Guide to Formatting Your Term Paper
The first thing is that your paper must have a title. A title gives your reader a clue as to what direction your paper is going to take your topic or possibly what motivation you have for writing it. The snappier the better. The title can either be one font size larger than your text OR it can be the same size as your text in Bold. Do not underline it – or anything else in your paper. Underlining is a typewriter function.
Secondly, the font can either be a simple serif font such as Times New Roman or a simple san-serif font such as Arial. Stay away from fancy fonts or script looking fonts. Over the long read of your paper it will make a difference to your reader. The size of your font for the body of your paper should be 12 point. As for spacing, I recommend 1.5. Not double, not single. As a note to spacing: DO NOT double space or increase in any way the space between paragraphs. This means that you will want to indent your paragraphs so they can be recognized.
Thirdly, as this is a research paper you will be quoting quite a bit. Be sure to follow the rules we established in class:
-the quote must fit grammatically with the lead in text of yours;
-quotes longer than three lines must be indented and do not use quote marks;
-the final punctuation for an in-line quote must follow the last parenthesis of the citation; and
-do not do anything fancy to the type font of a quote, like italicizing, nor to the spacing;
-these quotes are to be cited using the MLA In-Line citation method which can be found in any handbook or Google ‘MLA’ on line (Hacker 215).
Fourthly, make sure your Works Cited page is a separate page at the end of your paper. This page is not counted as part of the 10 pages that are your final paper. Make sure that you single space each entry and double space between entries. Every quote should have a citation.
Finally, indicate your thesis and conclusion with italics. This will allow you to easily read both quickly to make sure you got to where you said you were going.
Good luck. When you are finished look at your paper. Does it look like this page? If it doesn’t then you have violated one of these guides. Adjust it. Recheck. Hand it in. Could a course have been any easier!!??