Writing in Australian
It ended up being a late night last night, but I finished my paper and won a race (made at the point that I knew I was going to win - sorry Caitlyn and Brittany) to finish before my friends in New Orleans went to take an exam. The paper was interesting to write in that the only instructions were to choose a primary source created between 1600 and 1860 in the United States and craft a history paper around it. Being the urbanist (and New Orleanian) that I am, when I happened across a "Birds' Eye View of New-Orleans" from 1851 in the collections of the Library of Congress (gosh the internet is a great thing) I knew that I would start there.
With how open ended the prompt was, I ended up meeting with my tutorial facilitator last week to discuss just how to approach things. The meeting was helpful as it clarified not only the direction of the paper, but the way in which academic writing is supposed to be done down here - specifically at the University of Sydney (they keep mentioning how prestigious of a University this is) and even specifically within the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI). The research led me in all sorts of directions, and I admittedly found many ways to procrastinate, but the largest consumer of my time was attempting to wrap my head around formatting of punctuation in Australian English and citations for the paper. I will now address those individually:
Punctuation in Australian English:
The biggest discrepancy that I have encountered (beyond the utter detest that these people have for the Oxford comma) was the way in which Australian English handles quotes. Rather than using quotation marks (") as the primary demarker of a quote they use apostrophes (or inverted commas as they like to call them) ('). Secondly, when punctuating at the end of a quote, in American English the punctuation would fall within the quotation. This is not the case in Australia. I'm still attempting to figure out if Australia missed something and is just improperly using the English language, or whether someone consciously made the decision to use punctuation in these ways. The point is, ultimately:
Citations in Australia (or possibly just SOPHI):
With how open ended the prompt was, I ended up meeting with my tutorial facilitator last week to discuss just how to approach things. The meeting was helpful as it clarified not only the direction of the paper, but the way in which academic writing is supposed to be done down here - specifically at the University of Sydney (they keep mentioning how prestigious of a University this is) and even specifically within the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI). The research led me in all sorts of directions, and I admittedly found many ways to procrastinate, but the largest consumer of my time was attempting to wrap my head around formatting of punctuation in Australian English and citations for the paper. I will now address those individually:
Punctuation in Australian English:
The biggest discrepancy that I have encountered (beyond the utter detest that these people have for the Oxford comma) was the way in which Australian English handles quotes. Rather than using quotation marks (") as the primary demarker of a quote they use apostrophes (or inverted commas as they like to call them) ('). Secondly, when punctuating at the end of a quote, in American English the punctuation would fall within the quotation. This is not the case in Australia. I'm still attempting to figure out if Australia missed something and is just improperly using the English language, or whether someone consciously made the decision to use punctuation in these ways. The point is, ultimately:
." = '.
Citations in Australia (or possibly just SOPHI):
The
punctuation was easy to fix in the grand scheme of things. The most frustrating
part of the entire endeavor was the footnoting and creation of the
bibliography. While I was very diligent in recording all the information from
what turned out to be over a dozen sources, it was of little help in attempting
to sort out the complexity of citation rules laid out in a handbook that was
very, very hard to find on the SOPHI website. Instead of utilizing one of the
many internationally accepted citation standards (MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian,
etc.), it seemed that SOPHI decided it needed to create its own means of
citation (which included the same information as any other citation method but
in a different format). Those of you that know your way around Microsoft Word
2010 know that it will automatically generate citations when you enter in all
the information, saving time and hassle when you are almost done with your
paper. Unfortunately I had no such luxury. I had to decipher a method to the
madness of footnotes and bibliographic citations from the aforementioned
handbook which conveniently did not include many types of sources I had
utilized. I did my best figuring out what they might want, and after making
sure I had punctuated the citations according to Australian English rules,
called the paper done.
Fast forward to this morning: I slept in a bit and then started in on my studio work for review on Thursday. As the afternoon rolled around I finally got around to swapping my trackie daks for some acceptable attire to leave the house; Abs, Kayla, and I set out to go to the grocery. The rest of the afternoon and evening have been devoted to more architecture work. I have resolved quite a bit of stuff and am excited how the project is moving forward.
And now for an installment of a segment I haven't done in a while:
Word of the day: trackie daks (trah-key dahks)
Usage: track pants - because everything has to be abbreviated and then turned into a cutesy rhyme.
Other interesting Australia English things I have been neglecting to mention:
You don't live on a street, you live in a street.
You don't say thank you, you say thanking you.
When on the phone and wanting to be expeditious you just say 'ta to mean yes, no, I understand, and goodbye.
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