Guide to essay standards and report writing

Helen L. Chick
University of Tasmania

[These guidelines apply to units taught by Helen Chick. They may prove useful for other
units, but any guidelines provided by the corresponding Unit Coordinators should take
precedence.]

Introduction
There are two keys to successful writing: to have something worthwhile to say and then to
say it well, following the style conventions of the genre. These guidelines concern the latter
issue, because unless you can express yourself clearly and correctly the validity of your ideas
will not matter. Aspects of these guidelines are based on those of the American Psychological
Association (APA), as described in the Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (APA, 2010) and more briefly in the works of Perrin (2012) or Faigley (2013).
This guide is only brief and cannot cover all the issues. Moreover, it is not an actual example
of a paper, and so cannot be used as a model for one although it does exemplify some of the
key principles. You can learn much about writing good academic work, however, by reading
papers from reputable sources and chapters in books appropriate to your discipline. Note their
structure and the way the ideas are organised. There are also a number of useful published
guides that may help if you are going to be writing regularly.
Organising your thoughts
Although it may not be conventional to divide an essay into formal sections as has been done
for these guidelines, the use of temporary sections is a good idea for the planning stages of
any essay or other piece of writing. 1 For reports, sections are often appropriate or even
required. You should think about the key ideas you wish to convey and decide how they
should be placed in a meaningful sequence. Each key idea usually will be the subject of one
or more paragraphs, where a paragraph should comprise more than one sentence but certainly
no more than a page.
The introduction and conclusion are particularly important components of the essay. The
introduction should “set the scene” for the issue to be discussed and may indicate why it is an
important topic or provide background context for what is to come. The conclusion should be
more than a mere summary or reiteration of your main points, but should present the outcome
of the arguments and themes you have developed in the essay. It may be useful to think of the
introduction and the conclusion as “bookends” for the essay.
Quotes, citations, and references
For most essays you will need to refer to and incorporate the work of others in your
arguments. You must give credit to the authors of material whose work you quote or to which
you refer. If you are using someone else’s actual words you must indicate this with quotation
marks or similar (see later paragraph about quotations). You should make these
acknowledgements throughout your essay as well as in the reference list at the end. Failure to
do this is to plagiarise. Plagiarism is unacceptable academic behaviour. Penalties for
plagiarism are severe; the university’s policy can be found on the web-sites:
http://www.utas.edu.au/students/plagiarism/ and
http://www.academicintegrity.utas.edu.au/.

1
Note that it may be permissible to have formal sections for essays in some subjects. Check with your Unit
Coordinator if you are unsure. Note also that APA style avoids the use of footnotes, so this should not be here!
For further clarification on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it, check the helpful
booklet Using sources and avoiding plagiarism (Academic Skills Unit, n.d.). There is also a
relevant chapter in the work of Faigley (2013).
In the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania APA style is required for citations
(the credit given to authors within the essay) and for the list of references at the end of the
essay. In other places the appropriate and consistent use of other styles may be acceptable
(check with the appropriate authority). The main requirement is that the reference should be
complete enough for the reader to locate the source—this means that author, date, title,
publisher, place of publication, volume number, and page numbers (if relevant) are essential.
Examples of different kinds of references—including those for books (APA, 2010;
Borchgrevinck, 1907; Faigley, 2013; Perrin, 2012 2), journal articles (Chick, 2000a, 2000b;
Chick & Pierce, 2011; Pierce & Chick, in press), a paper or chapter in an edited book
(Gherkin, 1987), papers in a conference proceedings (Chick, 2011; Chick & Watson, 1998), a
reprint of work published previously (Booker, Bond, Sparrow, & Swan, 2012), and online
material (Academic Skills Unit, n.d.; Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority, 2012; Chick, 2011; Chick & Pierce, 2011; McIntosh, 2001)—are provided in the
somewhat spurious reference list for these guidelines. For articles in conference proceedings
or edited books, the authors of the article or paper are the ones who should be cited, not the
editors of the volume, although the editors’ names will appear within the reference list (see
Booker et al., 2012; Chick & Watson, 1998; Gherkin, 1987). Proper referencing ensures that
due credit is given to the appropriate people.
In general, the actual citation (author and date) should be given within the sentence that
quotes or refers to the work. Try to ensure that attributions and citations are incorporated
within the sentence as naturally as possible; this means that sometimes authors’ names will
be within the sentence with the reference date in parentheses, while on other occasions both
names and date will be within parentheses. As an example, consider the following paragraph.
Many researchers (e.g., Chick, 2000b; Wallace & Gromit, 1997) have found that
students love mathematics with a passion. Mills and Boone (2001) claim this
passion leads to “wild parties where factors and multiples are discussed in
intimate detail” (p. 34), whereas a UK team noted an increase in the frequency of
dazed looks (Brooke-Taylor, Oddie, & Garden, 1979).
For papers with three to seven authors, you should list all the authors’ names at the first
citation, so that the contribution of all the authors is acknowledged. For later citations use
“first author et al.” (since “et al.” stands for the Latin et alia, which means “and all”). So, for
example, the first citation of a certain mathematics textbook (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-
Williams, 2013) has all the authors listed, but when you next cite it you need only give the
briefer citation (Van de Walle et al., 2013; and, in fact, it should be noted that you can leave
out the date when there are two or more citations of the same work within a paragraph).
When there are eight or more authors you can skip to the abbreviated citation right from the
first instance and you also present an abbreviated set of authors in the reference list (see
Churchill et al., 2011). Good style guides (e.g., APA, 2010; Faigley, 2013; Perrin, 2012)
indicate what to do with more complicated situations where different papers involve some of
the same authors (it is too tedious to write about here, but, despite the pain, this technical
tedium is important to ensure accurate, consistent, and complete referencing).
All works that are cited should appear in the reference list, and the reference list should
contain only those works you have cited (APA, 2010, p. 174). The reference list should be in
alphabetical order by author. References to web-sites should be given, listing the full URL
address (complete enough to ensure the actual page containing the article can be located); this

2
Note that the sequence of citations in a list is in alphabetical order. This footnote should not be here either!
is discussed further in Note 5 after the reference list. Online sources should be used with
great caution, however, as there is not always regulation of material placed on the web.
Papers in good research journals—whether online or hard copy—undergo refereeing/review
before publication, which increases the likelihood of their quality; in contrast, much of the
material on the web is not scholarly and may contain errors. If a web page does not have a
clearly identified author—and Wikipedia is such an example—be wary about assuming it has
validity. The other thing to note about material found on the web is that it is often an
electronic version of something that was originally published in hard copy and should be
referenced as such. An example is Chick and Watson (1998), an article that is now available
online but originally appeared in a published conference proceedings. The reference list
really should refer to the original source (journal, book, or conference proceedings), rather
than the web address. If you find an article online it may be necessary to do some more
research to determine the correct way to reference it—especially if the article itself does not
state the details—perhaps by examining the way other authors have cited it in their own
work.
One difficulty with references and citations concerns those works that may have influenced
your thinking but to which you have not referred directly: should you include them in the
references or not? In this case, go back to the source and your essay and find an appropriate
way of citing the influential part, and then include the reference.
If one author refers to another author, and you want to use what was said by the second but
you do not have the relevant article that was the original source, then you should say that the
second author was cited by the first (e.g., Davidson, 1985, cited in Chick & Watson, 1998).
This gives Davidson the rightful credit for the idea, but indicates where you found his idea.
This makes Chick and Watson (1998) a “secondary source” for Davidson’s original 1985
article, which is the “primary source”. This does mean that you should be a little wary,
because Chick and Watson may not have reported Davidson’s idea correctly, which is why it
is better to find the primary source if at all possible. The second author’s paper (in this case
Davidson, 1985) will not appear in the reference list (despite being the original source of the
idea), but the paper that was your source for the information (i.e., Chick & Watson, 1998)
will, because that is where you found it (even though it was not Chick and Watson’s idea).
There are two ways of quoting the actual words of other authors. Short quotations of forty
words or fewer should be incorporated in the text surrounded by quotation marks, whereas
longer quotes should be presented in a seperate [sic] paragraph with wider
margins [like this one], and, since the narrower width of the paragraph indicates
that it is a quotation, it is not necessary to include quotation marks. (Chick,
2000a, p. 42)
In either case, the page reference for the quote should be given. In my opinion it is also
helpful to give a page number when you refer to a distinctive idea or example, even if you are
not quoting it directly, especially if the source document is lengthy and a reader might have
difficulty locating the original material. For more general summaries of a source, such as
when giving an overview of an author’s findings, you need only cite the author and year.
Any editorial modifications that you make to the quoted text should be indicated with square
brackets as exemplified in the previous quote: the words “like this one” were added by me for
this guide and were not in the original quote. If there is a typographical or author error in the
original source, then you should still quote verbatim but insert [sic] after the mistake to show
that you have recognised the error and that the mistake is not your own. The existence of
omitted text should be acknowledged by … and this is known as an ellipsis. It should also be
noted that “APA always uses double quotation marks, with ‘single quotes’ only used for
when quotation marks are contained within a quotation” (Chick, 2000a, p. 47).
Grammar and punctuation
The following dot points discuss some of the more common grammatical and punctuation
issues encountered in students’ essays.
• Make sure you write complete sentences. In general, an essay sentence should have a
subject and a verb. A common error is to begin sentences with connectives such as
“and,” “but,” “while,” “that is,” “as,” and even “however”; these should only occur in
the middle of a sentence. [It is possible to begin a sentence with “while” or “as,” but it
must be done with care.] Not all phrases have the strength to stand alone as sentences.
If you are unsure about this, read the sentence on its own, and see if it has meaning.
As an example “While the integration aide worked with a small group.” is not a
sentence since it does not make sense when read on its own, because some extra
information is needed to belong to the “while.”
• Ensure that the tenses are consistent. For essays it may be appropriate to use the
present tense, reserving the past tense for things that genuinely occurred in the past. In
particular, avoid different tenses in the one sentence, such as “the children sat [past
tense] in their chairs while the teacher reads [present tense] them a story.”
• Decide whether you are going to write in the third person or the first person, and then
stick to this choice. Choose carefully, because the third person approach can
sometimes sound too formal, and the first person approach may be inappropriately
personal. Most academic writing is in the third person, but first person is becoming
acceptable in some circumstances. Check with your Unit Coordinator for the
expectations here.
• If you are using dot points you must ensure that
• each dot point follows on from the phrase that led into the dot points (as is the
case here);
• it really is necessary to use dot points rather than writing a sentence incorporating
the necessary ideas, noting that it can be difficult to achieve high-level synthesis
and analysis with dot points.
• Ensure that verbs match nouns: if the noun is a plural then the verb must be in the
appropriate plural form, and the same applies to singular nouns. For example, “the
dogs [plural noun] in the kennel were [plural verb] barking,” and “each afternoon the
team of students [singular noun, because it is a team] jogs [singular verb] around the
oval.” Achieving this can be complicated, especially if the noun and verb are a long
way apart, as in “The key principle guiding the teachers’ implementations of the
Australian Curriculum document and its associated subject descriptions, with all their
organisational complexity, was a determination to provide equitable educational
outcomes for students. 3”
• One source of confusion is the distinction between “e.g.” and “i.e.”. The first stands
for “for example,” and so the items that follow its use should be examples of the thing
described in the preceding text. The second stands for “that is,” which means that
what is written thereafter very specifically makes clear what has gone before, not by
giving an example, but by describing the same thing in another way. Here are
examples of the two abbreviations in use. “Connectives, e.g., ‘and’ and ‘but,’ should
not be used to begin sentences.” “He enrolled at UTAS, i.e., the University of
Tasmania.” In fact, these abbreviations should only be used in parenthetical citations
when writing in APA style, and should be rare even in other styles, because
abbreviations are to be avoided in essays. It is, however, acceptable to spell out the
phrases in full and use them in the main text.

3
If I wrote this sentence I would be editing it. Oh, I did write it! I know it is excessively complicated (and,
ordinarily, I would edit it), but I need it like this to make my point. Note also that there should not be any
underlining in APA style, but in this exceptional case it makes the relevant verb and noun clearer.
 • Use colons (:) and semicolons (;) appropriately. The semicolon is like a substantial
comma; in fact, it could almost be replaced by a full stop. The colon, on the other
hand, is usually used to signal that a particular example is about to be described: like
this. Unlike the semicolon case, the phrase following a colon is rarely capable of
being a sentence in its own right.
• Use apostrophes correctly. For something that belongs to one student use student’s,
and use students’ when describing that which belongs to a group of students.
• In general the word “mathematics” should be written in full; if you wish to abbreviate
it, please use the English “maths” and over-ride any American spell-checker’s
preference for “math.” Above all, don’t use “math’s.” It is almost impossible to have
an apostrophe associated with the words “maths” and “mathematics.”
• Some writers confuse “its” and “it’s.” The first is possessive, meaning “belonging to
it,” whereas the second is a contraction of “it is.” It is tempting to put an apostrophe in
the possessive “its,” but it simply does not have one. It is already a possessive form in
just the same way as “theirs” and “hers,” neither of which have apostrophes either.
• Make sure it is clear whom or what is being referred to when using pronouns like
“they,” “their,” “them,” “it,” and so on.
• The word “data” is plural. This means “The data were analysed” is correct (and “The
data was analysed” is not), while “The data shows …” is incorrect (it should be “The
data show …”).
• Some writers have difficulty distinguishing between “practice” and “practise.” The
former is a noun (remember that “ice” is a noun), and the latter (which is not spelt
with “-ice”!) is a verb. Here is an example: “At practice [noun] she was able to
practise [verb] her goal-shooting skills.”
• Use “between” for comparisons between two things, and “among” for comparisons
among several things (so, “He had to choose between mathematics, English, and
science” is incorrect because there are three items involved, and hence “between”
should be replaced by “among”).
• The principal is in charge of a school, and, if she is any good, uses a sound set of
leadership and education principles to guide her decisions.
• An aide is a person who helps (e.g., “teacher’s aide”), whereas concrete materials and
visual aids are objects that help. On no account is “aide” a verb.
• Avoid contractions like “shouldn’t,” “won’t,” and “they’ve.” Instead, you should
write the full phrase.
• Full stops and commas should be placed before the closing quotation mark when
these forms of punctuation interact. There are many examples in the dot points above.
(I think this rule is silly and often downright wrong, but that’s 4 the official style, and
it is likely that any better rule is too hard to explain!)
• Small numbers (zero to ten) should be spelt as words rather than written with
numerals. Bigger numbers can be expressed in numerals, but do not begin a sentence
with such numerals.
• Ampersands (&) should appear only in the list of authors in parenthetical citations and
in the reference list. The word the ampersand stands for—“and”—should be written in
full on all other occasions. The quotation on page 2 that uses “Mills and Boone” and
“Wallace & Gromit” applies this principle.
• Avoid lots of parenthetical comments in your essay. If it is an important point it
should be “out in the open”; if it’s not an important point, you might like to re-
evaluate if it is needed.

4
You may have noticed that this guide sometimes breaks its own rules (it should be “that is” rather than
“that’s”). That’s because this is not a scholarly essay, but an informal guide. Here is another errant footnote, too.
 • Em-dashes—which are the big long dashes shown here—are useful for making semi-
parenthetical comments that are “out in the open.”
• One idiosyncrasy of APA style is that if you are listing several items in a list you
should include commas after all items, including before the final “and.” This is
different from conventional writing but makes it easier to follow complicated lists
involving compound technical terms, phrases that contain terms like “and” and “or,”
and other lengthy phrases. If the phrases in the list themselves contain commas, then
semicolons should be used to separate each phrase, as in the sentence “I like green
eggs and ham; bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches; and pumpkin soup.”
• Follow the principles of the AUAC (Association for Using Acronyms Correctly) by
ensuring that an acronym is defined when it is first used. The AUAC’s principles also
suggest that there is no point using an acronym if it is only used once at that initial
occurrence.
A useful (and amusing) general guide to apostrophes and punctuation—highlighting their
importance for effective communication—is the classic work of Truss (2003), although it
does not always reflect APA style.
Other matters of style
It can be difficult to write an essay that is free of gender bias, particularly when you need to
talk about a general person. For example, you may wish to discuss the teaching approach
taken by a hypothetical teacher. In so doing, you may need to use the expressions “he/she”
and “him/her”, both of which make for awkward reading. One way to avoid this is to talk
about hypothetical teachers in the plural, so you can use the pronouns “they”, “them” and
“their”. These pronouns traditionally have been plural pronouns, and so should not be used
with singular nouns. This view implies that sentences like “When the teacher [singular]
finished explaining, they [plural] asked questions to ensure the class understood” are
incorrect because the subject and pronoun do not match. There has been a shift towards
viewing the their/they/them pronouns as singular as well, but the jury is still out on the
matter. As a consequence, use the plural approach if possible, or use the appropriate gendered
pronouns if the genders of the individuals are known, or “him/her” if no other option remains.
Colloquialisms, such as “the jury is still out,” should be avoided! The overuse of exclamation
marks is also to be decried; for essays even one exclamation mark is usually excessive.
Polishing and editing
At all stages during the writing process make sure you are addressing the topic. You should
also ensure that you follow the guidelines that you have been given. This includes sticking to
length and presentation requirements. Do not assume that you are writing something fantastic
and that the reader surely will recognise your brilliance and forgive you for writing more than
allowed. You are likely to be wrong on all counts. There are usually good reasons for the
guidelines and failure to adhere to them will only make the reader feel less than positive
towards your work. Indeed, there are often penalties for exceeding word limits.
When writing, be specific and explicit. Do not use vague platitudes, unsubstantiated opinions,
or pad your ideas with meaningless waffle. Do not try to do too much with your writing: it is
better to be simple and clear than to be convoluted and confusing because you have tried to
be too clever.
One of the most important processes in writing is the editing and review process. Just
because you have written all the words does not mean that the essay or report cannot be
improved, and improved substantially. Do not underestimate the importance of revising your
work. The main cause of poor writing is that it has not undergone a significant and critical
review process. Many students struggle to stay within the word limits because their writing is
filled with fatuousness (purposeless or vacantly silly expressions), clichés, excessive
adjectives, and tautologies. It can be painful to delete things that you spent time writing, but
if it makes the essay clearer then it is worth it. Ideally you should finish the essay days before
it is due, and spend the remaining time re-reading and polishing the material. During this
time, edit and be brutal! Contrast the following paragraphs:
As an example of the characteristics of excessively fatuous writing that lacks
terseness and bypasses or obscures the point, this sentence has been laboriously
constructed for the purposes of providing a demonstration of essay writing that
borders on the incomprehensible and is to be avoided at all costs: there are no
grammatical errors but it has all the brevity and focus of a politician’s response to
a particularly probing journalistic question and makes readers feel that they are
chewing toffee.
Good writing reveals its points through the clarity and brevity achieved by
judicious editing.
The finishing touches and matters of presentation
In this day and age, essays must be prepared using a word-processor rather than being
handwritten. (Note that “In this day and age” is a cliché; as mentioned, these should be
avoided.) For printing out the essay use a serif font (i.e., one where the letters have “feet” like
Times or Palatino) in preference to a sans serif font (such as Helvetica), because studies have
shown that readers achieve greater comprehension with the former. Twelve point font is
recommended as this is the size that the geriatric eyes of your Unit Coordinator can still
manage if he or she holds the paper at arm’s length and squints in just the right way.
Always use a spell checker, set to Australian English, to check the spelling of your work,
since even those who can spell may make typing mistakes. Having done this, you should still
proof-read the essay, checking for clarity, style, and spelling (automated spell-checkers will
not detect the wrong word spelt correctly). It is worthwhile to read the essay aloud and/or
have someone else read it.
There are two ways to present paragraphs. One is to use an indent at the start of each
paragraph, and then have no blank line between paragraphs; the other is to use a blank line to
separate the paragraphs, in which case an indented start is not required. Do not do both, and
do do one.
When your masterpiece is completed, make sure that you present it in a format that is
acceptable for your Unit Coordinator. Some coordinators require double spacing and wide
margins, others do not. If single spacing is permitted ensure that the text is not so dense on
the page that it looks too daunting to read. Finally, for work that is going to be submitted as a
physical document, it is generally the case that fancy folders, plastic pockets, and other
difficult-to-handle presentation approaches are not only not required, they are nuisances.
Simply staple the pages together with the appropriate cover sheet.
Conclusion
To receive good marks for your essays or reports, the wise student will avoid making the
marker grumpy. If you follow these guidelines, you will help the reader remain in a good
frame of mind when marking; if you do not, then beware what the red pen will do to your
essay.
References
Academic Skills Unit. (n.d.). Using sources and avoiding plagiarism. Retrieved from
http://services.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/470204/5297-Avoiding-PlagiarismWEB.pdf
[Note the use of “n.d.” to indicate that there is no publication date given. See Note 5 below for more
information about online references.]
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association
(6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. [Reference to a book where the author and the publisher are the same.
 Note that the book title is italicised.]
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2011). The Australian Curriculum:
Mathematics. Retrieved from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Mathematics/Rationale [Website.
Since it contains a document that might be regarded as a book in print form I have italicised the title. See
Note 2 below.]
Booker, G., Bond, D., Sparrow, L., & Swan, P. (2012). Approaches to mathematics teaching and learning. In T.
Muir (Ed.), Primary and early childhood mathematics pedagogy (pp. 15-52). Frenchs Forest: Pearson
Australia. (Reprinted from Teaching primary mathematics (4th ed.), pp. 1-39, by G. Booker, D. Bond, L.
Sparrow, & P. Swan, 2010, Frenchs Forest: Pearson Australia). [This is, arguably, the most complicated
example here. Booker et al. wrote a textbook in 2010, and Muir, as an editor/compiler, reprinted one of the
chapters (found in pages 1-39 of the original book) in a compiled subject reader produced by Pearson in
2012 (where it appeared as pages 15-52). Since Booker et al. are the authors they receive the credit, but the
place their work was found was in Muir’s book published in 2012. The reference then needs to indicate the
fact that the original chapter appeared in Booker et al.’s own book (i.e., the true source, with its date, title,
and place), the details of which are given in parentheses at the end of the reference.]
Borchgrevinck, C. (1907). The Norwegian Antarctic sea-captain’s guide to references and citations. Moscow:
Mir Publishers. [Another book reference.]*
Brooke-Taylor, T., Oddie, W., & Garden, G. (1979). Anything, anywhere, anytime: The effect of long-term
exposure to mathematics on visual acuity. Journal of Neurological Influences on Physiological Phenomena,
3, 456-457. [Reference to a journal article. 3 is the volume number—and should be italicised—and then the
page numbers of the whole article are given. Note that the title of the journal is italicised but the title of the
article is not.]*
Chick, H. (2000a). Quotes for every occasion. Non-existent Journal of Useful Things, 17(3), 34–56. [Another
reference to a journal article, this time with both volume and issue number shown. You only need to do this
when each issue of the journal starts its page numbering from 1. Journals are usually made up of volumes,
and each volume is made up of a number of issues. Most journals start from page 1 with issue 1 and then
number consecutively through the whole volume, so that a later issue in the volume may have its first page
numbered as 112 or similar. Some journals, such as the non-existent Non-existent Journal of Useful Things,
start the page numbering from page 1 with each issue, and so the issue number must be shown.]*
Chick, H. (2000b). How to publish at least two papers a year. Journal for Making your CV Look Good, 145,
434-435. [A journal article, showing how to date the references when an author has two publications in the
same year.]*
Chick, H. (2011). God-like educators in a fallen world. Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference of the
Australian Association for Research in Education. Retrieved from AARE website: http://www.aare.edu.au/
[Conference proceedings published online. Note that this conference does not fit exactly with any of the
APA reference formats, so it combines the principles of a couple of formats. Note that Chick’s sole-
authored papers are presented in chronological order.]
Chick, H., & Pierce, R. (2011). Teaching for statistical literacy: Utilising affordances in real-world data.
International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. Advance online publication doi:
10.1007/s10763-011-9303-2. [Journal article that has been published online prior to being published in hard
copy. It has a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which is kind of like a URL but is meant to be more
permanent and archival. Sometimes page and volume numbers for the article may be known, so give these
as well as the DOI information, with the DOI data at the end of the reference. (This paper has now been
published with a volume and page reference, but I am leaving it in this form as an example of a paper that
was printed online first.) Note that the alphabetical order principle implies that Chick and Pierce appear
before Chick and Watson in the reference list, even though the Chick and Watson article is older.]
Chick, H.L., & Watson, J.M. (1998). Showing and telling: Primary students’ outcomes in data representation
and interpretation. In C. Kanes, M. Goos, & E. Warren (Eds.) Teaching mathematics in new times
(Proceedings of the Twenty-first annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of
Australasia Incorporated, pp.153-160). Gold Coast, QLD: MERGA. [Reference to conference proceedings.
The authors (Chick and Watson, listed at the beginning of the reference) are the authors of the paper and
thus the originators of the material you are citing; the less important editors (Kanes, Goos, and Warren) are
shown later in the reference. Note that the name of the publisher (MERGA) actually appears in full in the
reference as the conference organization.]
Churchill, R., Ferguson, P., Godinho, S., Johnson, N., Keddie, A., Letts, W., … Vick, M. (2011). Teaching:
Making a difference. Milton, QLD: John Wiley & Sons. [Book with eight or more authors. In this case, the
first six authors and the last are listed, with an ellipsis for the authors who are forced to miss out on their
moment of fame.]
Faigley, L. (2013). The little Penguin handbook (2nd ed.). Sydney: Pearson Australia. [Book, not first edition.
Finding the correct publication data for this one is complicated. It’s really annoying when publishers don’t
 clearly give their own publication data! Government agencies are often terrible at this.]
Gherkin, B. (1987). The little blue guy’s guide to calculator use. In D. Bernacchi & W. Smith O’Brien (Eds.)
Somewhat dated research results for mathematics education students (pp. 34-67). Darlington, TAS:
Pademelon Publishing. [Chapter in an edited book. Again the listed author is the author of the chapter itself
and the originator of the material you are citing; whereas the less important editors are shown later in the
reference. Note how the page numbers of the chapter are shown within the reference]*
McIntosh, J. (2001). Totally amazing mathematics lesson plan web-site. Accessed on 30/2/2002. Retrieved from
http://www.mathsystuff.com.au/index.html [A web-site reference. Note that the author and web-page title
are given if possible, together with the date of authorship and the date you actually accessed the article
since this main page regularly changes (or it might if the site really existed!). See Note 5 below for more
information.]*
Mills, H., & Boone, D. (2001). The romance of mathematics. London: Cambridge University Press. [Book]*
Perrin, R. (2012). Pocket guide to APA style. (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. [Book, not first edition.]
Pierce, R., & Chick, H. L. (in press). Workplace statistical literacy: Teachers interpreting box plots.
Mathematics Education Research Journal. [Journal article that has been accepted for publication and is “in
press” (which means it is being prepared for printing). This may then become an “online first” publication
(see Chick & Pierce, 2011) before finally being published in print (in which case it will be possible to give
the volume and page numbers). The name of the journal in which the article is to appear is included. Note
that papers that an author has “submitted” to a journal should not, in general, be used as sources unless and
until they are “accepted” for publication and deemed “in press”.]
Truss, L. (2003). Eats, shoots and leaves: The zero tolerance approach to punctuation. London: Profile Books.
[Another book reference.]
Van de Walle, J. A., Karp, K. S., & Bay-Williams, J. M. (2013). Elementary and middle school mathematics:
Teaching developmentally (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. [Book, with three authors. Note that the
date of publication comes from the source, despite the fact that it was still 2012 when I first saw it!]
Wallace, W., & Gromit, G. (1997). The effect of cheese on attitudes towards mathematics. Camembert
Quarterly Review, 12, 245-257. [Journal reference.]*

Note 1. This reference list does not contain all the variations on the kinds of references that you might need to
use. The APA style guides (APA, 2010; Faigley, 2013; Perrin, 2012) cover most of the remaining
cases.
Note 2. The punctuation used above is correct for APA style (yes, even the full stops and commas all over the
place). Note, too, the use of italics for book and journal titles, and the capitilisation of journal titles but
not of book and article titles. In general, the biggest “object” in the reference is the one that is italicised
(e.g., the book title, not the title of the chapter within it; the journal’s name, not the articles that
comprise it). Book references include the publisher; journal references do not. Journal titles should be
given in full, even if they are generally known by their initials. Names of journal editors do not need to
be given.
Note 3. Articles marked with a * don’t really exist. They are merely to illustrate points.
Note 4. Descriptions in highlighted square brackets are for information only; they would not appear in a real
reference list.
Note 5. IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ONLINE SOURCES: For online sources I prefer the URL to
be as complete as possible. The APA guides suggest that if the source document is easy to locate from
the home page of the source website (e.g., because it has good search facilities) then only the home
page URL needs to be given. On the other hand, since a reader who might want to find the source
document quickly, the complete URL that goes direct to the source is very helpful. There is a risk,
however, that this URL will change whereas the home page URL is likely to be more stable. For sites
where the information on the source page changes regularly (e.g., a Wiki) the retrieval date should be
given (see McIntosh (2001) above). If possible, the author and date of publication should be included.
APA style is a little bit ambiguous about where to use italics for online sources (in one place it says to
try to mirror the style of hard-copy documents but then some of the examples seem to have no use of
italics at all). I prefer the use of italics for things that are like major titles (which is what applies for
books and journals). Finally, pay particular attention to the comments in the essay guide about
choosing GOOD sources for your essay (not being able to locate an author can be a significant sign that
the source is not suitable).