To obtain the best grade when writing a project, report, or dissertation, a student should make sure they read as many related books, articles, and periodicals as possible.
In order to show your tutor the resources you have used to gain an understanding of your subject, all the documents you’ve read should be listed at the end of your work in the form of a bibliography.
So that you don’t forget which sources you have read once you get to the end of your study, it is a good idea to jot down the details of each item you’ve read as you go. You will need to make sure that you have details of the work’s full title, the author, place of publication, publisher, and the date of publication.
A bibliography should be written in alphabetical order and split into sections, beginning with books, then periodicals, and finally online resources (check with your tutor to make sure he or she prefers this standard format or if they like to have online resources listed first).
Below are some examples of how to reference different types of study material.
Books
Author’s surname, Initial, Title, (City of publication, Publisher, Date).
E.g., Kane, J., Another Cup of Coffee, (Cardiff, Accent Press, 2013)
Periodicals and Magazines
Author’s surname, Initial, ‘Article Title,’ Name of magazine. Volume number if applicable, (Date) page numbers.
E.g., Bellamy, J., ‘The Coterel Gang: An Anatomy of a Band of Fourteenth Century Crime’, English Historical Review Vol. 79, (1964), pp.1-39
Encyclopaedia
Encyclopaedia Title, Edition Date. Volume Number, “Article Title,” page numbers.
E.g., The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997. Vol 7, ‘Gorillas’, pp.50-51
Blog via the Internet
Author of blog, (Date). Subject of message. Electronic conference or bulletin board (Online). Available e-mail address if given.
E.g., Jenny Kane, (September 22, 2014). The Story Behind Another Cup of Coffee, http://jennykane.co.uk/blog/the-story-behind-another-cup-of-coffee/
WWW: Author, Web Address
E.g., Oxford Open Learning, http://www.ool.co.uk/
In order to obtain the best result when writing a project, report, dissertation, or an essay, a student must undertake a comprehensive reading of the subject in question.
To prove that you have used a variety of sources for your research, it is important to reference the sources you have read correctly. Whether you use online sources, books, or periodicals, or a combination of all three, footnotes or endnotes should be used to display every document you have used.
Footnotes
When you make a statement within your work that has been generated from reading a specific book, then you need to reference that fact. This is done by placing a small number next to the full stop that ends the sentence in question. This number is often (although not always) placed within closed brackets. The following sentence would therefore appear like this in your text;
The son of Edward II, also Edward, was dealt a challenge in the ruling of England that was more difficult than any monarch who’d come before him. (1)
Then, at the bottom of the page in which that sentence appears, you should record the full reference as below.
1. Prestwich, M., The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272-1377 (London, 1980), pp.20-26
Should multiple references appear on the same page, then they should be listed in numerical order. For example-
1. Prestwich, M., The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272-1377 (London, 1980), pp.20-26
2. Knight, S,. Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford, 1994), pp.59-60
3. Holt, J., Robin Hood (London, 1982), pp.1-9
Endnotes
Some tutors prefer their students to use endnotes rather than footnotes. The process of referencing within the body of your project remains the same as with footnotes. Rather than placing your references at the foot of each page, however, they should be listed all together in numerical order at the very end of your document.
Whether you use footnotes or endnotes, the references themselves should always be set up with the author’s surname first, followed by their first name or initials. Then comes the book title (underlined), followed by the publication location and date in brackets. Last of all, you need to record the page (p.) or pages (pp.) that are specific to the reference you are making within your text.
Activists at the last Conservative Conference before the General Election left Manchester with a slight spring in their step. Why? There were two reasons: the planned welfare freeze and income tax cuts, and the promise to clamp down on corporate tax evasion.
If the party wins a majority in 2015, benefits paid to people of working age will be frozen for two years, affecting child benefit payments and income support, hitting approximately 10 households (two thirds of the working population), saving £3 billion per annum over the period 2016-18. The Chancellor has also promised to cut the basic rate of tax by £500 per person by 2020, saving those earning between £50,000 – £100,000 per year some £1,313 in tax payments each year. Also planned is a tax free personal allowance of £12,500. Those working 30 hours per week or less will pay no tax.
Pensioners (tax winners over the last 5 years) will not have their benefits cut. They will also stand to gain from from the proposal to scrap the 55% tax rate on inherited pension funds and about half of all welfare payments go to those over 65 rather than to the demographic groups most in need. All this is justified on the grounds that wages during the economic recovery have risen slower than the increase in welfare payments, and why should “hard working families” (a group beloved by all politicians) subsidise those who “live off the state” whilst the economy continues to recover and unemployment is falling.
The “cunning” part of these proposed measures is not economic, but political; they are designed to appeal to “Middle England”, detaching many on both the right and the left from the siren call of UKIP. Attitude surveys indicate that those in work with long term career prospects actually resent paying for the welfare of the poor and those choosing to live “inappropriate” lifestyles. We have become a less compassionate society.
However, these measures may raise social costs in the short and long term. The maximum amount working households can claim in welfare payments is currently £26,000 per annum. This will reduce to £23,000 or £56, or £56 a week if the Chancellor’s proposals are implemented. The Treasury calculates that over the next two years the total cost of welfare will be £356 billion. The Chancellor’s proposals represent only 0.9% of this bill. So much for cutting the national defecit and reducing rising interest payments on international loans.
Child poverty in depressed areas is likely to rise as a direct result of the decline in living standards and with welfare payments also falling. Social divisions are likely to grow as a result.
The question of how the costs to the Treasury of these tax giveaways are to be paid for have yet to be answered, though nor have those regarding the opposition’s plans for the economy. NHS expenditure has been declared sacrosanct and education will be similarly protected; defence spending may also have to rise, the longer we stay in the Middle East. All of this means that, despite their own unanswered questions, the opposition has plenty to get its teeth into before the next general election in Spring 2015. The Chancellor’s “cunning plan” may yet not prove quite so cunning after all.
It’s summer, and perhaps we shall see some blue skies overhead. A nice sight, certainly, but is it anything more?
Blue-Sky means having the pleasant appearance of a blue sky. A completely blue sky has no opaque objects, in other words no clouds. Similarly, Blue-Sky Thinking was considered to be empty thinking (i.e. a blue sky without clouds) and in this case without the tarnish of any ideas at all. More specifically, Blue-Sky Thinking means fanciful thinking, hypothetical, not practicable or profitable in the current state of knowledge or technical development. The use of Blue-Sky goes back to 1906, when it was used in the context of Blue-Sky securities, which are worthless securities. Those people trading in worthless securities, something that would later be referred to as junk bonds, were said to be selling “Blue-Sky and hot air” and so were called “Blue-Sky merchants.” In 1948, Blue-Sky securities indicated a bad investment or a fraud.
Blue-Sky was used in a different way in the 1920’s, in a work called Raymond Robins’ Own Story, by W.Hard, which refers to Lenin and Trotsky never giving any Blue-Sky talk. In other words, they never promised anything without the power and the will to deliver. Later, in 1956, the phrase Blue-Sky book came into being in the U.S. This type of book is a literary work which lacks any expert knowledge or specific technique. Similarly, there is a quote in the Times in 1977 regarding Blue-Sky technologies, which are those where there are no real world applications immediately apparent. So Blue-Sky carries a theme where there is nothing useful, nothing concrete or practicable. Ref: English Oxford Dictionary.
Blue-Sky Thinking is currently considered to be thinking that is not based or connected with the realities in the present moment. It allows for creative ideas where there is no restriction or limitation placed on them from current thinking or beliefs.
There is a similar usage, which is the phrase, “Thinking Outside The Box”, which means thinking creatively, freely, without restriction or conventional constraint. The origin of this is from the U.S. in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. There is an early example in the Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine, in July 1975, which says, “We must step back and see if the solutions to our problems lie outside the box.”
The ‘box’ represents rigid and unimaginative thinking, so out of the box is a distinct contrast. Thinking outside the box and Blue-Sky thinking essentially mean the same thing, the latter phrase being the older of the two.
These phrases described above relate to the work of Edward De Bono, a psychologist and inventor, who gave encouragement in the U.K. to find solutions from outside our normal thinking behaviour. He also coined the phrase Lateral Thinking, in 1967, and went on to develop it as a method of structured creativity.
All this given to the world of business and beyond, from a simple, pleasant sight of nature and environment.
Oxford Home Schooling’s brand new Business Studies IGCSE course is now enrolling students. The OOL course consists of five modules and twenty-two lessons in total, with 9 Tutor-marked Assignments. The module names and contents follow the sequence laid out in the Edexcel 4BS0 specfication:
- Business Activity and the Changing Environment
- Human Resources (HR)
- Accounting and Finance
- Marketing
- Production
This specification is examined for the first time in 2011. There is no coursework. Students aiming for 2010 exams should take the Business Studies GCSE course instead. Please feel free to contact a Student Adviser on 0800 0111 024 if you have any queries or wish further information.