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Two further sources that were invaluable in researching this essay but that are not explicitly referred to in the body of the essay are the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University and the Writers Handbook at the University of Wisconsin – Madison the latter recommended by the International Baccalaureate Organization . I am also indebted to Mr.. N. Never of the Information & Communication Technology Department at Oakum School for assistance with setting up the Oakum PAP template. Contents A House Style for the Formal Presentation of the Extended Essay The Diploma Programmer: Extended Essay Guide hereafter referred to as the Guide, states clearly that the research process and its formal outcomes “are of primary importance in the extended essay’.
Fundamental to the research process and its formal outcomes is the documentation of sources, which is also the foundation upon which academic honesty rests , so much so that the Guide states: An extended essay must reflect intellectual honesty in research raciest and provide the reader with the exact sources of quotations, ideas and points of view through accurate bibliographies and referencing, and failure to comply with this requirement will be viewed as plagiarism and will, therefore, be treated as a case of malpractice. The Guide expresses no preference when it comes to documentation style, provided that it is academically recognized and applied consistently. Given that academically recognized documentation styles generally form part of broader style guides for academic writings , and that the extended essay makes formal acquirement beyond documentation style, it makes sense to include the relevant style guide in considerations of a particular documentation style. After careful consideration, PAP was chosen as the basis of a house style for academic writing and documentation, namely Oakum PAP.
While the implementation of Oakum PAP is unlikely to be painless-largely because it needs to be specific enough to be genuinely useful in helping to meet the formal requirements of the extended essay without being so prescriptive that it becomes cripplingly burdensome, and because it will require some degree f effort on the part of staff and pupils-it is argued that the benefits, both immediate and long term, of implementing a house style are worth it. Conceptualizing PAP There are essentially two approaches to documentation: numbered, in which the citation appears in a footnote or endnote, and parenthetical, in which it appears in-text. Numbered Documentation Numbered documentation had already been superseded by parenthetical documentation more than a decade ago , and even Chicago/Turban, perhaps still the most well known numbered approach, now devotes roughly equal space to parenthetical documentation . This is the main reason why the numbered approach was not considered further.
Parenthetical Documentation Parenthetical documentation styles are essentially either author-date, or author-page (sometimes author-title-page). The most common author-date documentation styles are Harvard and PAP, while the most common author- page documentation style is MI-A. Author-date documentation style. According to Cheering , the origin of the author-date method of documentation can be traced back to Edward Laurels Mark (1847-1946), although exactly how this method came to be known as Harvard remains unclear. As a method of documentation, there is no definitive Harvard style, although its success as a method has led to the proliferation of documentation styles based on it.
One of the most well developed styles that can be said to be based on Harvard is that of the American Psychological Association, commonly referred to as PAP style and first published in 1929. Author-page documentation style. The author-page documentation style, or author-title-page if more than one ark by the same author, originated with the Modern Language Association of America in 1985. PAP or MILA? Crucially, both PAP and MI-A documentation styles are supported in Word. While MILA appears to be quite popular in B World schools that have adopted a house style, it is not clear why, particularly as citations within MILA are less uniform than PAP and so more difficult to manage consistently.
Finally, while both PAP and MILA are well established in university and academic publishing circles, PAP has the added advantage that Harvard, being the method of accumulation that PAP is based on, is particularly common in British universities and therefore most likely to be encountered by our pupils at university. Conclusion Given the importance that the B attaches to the formal outcomes Of the research process in the extended essay, of which the documentation of sources to an academically acceptable standard is fundamental, any interventions that genuinely facilitate this are to be welcomed. Oakum PAP is best understood, therefore, as an attempt to simplify radically the process of documenting sources by utilizing tools freely available in Microsoft Word hill, at the same time, ensuring that this process remains firmly rooted in the bib’s broader concern with formally presented scholarly writing the real benefits of which extend to university.