Style Guide and Submission Guidelines for TABL 2741 Research Assignment
Cover Sheet
You are responsible to ensure that you have attached a completed cover Sheet to the written
assignment submitted. The cover sheet must contain your full name, official UNSW
email address, word count and a signed declaration that the work submitted is your
own.
You MUST also keep a hard copy of your written answers.
Presentation: Spacing and Font
Your assignment must be submitted electronically through Turnitin on Moodle.
Assignments should be typed in 12-point Times New Roman or equivalent font and
have adequate margins. Use double or 1.5 spacing between lines.
Your assignment must include both footnotes [see worked examples below] and a
bibliography [see further information below].
Length
The written assessment has a maximum word limit of 1,800 words and a minimum word
limit of 1,600 words. Written answers must be kept to the prescribed word limit. A
word limit does not include a synopsis (executive summary), footnotes or
bibliography.
If material submitted exceeds the prescribed limit the marker may:
1. require you to revise and edit the work to the prescribed requirements, and/or
2. stop marking at the word limit.
Footnotes, Quoting and Copying
Footnotes allow the reader to quickly and easily find the exact place in the source material
to which the footnote refers.
In the course of the written answer, you will need to cite relevant references and legal
authorities. These may be a case precedent, the views of an author, a piece of legislation or
an article. The source of the proposition or idea that is used must be acknowledged. For
example, you do not quote the opening page of a website if your quotation comes from
another page. You must quote the exact, complete, location of the page on the web where
you found the material.
All sources must be acknowledged by a footnote at the foot of the page where:
• the source is being directly quoted.
• an argument or proposition in that source is being paraphrased.
• the source is being used as authority to support a student's proposition or argument.
Footnotes that represent digressions from the main argument should be kept to a minimum.
Citation of Articles1/Cases2/ Books3 and repeat citations4 and statutes5
DO NOT use the Harvard system of citation - use footnote references.
See examples below of footnote citations – use this template.

1 Hargovan A and Harris J, “The Relevance of Control in Establishing an Implied Agency Relationship between
a Company and its Owners” (2005) 23 Company and Securities Law Journal 461 at 463.
2 Pioneer Concrete Services Ltd v Yelnah Pty Ltd (1987) 5 NSWLR 254 at 256 (hereinafter Pioneer case) –
quoted from Hargovan, Adams & Brown, Australian Corporate Law, 7th ed, 2021, LexisNexis at 169.
3 Austin and Ramsay, Ford, Austin and Ramsay’s Principles of Corporations Law, 17th ed, 2018, LexisNexis at
129.
4 Ibid at 130. [use this method when the immediate reference above is the same reference used]
5 Corporations Act 2001(Cth) s 180(1)
2

Note the need for pin-point pages references to textbooks and articles [as shown in worked
examples].

Bibliography
All books, articles and other sources you use in the preparation of your work (internet
references) must be listed in a bibliography at the end of the written answer. Use separate
heading (such as Books, Journal Articles, Web Sites etc). Note that statutes and cases need
not be separately listed in a bibliography.
Language: Use plain English and gender-neutral language. Pay attention to your tone and voice, which
should be measured, balanced and objective. Avoid colloquialisms, grammatical contractions (for
example, use ‘do not’ instead of ‘don’t’), slang, verbosity and emotive language. Be careful to check
your sentence structure. Use the Macquarie Dictionary Australian spelling.
Your answer must be proof-read, prior to submission, to guard against spelling errors and
grammatical mistakes.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a serious academic offence, and it is important to understand what it means. The
following is an extract from the Student Guide that you should read very carefully.
Plagiarism and failure to acknowledge sources
Plagiarism involves using another person’s work and presenting it as yours. Acts of plagiarism
include copying parts of a document or audiovisual, or computer-based material without
acknowledging and providing the source for each quotation or piece of borrowed material.
Similarly, using or extracting another person’s concepts or conclusions, summarising another
person’s work or, where there is collaborative preparatory work, submitting substantially the
same final version of any material as another student constitutes plagiarism. This includes
copying another student’s work or using their work as the basis for your written answer. It does
not matter whether you have their consent or not.
Encouraging or assisting another person to commit plagiarism is a form of collusion and may
attract the same penalties.
Academic misconduct can occur where you fail to acknowledge adequately the use you have
made of ideas or material from other sources. It is essential that you correctly attribute your
source wherever you draw on and use someone else’s ideas or information, whether by
summarising or direct quotation. You must do this in such a way that is clear to anyone reading
what you have written (or submitted) which of the ideas, arguments and views are yours and
which are those of the writers or researchers you have consulted.
It is your responsibility to make sure you acknowledge within your writing where you have
“sourced” the information, ideas and facts etc.
The basic principles are that you should not attempt to pass off the work of another person as
your own. It should be possible for a reader to check the information and ideas that you have used
by going to the original source material. Acknowledgment should be sufficiently accurate to
enable the source to be located speedily.
The following are some examples of breaches of these principles:
• Quotation (ie using the exact same words from the source material) without the use of
quotation mark ( ie “…”).
It is plagiarism to quote another’s work without using quotation marks, even if one then
uses a footnote to refer to the identity of the quoted source. The fact that the material is
quoted must be acknowledged in your work. This includes quotations obtained from a
web page.
3

• Significant paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing is using sentences in which the wording is very similar to the original source
wording. This applies even if the source is acknowledged by a footnote. The source of all
paraphrasing must be acknowledged by a footnote.
• Unacknowledged use of information or ideas.
The unacknowledged use of information or ideas, unless such information or ideas are
commonplace, is plagiarism. In particular, citing sources (eg texts, cases), that you have
not read, without acknowledging the ‘secondary’ source from which knowledge of them
has been obtained, is plagiarism. For example, you have read a paragraph from a company
law textbook, at the end of the paragraph, there is a footnote which refers to 3 cases. You,
having not read any of those 3 cases, refer to them in a footnote in your paper without
acknowledging that they come from the footnote in the textbook.
These principles apply to both text and footnotes of sources. They also apply to sources such as
teaching materials, and to any work by any student (including the student submitting the work),
which has been or will be otherwise submitted for assessment.
Using the principles mentioned above about proper acknowledgment, you should also proceed
on the general assumption that any work to be submitted for assessment should in fact be your
own work. It ought not be the result of collaboration with others unless your lecturer gives clear
indication that, for that written answer, joint work or collaborative work is acceptable.