned here. Put still another way: postmodernism has
changed, zig-zagged, in the very process of revealing itself, as we
have changed in the process of living our lives. (Hassan 2000: 1213)
Works Cited entry:
Hassan, Ihab. What Was Postmodernism and What Will It Become?
in 20th Century American Literature after Midcentury, International

Conference Proceedings (Kyiv, 25-27 May, 1999). Kyiv: Publishing

Dovira, 2000.
(4) Citing an article in a journal:
Wilcox, Rhonda V. "Shifting Roles and Synthetic Women in Star Trek: The
Next Generation." Studies in Popular Culture 13.2 (1991): 53-65.

(5) Sample Citation Electronic Material:

SALMAN RUSHDIE: I think I relied mostly on memory. I spent a long
time just kind of excavating my memory and the memories of other
people. And when there were errors in the remembering, I found I
quite liked that, because I didn't want to write something that had
journalistic truth but rather some- thing that had a kind of
remembered truth. And of course memory does plan those tricks. For
instance -- this is something that Indian readers catch at once -- at
one point Ganesh is described as having sat at the feet of Valmiki and
taking down the Ramayana, which of course he didn't. There are a lot
at mistakes like that: they are consciously introduced mistakes. The
texture of the narrative is such that it almost depends upon being an
error about history; otherwise it wouldn't be an accurate piece of
memory, because that's what narrative is, it's something remembered.
(Rushdie 2006, online interview)
Works Cited entry:
Chaudhuri, Una. Imaginative Maps: Excerpts from a Conversation with
Salman Rushdie. Turnstile Press. Vol. II, No. 1 (1990). N.p. 21 Feb.
2006.
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<http://www.subir.com/rushdie/uc_maps.html>
The analogy between the terms "global" and "universal" is
misleading. Universalization has to do with human rights, liberty,
culture, and democracy. By contrast, globalization is about
technology, the market, tourism, and information. Globalization
appears to be irreversible whereas universalization is likely to be on
its way out. At least, it appears to be retreating as a value system
which developed in the context of Western modernity and was
unmatched by any other culture. Any culture that becomes
universal loses its singularity and dies. That's what happened to all
those cultures we destroyed by forcefully assimilating them. But it is
also true of our own culture, despite its claim of being universally
valid. The only difference is that other cultures died because of their
singularity, which is a beautiful death. We are dying because we are
losing our own singularity and exterminating all our values.
(Baudrillard 2003, online article)
Works Cited entry:
Baudrillard, Jean. The Violence of the Global. Trans. Franois Debrix.
CTheory.

(20

May

2003).

21

Feb.

2006.

<http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=385>
Use automatically inserted Endnotes as explanatory, content notes, i.e.
for supplementary information.
(5) Cross-References:

To avoid unnecessary repetition in citing two or more works from the

same collection, create a complete entry for the collection and crossreference individual works to the entry. In a cross-reference, state the
author, the title of the piece, the last name of the editor of the collection,
and the inclusive page numbers. If the piece is a translation, add the
name of the translator after the title:
Hamill, Pete. Introduction. Sexton and Powers xi-xiv.
Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Brooklyn Bridge. Trans. Max Hayward and
George Reavey. Sexton and Powers 136-41. MCCullers, Carson. Brooklyn
Is My Neighbourhood. Sexton and Powers 143-47.
Sexton, Andrea Wyatt, and Alice Leccese Powers, eds. The Brooklyn
Reader: Thirty Writers Celebrate Americas Favourite Borough. New York:
Harmony, 1994.
(6) Citing unpublished material:
To cite unpublished material, enclose the title of the material in
quotation marks (e.g. dissertation etc) or italicise if a full-length
manuscript (e.g. monograph) (do not underline it). Add a descriptive
label identifying the type of material, e.g. Diss., and, where applicable,
the name of the degree-granting university, followed by a comma and
the year:
Boyle, Anthony T. The Epistemological Evolution of Renaissance
utopian Literature, 1516-1657. Diss. New York University, 1983.
(7) Citing the published proceedings of a conference:
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Freed, Barbara F., ed. Foreign Language Acquisition Research and the
Classroom. Proc. Of Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning
Conference, Oct. 1989, U of Pennsylvania. Lexington: Heath, 1991.
(8) Citing a multivolume work:
If you are using two or more volumes of a multivolume work, cite the
total number of volumes in the work (5 vols.) after the title, or after
the name of the editor or identification of edition:
Bianco, Richard L., ed. The American Revolution 1775-1783: An
Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Hamden: Garland, 1993.
(9) Citing a translation:
To cite a translation, state the authors name first if you refer
primarily to the work itself; give the translators name, preceded by
Trans. (Translated by), after the title. If the book has an editor as
well as a translator, give the names, with appropriate abbreviations, in
the order in which they appear on the title page:
Dostoevsky, Feodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Jessie Coulson.
Ed. George Gibian. New York: Norton, 1964.
(10)

Citing two or more books by the same author:

To cite two or more books by the same author(s), give the name(s) in
the first entry only. Thereafter, in place of the name(s), type hyphens,
followed by a period and the title. The three hyphens stand for exactly
the same names) as in the preceding entry:

Durant, Will and Ariel Durant. The Age of Voltaire. New York: Simon,
1965.
- - -. A Dual Autobiography. New York: Simon, 1977.
(11) Citing a book by a corporate author:
A book can be authored by a commission, an association, a
committee, or any other group whose individual members are not
identified on the title page (applies to government publications). Cite
the book by the corporate author, even if the corporate author is the
publisher:
American Medical Association. The American Medical Association
Enclycopedia of Medicine. New York: Random, 1989.
(12)

Citing a book by two or more authors:

(a) To cite a book by two or three authors, give the names in the same
order as on the title page (not necessarily in alphabetical order).
Reverse only the name of the first author, add a comma, and give the
other name or names in regular form (Wellek, Ren, and Austin
Warren). Place a period after the last name:
Jakobson, Roman, and Linda R. Waugh. The Sound Shape of
Language. Bloomington: Indian UP, 1979.
(b) If there are more than three authors, you may name only the first
and add et al. (and others), or you may give all names in full in the
order in which they appear on the title page:

Gilman, Sander, et al. Hysteria beyond Freud. Berkeley: U of California

P, 1993.
Indirect Citation:
When direct sources are not available and someone elses published
account of another persons words are used, introduce qtd in (quoted
in) before the indirect source the abbreviation.
Punctuation with Titles and Citation:
- Titles of full-length volumes, books etc should be in italics, as well as
words singled out for emphasis, single foreign words not naturalised in
English and foreign phrases.
- No other form of emphasis (capitals, bold, large print, etc.) should
be used, and careful, sparing use of inverted commas is
recommended.
- Do not underline, italicise or use inverted commas or block capitals in
main title and chapter titles. Use inverted commas or italics only to mark
titles within titles.
- Do not use a period after titles or after any headings in the paper.
- Quotations within the main body of the text should be in double
inverted commas.
- Words or phrases used in an unusual way, upon first appearance in
that acceptation, should be in single inverted commas.

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- Quotations within quotations should be in single inverted commas.

- Omissions within quotations should be indicated by means of ellipsis
(three points within square brackets, each point separated by a space).
- Changes, or additions within quotations, are marked by square
brackets, but not elisions. Changes and comments at the end of the
quote should be in round brackets.
- Spelling may follow either British or American conventions, but should
be consistent throughout the paper.
- Quotations in languages other than English: all quotations in
languages other than English will be given in original with a translation
provided as a Footnote.
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is a serious offence that can be described as theft of
intellectual property. It is considered the most severe infringement
of academic integrity and consists of presenting another persons
ideas, concepts, wording, phrasing, drawings, graphs, etc. as ones
own without acknowledging
the source of the information. Rephrasing, adapting or restating the
original writers ideas by changing the original word order without
acknowledging the source does not exempt one from the
responsibility of documenting the source.

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To avoid committing plagiarism, credit must always be given to

someone else's ideas, opinions, theories, facts, statistics, graphs and
drawings which are not considered common knowledge.
Common knowledge is information found in numerous places and
known by many people. E. g. English is a Germanic language.
Plagiarism is a felony and therefore grounds for expulsion from the
Higher Education institution.

PLEASE OBSERVE THE FOLLOWING:

Do not indent the opening paragraph;

Italicise titles of full books/ volumes/collections of

essays/anthologies/novels/plays/long poems published as
books/pamphlets/periodicals/films/compact
disks/ballets/operas/instrumental music compositions;

Use quotation marks for the titles of works published within larger
works (articles/essays/short poems/short stories/chapters of books);

Note that punctuation with quotation marks (regular and single) is:
. and , or . and ,

Use regular quotation marks for quoted syntagms etc. and single
quotation marks for syntagms, phrases, etc. employed ironically or in
a figurative meaning;

For mottos use suggested format for long quotes (Font 11, centred
etc.);

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Do not include p for page number in Notes entries.

When documenting articles in journals, remember to give the

inclusive page numbers of the article, e.g. 11-32.

When citing/quoting from titles of articles, indicate length of article

(e.g. 5-14)/length plus appropriate page number documenting
quotation (e.g. 5-14, 9).

Use ibid., idem, and op. cit. to enter a quote from/reference to a

book whose title is entered above.

Use abbreviations and foreign language items whenever it is necessary

(e.g.

Use endnotes instead of footnotes and keep them to a minimum.

Use I for the author and we when you refer to the author and the
reader or to several authors.

Incorporate pictures, graphs, questionnaires, text samples and longer

material in the appendices/annexes section.

SAMPLE TITLE PAGE ROMANIAN

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Header:
UNIVERSITATEA BABE-BOLYAI, CLUJ-NAPOCA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE
CATEDRA DE LIMBI MODERNE APLICATE

Disertaie Master

Title of dissertation in Romanian

ABSOLVENT

COORDONATOR

14

SESIUNEA IULIE 2013

SAMPLE TITLE PAGE ENGLISH

HEADER:
BABE-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY, CLUJ-NAPOCA
FACULTY OF LETTERS
DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MODERN LANGUAGES

MA THESIS

Thesis Title in English

GRADUATE

15

THESIS ADVISER

CLUJ-NAPOCA JULY 2013

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