the banal questions first: 1) if I cite a paper from an edited volume do I need to include the paper itself AND the edited volume separately in the biblio? 2)Does it matter how many times I refer to a figure in the text?

I'm really rubbish at languages and was wondering if anyone has a few tips that might speed the process up a bit. What I really want is some sort of matrix style inplant, hyponosis or subliminal message to get things into my head! :-)

If you mean a chapter in an edited book thats been written by someone else, in the text I do (author, date if its there, in author of book, date of publication). Then in your list of references reference the full title of the chapter then the book its in, hope that makes sense. But thats using the Harvard system that I have to follow, yours might be different. Basically you don't do them separately, when you're doing it in alphabetical order use the author of the paper. Not sure about figures as I don't really use them in my subject but I can't see that being much of a problem.