Tips on Research Papers

Just some things I noticed in reading the first 12 papers...

1) Specific facts and interpretations need to be cited from specific sources. You can't just paraphrase ideas at will for a whole paper and then slap a bibliography at the end. As for the format of the citations, you can basically choose from footnoting versus parenthetical. This is how I like to do mine with footnotes. (Article I wrote several years ago that sucks... do not use as a model for good writing.) You need to know how to use MS Word a little bit. For parentheticals, see the chapter on MLA style in Easy Writer and/or the sample papers I sent you for the peer review. Choose the style that you think best suits your essay and be consistent with it.

2) Even if you have a footnote or a parenthetical citation, you still need to introduce secondary sources at the beginning of a direct quotation.

WRONG: The Lakers are "a force of pure evil" that "must be stopped" (Winter 9).

RIGHT: As Aaron Winter argues, the Lakers are "a force of pure evil" that "must be stopped" (Winter 9).

SAMPLE: A few pages from my dissertation, showing how primary and secondary quotations can be incorporated into sentences properly.

3) Your paper needs a thesis, not just a topic or question.

TEMPLATE: Aristotle says banana, and Descartes says apple, but I argue that the truth is really orange.

4) Title format... the essential part is a specific description of your project. Almost like a miniature thesis. You can put a jokey/creative part in front of that if you want.

WRONG: "Yo Mama So Fat!"
WRONGISH: "African-American Insult Humor"
RIGHT: "The Globalization of African-American Insult Humor in the 1990s"
RIGHT: "Yo Mama So Fat!: The Globalization of African-American Insult Humor in the 1990s"

5) There will come a point for most of you, I hope, when you actually have too much research to fit in your paper. The HumCore website says 8-10 pages for the final draft. I think you should go for that 10. But you know, some of you are already pushing past that and may have to cut some. Some facts, concepts, quotations, etc. in your paper are simply going to be more important than others, and you need to work in your second draft to decide which, and make it clear to your reader.

AN ANALOGY:

1 Kobe
4 more starters (Kobe, Gasol, Ariza, Fisher, Bynum)
5 more rotation guys (Odom, Farmar, Walton, Vujacic, Brown)
? total scrubs who never get to play (Powell, Mbenga, Morrison, etc.)

1 thesis
2-4 main sections or sub-topics
2-5 examples, evidence, or concepts within those sub-topics
? material that gets relegated to your footnotes