Irish Studies: Writing & Citing

To assist you to develop the writing skills necessary to become a confident and skilled writer, the Student Learning Centre offer the following services:

Study Guides

• Planning and Writing University Assignments: Planning assignments, and strategies for finding information, reading, and taking notes. 
• Guidelines for Writing and Editing: Paragraph and sentence structures, writing style, and the rules for the apostrophe, comma, colon and semicolon.
• Perfect Your Punctuation - A Brief Guide to the Comma, Apostrophe, Colon and Semicolon: Common usage of these key punctuation marks.

Tipsheets

• The Quirky Comma: Tips on the when and how of using commas.
• The Dreaded Apostrophe: Tips to help you use apostrophes correctly in your writing.
• Colons and Semi Colons: This tip sheet is designed to clarify the use of colon and semi colons.

Online Tutorials

• Essay writing with readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Business Report
• Scientific Report

Workshops

The Student Learning Centre offer a range of workshops that will assist with your writing:

• Writing at University
• Thesis Writing

Drop-in Thesis Clinic

If you are a postgraduate student and have a problem with some aspects of your thesis, then the thesis clinic is the place for you. You can discuss any issue related to thinking about your postgraduate research, and planning and writing a thesis. Drop in to the Student Learning Centre on a Thursday at 4pm.

Individual Consultations with a Learning Advisor

If you are an enrolled student, you are welcome to visit the Student Learning Centre in the south-west corner of the Central Library (ISB) Building to discuss any aspect of your study that is causing concern. You can also telephone 479 5786 or e-mail student-learning-centre@otago.ac.nz to make an appointment with a Learning Adviser. There are many ways that we can assist you in an individual appointment.

If you are an off-campus student, the same service is available to you through e-mail or a toll-free line: 0800 808 098.

If you follow a citation style correctly, you will avoid plagiarism and help your reader find your information sources.  Ask your lecturer/supervisor if you are not sure which style you should use.  The recomended style for History at Otago is:

• Chicago (Footnotes and a Bibliography) sometimes called "Chicago A"

You'll find examples of how to cite correctly using Chicago's Author-Date style on the History Department Website:

• Study Skills

PLEASE NOTE: The Chicago Manual of Style also contains examples for both the Notes+Bibliography style (sometimes called "Chicago A") used by the History Department, and the Author-Date style (sometimes called "Chicago B") used by the English Department.  Try not to get confused between the 2 styles.

There is software available to help you to keep track of all of the information that you find and ensure that your citations are formatted correctly

• Zotero

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

• EndNote   

EndNote is software used to manage bibliographic citations. It can be used to organise references, cite them in papers, and automatically generate bibliographies - in the citation style of your choice.