Writing Your Paper and Bibliography

If you need writing skills help:
There are several standard writing guides at the library. See the libraries’ Plagiarism Bibliography for a recommended list of titles kept at the Harriet Irving Library’s Information Desk for quick reference. UNB students can make use of the UNB Writing and Study Skills Centre (Keirstead Hall, Room 318 and the Harriet Irving Library, Room 116) and STU students can make use of the STU Writing Centre (Edmund Casey Hall, Room 102).

Avoiding plagiarism:
In academic writing, if you copy or paraphrase another person’s words, or adopt their ideas or data, without giving credit by citing the source, you are plagiarizing—whether you had intended to cheat or not. And universities do not take plagiarism lightly. The possible consequences range from an awkward confrontation with your instructor to expulsion from university. Therefore, the best approach is avoidance. For more information on how to avoid plagiarism, consult the Libraries’ Plagiarism: A How-NOT-to Guide.

Preparing a good bibliography:
When writing a paper you normally have to list the publications you used in a bibliography or list of works cited. A good bibliography will usually have a variety of types of publications, and will follow an accepted style. Your professor may request that you use a particular style manual which will explain, with examples, how to format a reference. Different manuals are the standard in different disciplines:

Social Sciences: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (called "APA")
Humanities: The MLA Style Manual, or The Chicago Manual of Style (also used in the "Turabian" manual)
Sciences: Scientific Style and Format (called "CBE" or “CSE”)

The UNBF English Department has also created a manual entitled Form and Format which covers all these styles. All of the Style Manuals are available at UNB Libraries, and brief Citation Style Examples are also available at the libraries.

Also consider using RefWorks, which can automatically format citations in any standard style. As you conduct your online research you can export citations to your own RefWorks database, and later use RefWorks to automatically format your bibliography. If you are using indexing databases from CSA (e.g., Sociological Abstracts, Criminal Justice Abstracts, etc.), you also have the option of directly creating a formatted bibliography using QuickBib.

All the standard styles have specific methods for citing electronic publications. An e-journal article, for example, should not be listed as if it were found in print form. Some styles require that citations to electronic publications declare where and when you retrieved the publication.

Keep in mind that the whole point of a bibliography is to provide another person with enough information to to find the publications. Your instructor will not be pleased if s/he cannot find items in your bibliography!

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