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When writing an assignment, you will probably face the problem of adding references in the text. The references or citations are usually related to the attribution of a text to another source. It has an important role, which is to support and justify own arguments (for example, quoting researchers who have opinions and criteria that agree with yours) or to demonstrate a new attitude towards the subject (highlighting a contrary opinion with respect to the general tendency). For this reason, reference notes are often used as a rhetoric way to convince the reader of one’s own approaches. However, the reference to earlier literature is not just a rhetorical question or a convention to be followed. On the contrary, it is fundamental to demonstrate that the text is related to the knowledge accumulated in the scope of its discipline, and that, therefore, it is susceptible of generating a valuable contribution starting from the advances proposed by previous researches
There are two different types of reference notes widely used: footnotes and endnotes.
The footnotes are the citations or reference notes that appear at the end of a page. The endnotes are also the reference notes, but they appear at the end of the whole document. One document usually contains only one type of reference notes, the footnotes or endnotes, respectively.
The endnotes usually include references to the source, additional sources or information that does not belong to the general line of the arguments presented by the author, but that can complement or contrast it. It is assumed that the endnotes only appear when necessary. It is believed that when the notes of this type are present in the text, it does not mean that the text is complete, but rather that it has been written using the bad style of writing. That is because the elaborated arguments or additional explanations must be incorporated directly into the current text.
It should also be noted that endnotes are used not only to highlight the additional arguments. Short comments that appear below a photograph or an illustration, for example, also appear at the end of the assignment.
Let us take a look at how to do endnotes in assignment:
Cole found that “The bones were very fragile” (33-34).¹
- James Smith, The first and last war, (New York, Hamilton, 2003) (appearing at the end of the assignment).
To correctly insert an endnote within the standards in your academic work, the first step to make is to make sure they are separated from the body of the text by a continuous stroke of three centimeters.
Note that spacing between words should be set to simple. The characters must be smaller than those of the body of the text, and it is recommended to use size 10. The alignment should be on the left so that the first words of each line always keep starting at the same distance from the margin.
When you create an assignment in Microsoft Word, you can change the formatting of the reference notes both individually and for all notes at once. To change a single note, you can simply select your note and apply the changes in the gray box displayed. If you want to change all the reference notes at once, you should select your notes and put changes in the blue box around notes.
One more interesting information: all footnotes and endnotes are numbered continuously throughout the document with Arabic numerals by default, but you can change this formatting as well. To change the format of footnotes and endnotes, you can use the Footnote panel in the Format inspector.
Now you know how to do endnotes in assignment, so you can proceed to write! Good luck!