Formatting your work

An appendix includes additional information that provides useful background and context for your topic. This must be relevant and aid the reader in understanding your work. This could include your own research data or information from other sources. If you are using more than one appendix, you would refer to them as appendices.

Supporting information for your work from other sources, for example data or diagrams.

If you have conducted your own research, it is a good idea to include your raw data for example: interview transcripts, surveys, correspondence (emails, letters etc.), statistics. Additionally, consider putting images or graphs in an appendix, whether your own or from another source.

They are located at the end of your work after your reference list or bibliography.

• To make it clearer for your reader, consider breaking down long appendix into separate ones.
• Keep information in a single appendix within a particular focus area, for instance interviews on a topic with participants.
• Label each new appendix alphabetically, for example appendix A, appendix B.
• Give each appendix a meaningful title.
• Start each appendix on a new page.
• Refer to individual tables or sources within the appendix as numbered items. This ensures you can easily refer to these individual sources within your body of work. Order the appendices as they are referred to within the main body of the text for the first time. If your work includes a contents page, add appendices to the table of contents.
• Continue page numbers from the end of your main body of work.

All appendices should be mentioned in your work.  You could do this in the following ways:

The data I gathered on this topic suggests there’s a correlation (see appendix A).

Appendix B suggests …

If your appendix contains more than one information source, refer to it in the following way:

(see appendix A1)

As shown in appendix B3 …

If your appendix refers to your own research or data you do not need to provide a reference. However, if your appendix refers to the work of others, provide an-text citation in the appendix and add the full reference to your reference list. For instance, if you’ve created a table using someone else’s work, underneath the table it could look like this:

(Table author’s own, data from Greig, 2021.)

Put quotation marks around the quote and include within a standard-format paragraph of your text. Include any italics and errors of spelling or punctuation found in the original.

Example:

As Pearson et al. state (2007, p.72), "The basis of evidence-based practice is, of course, evidence".

Indent the quotation in its own paragraph and leave out the quotation marks. Include any italics and errors of spelling or punctuation found in the original.

Example:

Pearson et al. (2007, p.74) summarise the issue as follows:

Critical appraisal is a difficult component of the systematic review process, and a good understanding of research design is required. The major aim of critical appraisal of any type of evidence is to establish the validity of the evidence for practice. Validity refers to the soundness of the evidence; in other words, it is about the degree to which we can accept the evidence as trustworthy and believable.

You can make minor changes to a direct quotation as long as you don't change the meaning and indicate where you have made changes:

• If you insert your own words, or different words, into a quotation, put them in square brackets [ ]
• To draw attention to an error in a quotation (for example a spelling mistake) do not correct it, but write [sic] after the error
• To emphasise something in a quotation, put the emphasised words in italics, and state that the emphasis is your own

"Mobile-learning (m-learning) is learning in which mobile technologies play a central role" (Davis, 2011, p.125, my italics)

If you wish to omit part of a quote, indicate the omission by inserting a space, three full-stops, and another space.

Example:

Pearson et al. (2007. p.74) conclude that "Critical appraisal is a difficult component of the systematic review process ... The major aim of critical appraisal of any type of evidence is to establish the validity of the evidence for practice."

When quoting from other works you can use single or double quotation marks. If your source of information is quoting direct speech, use the two types of quotation marks to differentiate them.

Check with your module tutor if you need advice and be consistent with the use of single or double quotation marks throughout your piece of work.