Literary Standards and Referencing / Guidelines for Written Assignments

https://library.mohawkcollege.ca/topic-guides/writing

Students are required to write in a manner appropriate to the field of work they expect to enter. All written work produced while in this program should be understandable, clear and well-organized. Submitted work should have satisfactory spelling and punctuation, and show evidence of thorough proof-reading. Marks may be subtracted according to the assigned marking scheme for poorly written work. Also, students whose work does not, in the teacher’s judgment, meet these standards will have their grades withheld until adequate improvements have been made. In such cases, students are advised to seek help from their current Language Studies Instructor (if applicable), from the Writing Centre, or from an ESL tutor. Information about the IAHS Writing Centre (see Section 8) or ESL tutoring can be obtained through the Academic Counseling Office or the Student Success Advisor.

Whenever a written assignment is to be done in any course during any semester, the following guidelines are to be used, unless your professor states otherwise.

Format

The assignments must:

• Be typed/word processed, double-spaced and single sided printing (not back-printed)
• Contain a title page and a reference list (see below for format)
• Have the student’s name and number on each page
• Follow APA format guidelines
• Assignments must be submitted as per specific instructions from faculty (deadline and method of submission).

References

In the course of researching information for an essay, multiple sources of information and various types of reference materials are used. It is important for the author of an essay or scholarly paper to identify any points of information obtained from another source and to give credit to the author(s) of the other source. Failure to do so constitutes academic dishonesty.

Within the text of the essay or formal assignment, material obtained from other sources is identified using the author’s surname and year of publication in parenthesis (e.g. Jones 1999). If the original source is quoted verbatim (i.e. word-for-word), then the quoted text is put within quotation marks. If the words of the original source are paraphrased by the essay author while maintaining the essence of the meaning of the original author’s words, then no quotation marks are used but the author and publication date must still be inserted to signify that the point was obtained from another source.

Following the text of the essay or assignment, a References list must be included on a separate page. All authors cited directly (as a quotation) or indirectly (paraphrased) must be listed. Do not list sources that were read but not cited.

Referencing Style

Most allied health sciences journals use the American Psychiatric Association (APA) style, and this method will be required for essays and other formal written work submitted for evaluation in this program. Information about the APA method is available as hard copy or online through the Library https://library.mohawkcollege.ca/apa-guide.