Rules for Writing Papers

Dr. Kate Connelly

(Based on a document prepared by and used with the permission of Dr. Mike Palo)

There are several different formats for academic papers and these depend somewhat on
the field of the research: psychology, literature, history, engineering, …. My preference is
for CMS [Chicago Manual of Style], but you are not required to use this formatting style.
If you do wish to use CMS formatting, see Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of
Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations, 6th edition. (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1996.) In your COR 111 and 112 courses, you used MLA
(Modern Language Association) format. This is also perfectly acceptable for my class. If
you want to stick with what you know, see the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers, 6th edition. (New York: The Modern Language Association, 2004.) Your
Hodges’ Harbrace Handbook, used in COR 111 and 113, is also a useful source for term
paper formats.

The manuals listed above provide information on spelling, capitalization, grammar, use
of italics and quotation marks, the difference between n- and m- dashes, etc. If you don’t
already own a style guide, it is imperative that you make the investment and buy one.
You will use it for many, many years.

You may have to write many different kinds of papers in my classes. By papers, I mean
(as Dr. Palo wrote) “any prose compositions that are devoted to a question or topic and
are handed in for a grade.”

You may want to use parenthetical references (Smith, 23) for shorter papers of, say four-
to-six double-spaced types pages. For papers above six pages, you should use footnotes.
You can easily create footnotes in Microsoft Word: From the INSERT menu, choose
FOOTNOTES. Format them with numbers 1, 2, 3 and presto-chango! you’ve got
footnotes. I am not a big fan of endnotes and do not want you to use them on papers you
hand in to me.

Ten Steps to a Proper Research Paper:

Step 1: When doing academic research, you should first gather a list of relevant sources
for your topic – and these should come from monographs, professional journals,
newspaper articles and, yes, reputable internet sources. As you go through all the
materials, some will seem more useful to your specific topic than others. Save the most
useful sources and return the others to the shelf.

Step 2: Now, take a piece of paper (or open a new page on your laptop). For each source,
make a complete bibliographic record. Save this page as “working [Link]”.
This way, if you make photocopies (and leave the actual sources in the library), you will
still have a complete record when it comes time to draw up your bibliography. (You may
want to write on the front page of any photocopy the title or author of the source
material.)

Step 3: The next step - so often skipped by students - is to actually read the materials!!
It is no use to scan materials for trite sentences that support your argument. You must
read, and understand, all the sources you are going to use. Take notes – not copied
statements and assertions from the source - but notes in your own words while you are
reading.

Step 4: Once you have finished all your reading, compare the sources in your mind, using
the notes your took while reading. Think about what they have in common and what is
different. THIS is when you should begin to formulate your thesis, question, topic,
argument, etc.

Step 5: Next, put your sources away so you will not be tempted to “borrow” phrases.
Based on the knowledge you have gained from your reading, aided by the notes (not
quotes) you took, begin writing your paper in your own words.

Step 6: Once you have your entire argument laid-out and your paper is well on the way to
being finished, extract (from your notes or photocopies) only those quotes that are
particularly poignant, well-written, pithy, and concise and add them to your paper ---
always with proper attribution and/or references. (See guidelines for quotations, below)

Step 7: Now do your bibliography. (See general guidelines below)

Step 8: Once you have a first draft, set it aside for a few days – maybe by passing it on to
a friend who is willing to read it over for you (perhaps you could return the service on
your friend’s paper). When the first draft comes back to you, pay attention to the
comments your friend has made. Discuss any problems and find out what was
particularly good about your paper.

Step 9: Make corrections and write the second draft. Again, leave it aside for a few days.
Come back to it and do the final editing about three days before the paper is due, and
print out a hard copy.

Step 10: Set the hard copy aside for a day. Then pick it up and read it OUT LOUD to
yourself. Correct any vagaries of thought or language and print out the final copy at least
36 hours before the paper is due.

Journalistic-style Assignments:

You will be asked in CMM 103 and 203 to write news stories and feature articles; but at
the same time, you will be required to cite your sources and provide me with a
bibliography. Open a quality newspaper and you will notice that journalists do not use
footnotes or bibliography; and they do not cite written sources. What to do? Here are a
few ways that you can cite sources (called “attribution”) in journalistic-style writing:
 During my interview with Mary Smith, the Director of the National Endowment
for the Humanities, she confirmed that, “blahdeblahblahblah.”

In his article of June 4, 2006 in The Guardian, journalist Fred Bloggs noted the
importance of “blahdeblahblahblah.”
The singles scene among affluent young Londoners is alive and well. There are
more young millionaires in London than anywhere else in Europe and, as novelist
Jane Austen so astutely noted in Pride and Prejudice, “a young man in possession
of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.”

The Kenyan Center for Population Statistics reported in Agricultural Statistics

Concerning Maize Production in the Northwest Regions (2005) that
“blahdeblahblahblah.”

Working in this way, you can cite sources (making you more credible as a journalist and
also saving yourself from a potential plagiarism charge) without defying journalistic
conventions.

Bibliography
If you used all the examples of sources (above) in one magazine article, your
bibliography (ALWAYS handed in on a separate page) would look something like this:

Bibliography [or Works Cited]

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. (John Mason, ed.) Palgrave Pocket Books, London:
2002. [VUB: AD 456.98.2002]

Bloggs, Fred. “Arts in Society.” The Guardian. June 4, 2006. Accessed online Feb. 14,
2007: [Link]

Center for Population Statistics of Ghana. Agricultural Statistics Concerning Grain

Production in the Northwest Regions (2005). Accessed online Feb. 16, 2007:
[Link]

Interview with Mary Smith, Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Office of the NEH, New York, January 23, 2007. (Contact: 212 - 765-4321.)

General Guidelines for Bibliography

Some students seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the purpose of a
bibliography is to list as many relevant sources as they can find. This is a dire
misunderstanding of the research process
 • Bibliographic entries are arranged alphabetically by author, as far as possible.
(The Center for Population Statistics is the ‘author’ of the article about agricultural
statistics presented in the sample bibliography above.)

• Bibliographic entries are NEVER numbered; nor are they presented as a bulleted
list.

• Access and, where possible, ‘last updated’ dates must be provided for all internet
sites.

• Internet sources should not be more than 20% of total sources. Exception: when
you use JSTOR or ANTILOPE to access academic journals online; in which case you
must give the author, issue, date, pages for the article, but also the website and the
usual access/updated information.

• Call numbers must be provided for all library materials. If sources belong to you,
then you note “personal collection” – and I may ask for you to bring the book/source
into class.

• The title of a journal appears in italics: American Journal of Professional

Communications. The title of the article goes in quotation marks: “When Materials
Go Abroad: Simplify.” Book titles are italicized, as are film and newspaper titles; i.e.
The Guardian (though the title of the article itself (the headline) “London’s Swinging
Singles” appears in quotation marks.

• Bibliographic entries are single-spaced, often with a hanging indent (where the
second line is indented, like this sentence). There is one space between entries.

• If you use multiple titles by the same author, the first entry (alphabetized by title in
this case) includes the author’s name. Subsequent entries are marked with five-
to-seven dashes:

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. (John Mason, ed.) Palgrave Pocket Books, London:
2002. [VUB: AD 456.98.2002]

----- Pride and Prejudice. (Penny Lemmer, ed.) Penguin Classics, New York: 1994.
[Personal collection.]

General Guidelines for Quotations (courtesy of Dr. Palo)

If you must quote a text exactly, be careful to indicate that the quotation marks that you

use are yours and not in the original text. If you have a quotation within a quotation,

indicate the entire quotation by placing it within double quotation marks “ ” and the

interior quotation between single marks ‘ ’: “Excitement trickled through Harry, but he

was not immediately sure why. He read the sign again. Hermione was already a flight of

stairs below him. ‘Hermione,’ he said, and he was surprised that his voice was so calm,

‘Come back up here.’”

Quotations which run for more than three lines should be set off in single-spaced
block form in your paper (as I have done with this paragraph) and do not require
double quotation marks in this case, though you should still use single marks for a
quote within a quote. Remember that your paper itself will be double-spaced.
When you want to set off a quote, you double-space to the next line, then single-
space and indent the quote.

If you are indenting paragraphs throughout your paper, and the blocked quotation is that

start of a new paragraph, the first line of the quote should be indented twice. I have not

been indenting paragraphs in this document, so I have not indented the first line of the

block above, even though it is a new paragraph in my paper.

If you leave out some part of the quotation (and try not to do this very often!), indicate
this omission by ellipsis points, i.e., three full stops …in the middle of a sentence; at the
end of a sentence, four full stops …. Never put an ellipsis in parentheses.

If you need to clarify a word in a quote, perhaps the use of ‘he’ which, due to the context
of the original document, is understood, but would not be clear in your excerpted
quotation, use [ ] to give the proper name. This is called interpolation. The quoted
sentence (from, say, a biography of Jefferson), “Not only that, but he was also the
founder of the University of Virginia” would appear in your paper like this: “Not only
that, but [Thomas Jefferson] was also the founder of the University of Virginia.”

When you are using quotation marks, periods and commas always fall within the closed
quote. Semicolons and colons come after the quotation mark. Question marks and
exclamation points fall within the quotation marks only if they are in the original quote.
If there is a mistake, say a spelling error or a typo, in the original and you do not want to
be held responsible for the error, write the Latin word [sic] in italics, in square brackets.
“George Buss [sic] was president of the US from 2000-2008.”

Remember not to overdo the use of quotations. Introduce each quotation by identifying
the author, using phrases such as: As the author notes, “....” or, According to Professor
Mark Berlin, “….” or, as author Julie Morgan asserts “…..” Subsequent remarks by these
two scholars would be Berlin and Morgan (no first names or titles).

Note that any foreign words or phrases - pas comme il faut, semper ubi sub ubi, Viva la
Raza, should be italicized.

For quotations from non-English sources, you should translate the word/phrase/sentence
into English in the body of your paper, then provide a footnote with the quotation in the
original language.

It’s important to be precise when you are quoting sources. After all, Meallan muilte Dé
go mall ach meallan siad go mion!1

General recurring problems in student writing

Please be careful in your use of words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and
have different meaning:

To, too, two

Bare, bear
Break, brake
Lose, loose (When you lose weight, your clothes become loose.)
Then, than
- Then is a sequential marker: First I did this, then I did that, then I finished up
by doing the tango.
- Than is a comparative adjective: I am older than you are.

The use of the simple past VS the use of present perfect:

I ate an apple for lunch yesterday.

I have always eaten an apple a day.

I went to prison when I was 17.

I’ve never been in prison.

Articles – the, a, an – often cause problems for students whose native language does not
include them. There is a complete science to article use in English. If you are not sure, get
out your old grammar books and learn the rules.
___________________________
1
Irish. “God’s mill may grind slowly, but it grinds finely.”