Footnotes in essays: Does this seem odd to anyone else...

Zelenka · Apr 21, 2008

...Or am I just being crabby this morning? Our university (probably like all the others around here) has recently started a rigorous anti-plagiarism drive, given the rise of these pay-per-essay sites and the likes. All submissions are run through some sort of software / search engine to check you haven't downloaded it and to look for similarities to published things. In order to avoid being accused of plagiarism we're told to cite absolutely everything, and to list books in the bibliography even if we only scanned them briefly.

The guidelines for both the School of Law and the university in general state that any direct reference or quote has to be footnoted to give its source, as does any paraphrase of a published opinion. So if you're like me and paranoid that you'll be failed or marked down because they recognise an argument from a book, everything is footnoted.

Yet - and this is what I find off - they are still including the footnotes in the overall word count?

Now, I can see the need to keep a check on footnotes as they are a cheating way to avoid the word count if you use them to add explanatory notes. If someone has whole paragraphs of writing in the footnotes, then fine, include that in their count. However, when it's just citations, surely they should be encouraging this, rather than penalising? I've just finished a 5,000 word essay, a practice run for the 4th Year dissertation, and I've had to take advantage of the 10% leeway we're given on word counts anyway as the subject was so huge. With the footnotes added, I've got another 500 words to consider. As I said, there is one explanatary one which is less than 10 words long. The rest are all references and citations.

Having called the course convenor this morning, I've managed to negotiate these out of the word count, but it still took a lot of persuading. The guidance notes for the big dissertation, which is 10,000 words, specify that the footnotes are counted. Now, if there are 500 words for a 5,000 word essay... It starts to take a rather large chunk of argument space away.

I'm tempted to actually write to someone, but I have no idea who to address the issue to. It just seems to be completely against the spirit of discouraging plagiarism and encouraging honest attribution. Or am I getting annoyed at nothing here?

(I also apologise if this is the wrong place for this, but since it is a bit of a rant, and not generally writing related, I thought OP a good place to start. Please move it or delete it if this isn't the case).

JimmyB27 · Apr 21, 2008

As someone who was always very to the point, and always came up short on wordcount in essays, this sounds great to me*.

*Though I can see how others might not like it**.

**I can also see it being abused by people like me***.

***Sorry I don't have anything more constructive to say.

BlackViolet13 · Apr 21, 2008

JessRamage said:
...Or am I just being crabby this morning? Our university (probably like all the others around here) has recently started a rigorous anti-plagiarism drive, given the rise of these pay-per-essay sites and the likes. All submissions are run through some sort of software / search engine to check you haven't downloaded it and to look for similarities to published things. In order to avoid being accused of plagiarism we're told to cite absolutely everything, and to list books in the bibliography even if we only scanned them briefly.

The guidelines for both the School of Law and the university in general state that any direct reference or quote has to be footnoted to give its source, as does any paraphrase of a published opinion. So if you're like me and paranoid that you'll be failed or marked down because they recognise an argument from a book, everything is footnoted.

Yet - and this is what I find off - they are still including the footnotes in the overall word count?

Now, I can see the need to keep a check on footnotes as they are a cheating way to avoid the word count if you use them to add explanatory notes. If someone has whole paragraphs of writing in the footnotes, then fine, include that in their count. However, when it's just citations, surely they should be encouraging this, rather than penalising? I've just finished a 5,000 word essay, a practice run for the 4th Year dissertation, and I've had to take advantage of the 10% leeway we're given on word counts anyway as the subject was so huge. With the footnotes added, I've got another 500 words to consider. As I said, there is one explanatary one which is less than 10 words long. The rest are all references and citations.

Having called the course convenor this morning, I've managed to negotiate these out of the word count, but it still took a lot of persuading. The guidance notes for the big dissertation, which is 10,000 words, specify that the footnotes are counted. Now, if there are 500 words for a 5,000 word essay... It starts to take a rather large chunk of argument space away.

I'm tempted to actually write to someone, but I have no idea who to address the issue to. It just seems to be completely against the spirit of discouraging plagiarism and encouraging honest attribution. Or am I getting annoyed at nothing here?

(I also apologise if this is the wrong place for this, but since it is a bit of a rant, and not generally writing related, I thought OP a good place to start. Please move it or delete it if this isn't the case).

I don't think you're getting annoyed at nothing at all. To me, this seems counterproductive, and doesn't teach students the intended lesson. I would be annoyed too, because I know there would be people who would take advantage of using extra long footnotes and wouldn't have to write as many 'original' words. Our U. uses TurnItIn to check our work. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I know it's a deterrent. And with the big speech on plagiarism, plaques in every classroom about the honor code and plagiarism, anything more would breed an environment of distrust. We have to be on our honor, but when the U. goes so far as to add that footnote policy...just no. It's not good. And I don't think it would do students any favors when they're learning to write academic papers, either.

Start with the Dean of your department (my university has several 'sub-colleges' within it, and I have been told to start with the dean of my college if I need help), and go from there. The deans in my university encourage open discussions and even if they can't help, they can tell you who can help. You might also try the student council.

Best of luck to you!

robeiae · Apr 21, 2008

The trick is, learn how to footnote properly:

1) Use Ibid whenever possible. It'll trim hundreds of words out of a large dissertation's footnotes.
2) Don't overdo it, even when tempted to do do.

I get the fear factor here, but if you are not plagiarizing, you are not gonna get busted. But I think far too many students are plagiarizing. Too much cutting and pasting.

When I was a TA, I caught a number of students. Several were expelled after I turned them in (yeah, I'm a hard ass--but the ones I turned in were ones I busted more than once). The way I did it was by using Dogpile, but now you could probably just use Google. What I did was look for really well-stated phrases or sentences that seemed better than what I would expect. I then did a search with the phrase or part of the phrase in quotes. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! If you want to check your own stuff, it's a good exercise. See what it turns up.

johnnysannie · Apr 21, 2008

robeiae said:
The trick is, learn how to footnote properly:

But I think far too many students are plagiarizing. Too much cutting and pasting.
.

Sad but true even as young as middle school students. Last year my daughter had to write a research paper and one of her classmates - who had never really been one of her friends or friendly - kept begging for her to help and for them to work together on the same topic. My daughter didn't but when the research papers were displayed, the other girls' work was copied from several sites online, cut and pasted together. I had helped show my daughter how to footnote and recognized the excerpts. The worst part is that my daughter - who worked hard and researched using books as well as the Internet - got an A but so did the girl who plagarized. I mentioned it quietly to the teacher hoping she might check but she blew it off, saying that they were so young and just learning but I maintained it's not okay and should not be condoned. What example was set for the other girl? A very bad one.

Footnotes in essays: Does this seem odd to anyone else...

Zelenka

Going home!

JimmyB27

Hoopy frood

BlackViolet13

robeiae

Touch and go

johnnysannie