Assessment, Writing Style, Referencing, etc.
In this section
Submitting your work:
PenaltiesWriting your work:
Assessment Deadlines
The dates and times by which you should submit your work for assessment are given on Tabula.
Work should be uploaded to Tabula by the date and time specified on the system and following the online instructions. Please note that since this is an electronic system, it is very accurate, so even if you submit your work just one second after the deadline, it will be marked as late and penalties will be imposed accordingly.
Make sure you allow yourself plenty of time to upload your work and try not to leave this until the deadline day itself. If you encounter any technical problems with your IT equipment or with uploading your work which mean that you are unable to meet the deadline, these cannot be accepted as a valid reason for late or non-submission and penalties will be imposed accordingly. Work submitted by any other means (e.g. emailed to the Office or a tutor) will not be accepted. Ensure that you have uploaded the correct version of your assignment by checking after submission.
Last Submission Date Policy:
Students will not normally be able to submit coursework once feedback for that assignment has been released. The PG History Office can only reopen a specific assignment for a student if the student has support to do this from their personal or senior tutor. In this instance, students should note the following:
The submission will be a late submission, so late penalties will be imposed.
Late penalties can be waived with an approved mitigation application, but the department cannot guarantee whether late penalties will be waived, because this decision is made by the mitigation panel and exam board in the summer.
As a late submission, work will not be subject to the same 20 working day marking turnaround university policy and therefore feedback may take longer than usual.
Students are encouraged to submit late work as soon as possible, so that it doesn’t impact other deadlines.
In addition to this, students should note that any work submitted after 12 noon Thursday 8th May 2025 will not be marked, will receive an automatic mark of zero, and will not be considered by the PGT interim exam board.
File Naming
While there is no "correct" way to name a file, we strongly urge you to adopt a robust convention for naming and organising your files before submitting work - this will help prevent you from accidentally submitting the wrong file. Submission of the wrong file will result in penalties (for more information please see below)
A meaningful filename would contain your student number, the module code, assignment name and an indication that it is the final version, for example:
1234567 - HI999 - Source Review - FINAL.pdf
It is essential that you do not include your own name in the document or file name.
Submission of the Wrong File
Occasionally, a student will accidentally upload an incorrect file The department allows a window of 2 working days after the deadline in which students who realise that they have uploaded an incorrect file can contact the department and have the incorrect file deleted and be allowed to upload the correct file.
It is the student’s responsibility to check Tabula and ensure that they have uploaded the correct file for all of their summative assessments.
If a student discovers that they have uploaded an incorrect file for a summative assessment they must email the History PG Office within 2 days of the original submission and ask for the submission to be deleted. Students must then submit the correct file on Tabula once an initial submission has been deleted by the office.
There will be a penalty of 5 marks per working day applied to the submission.
Once the 2 working day window has passed, students who re-submit the correct file for the respective assignment before marking closes will receive a capped mark of 50%; if the mistake is not rectified before marking closes, the mark will be 0%. This policy applies to all assessments.
Please note that it is the student's responsibility to check that a correct file has been uploaded not the marker.
Penalties for Late Submission or Non-Submission of Written Assessed Work
Deadlines for the submission of work are available on Tabula. According to University rules, late submission of an assessed essay will, unless an extension has been approved, result in a penalty deduction from your mark for the work of 5 marks per day. Weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and bank holidays are NOT included when calculating penalties for late submission. There is no upper limit to the total penalty for late submission. Work submitted up to the date of release of feedback will be marked. If, for medical or other compelling reasons, you require an extension for an assessed essay or dissertation please see the extension policy.
Word Length and Penalties for Over Length Work
A published maximum word length has the force of a University Regulation. All assessed work submitted for a Masters degree must conform to the word lengths are given in this Handbook, and published elsewhere. You will be asked to provide a word count of your essays and dissertation, to be noted on the title page and confirmed on Tabula. Please note that the word count excludes the bibliography, title pages, footnotes and appendices (including acknowledgements).
- Any assessed work over 4,500 words: 1 mark off for each 100 words (or part thereof)
- Any assessed work up to 4,500 words: 1 mark off for each 50 words (or part thereof) over the specified limit
The word limits are strict upper limits, and marks will be deducted if the assessment is over-length. The title page is not included in the word count, but titles and subtitles in the text are. You do not need an abstract or content list, but if you do include these, they are counted in the word count.
You will not be penalised for producing under length work, provided quality is not sacrificed to brevity. Learning to write to a limit is one of the skills the degree is designed to encourage you to cultivate.
| Included in word count | Not included in word count |
|
Titles and subtitles in the text Abstract Contents page |
Bibliography Title pages Footnotes Appendices Image captions |
Essay Writing Guidelines
As a postgraduate student, you are probably well-practised in the art of producing high-quality written work, but there's no harm in rehearsing the basics and understanding the expectations of your department (especially if you have come from another institution or another discipline or have been out of higher education for some time). Whatever your background, you may find some of the following advice helpful when planning and writing your essays. Few of them are iron rules. Good essays come in many forms, and a good essay-writer will sometimes ignore some of these guidelines.
In history essays, you should demonstrate awareness of more than one argument, acknowledge differences in the views of historians, and adopt a critical appreciation of evidence and its sources. You should also provide the necessary scholarly underpinning for your analysis by showing the sources of your information and arguments in bibliographies and footnotes.
On questions of presentation, footnoting, etc. you should follow the advice given from the department (below).
The Essay Question
- Have you really answered the question?
- Have you thought what might lie behind the question and about what alternative explanations might be suggested?
- Is each paragraph clearly related to the overall question, raising a new topic and moving the argument forward?
- If you left the title off the top of your essay, could a friend guess the question from your answer?
Your Analysis
- Have you made an argument or is the essay simply relating what happened?
- Is your argument logical, coherent and clear?
- Are you contradicting yourself?
- Are you using appropriate evidence to back up each part of your argument?
- Are you aware of counter-arguments?
- Have you combined evidence and ideas from several different sources at each stage of the argument, or are you merely summarising what your sources say one by one?
Your Research
- Have you done enough reading? Six books/article/chapters is suggested for a short essay; ten or more for a long one.
- Are you up to date on the historical debate? Do not rely only on the older texts.
- Have you listed in the bibliography all the sources you used, and only those sources?
Referencing
Why reference?
From reading academic articles and books, you should be familiar with the scholarly practice of making references in the text to other people's work and providing listings of relevant source material at the end of the text.
Why is this done?
- To enable someone reading the document to find the material you have referred to or consulted
- To demonstrate your width of reading and knowledge about a subject
- To support and/or develop points made in the text
- To avoid accusations of plagiarism: using somebody else's work without acknowledging the fact
Citation style
A citation style is a system for formatting references, whether in the main text of an essay, in the footnotes, or in the bibliography. It covers such things as the order of information in the citation style, the length of the citation, and the use of capitalisation and italics.
A common style used in the humanities is known as the MHRA style, so-called because it is administered by the Modern Humanities Research Association, a scholarly association based in the UK. Below are some examples of citations formatted in the MHRA style.
A book:
Tom McArthur, Worlds of Reference: Lexicography, Learning and Language from the Clay Tablet to the Computer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 59.
A chapter in an edited book:
Martin Elsky, ‘Words, Things, and Names: Jonson’s Poetry and Philosophical Grammar’, in Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben, ed. by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), pp. 31–55 (p. 41).
A journal article:
Robert F. Cook, ‘Baudouin de Sebourc: un poème édifiant?’, Olifant, 14 (1989), 115–35 (pp. 118–19).
These examples are taken from the MHRA Style Guide, the third (2013) edition of which is available here. For a short summary of the guide, see pages 3 to 8. For more detail on referencing, see pages 58 to 82.
Another citation style often used by historians is the one in the Chicago Manual of Style, published by the University of Chicago Press and currently in its seventeenth edition. This style is subtly different from the MHRA style, as you can see by comparing these citations with the ones above:
Tom McArthur, Worlds of Reference: Lexicography, Learning and Language from the Clay Tablet to the Computer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 59.
Martin Elsky, “Words, Things, and Names: Jonson’s Poetry and Philosophical Grammar,” in Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 41.
Robert F. Cook, “Baudouin de Sebourc: un poème édifiant?”, Olifant 14 (1989): 118–19.
Which citation style should you use? The History Department does not favour one particular style, but it does require that students:
- Use the same style throughout any given essay
- Use a recognised style for citations rather than inventing your own style – the MHRA and Chicago style guides are examples.
- Use footnotes for citations rather than in-text citations.
- Include a bibliography at the end of each essay, ie. a list of the works you have cited in the course of the essay
Presentation
The Department has no rules about how assessments should be presented and formatted. What is important is to ensure that your writing is clearly readable on a screen, which makes it easier for markers to focus on the merits of your argument and writing rather than be distracted by poor presentation. Please check with your tutor in case there are specific requirements for a particular module. If you aren’t sure where to begin, the following are suggested guidelines for how you might format and present your assessments:
- Font
- Your font should usually be font size 12 in a standard font (e.g., Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman).
- Margins
- There should be standard margins (e.g., the default for Microsoft Word is 2.54cm) on all sides of the page.
- Line Spacing
- The line spacing for the text of your essay should be double-spaced.
- The line spacing for the footnotes should, however, be single-spaced.
- Alignment
- Work should be left aligned or justified, rather than centred or right aligned.
- Pagination
- Number each page of your essay.
- Title Pages/Coversheets
- Title pages and/or coversheets are not required, but you should include the title or question at the beginning of the assessment.
- Numbers
- Numbers up to one hundred, when occurring in normal writing, should be written out in words rather than numerals.
- When there are many figures, it is better to use words only for numbers up to nine.
- Spell out 'per cent' rather than using the % sign in your text.
- Dates
- Instead of (for example) '22nd of June 1941', the correct format for dates would be '22 June 1941'.
Proofreading Guidelines
University guidelines on proofreading of assessed/unassessed work can be found at https://warwick.ac.uk/services/aro/dar/quality/categories/examinations/policies/v_proofreading. It sets out expectations, acceptable practices and exceptions for students. The Tabula cover sheet has been updated to reflect this policy and all students must confirm on submission of their work if they have used the services of a proofreader to support their assignment.
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