The Student Room Group

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Reply 20
It matters, but take your department's advice with a pinch of salt.
We were advised to purchase a certain edition of a play in my first year - don't know why, as it didn't have a particularly useful introduction or appendices, but more importantly, it had no line numbers, which made writing essays on the play a nightmare. Our seminar leader's edition of the text was better in this regard, and she actually ended up photocopying large amounts of her text for us to use. Result: the students' money was wasted on a useless text, and the department's money was wasted on needless photocopying. Nice.

So my advice would be to shop around, not only to get the best deal but also to check out the best editions. Check out the ones recommended by your department first and see if they're suitable for you in terms of writing essays etc. If they are, then that's good, but if it would be barking mad to buy the edition they've suggested, then disobey :p: