RESEARCH & WRITING GUIDELINES
A not comprehensive guide that will seem excessive to you
By Michelle L. Berenfeld, (ever so slightly modified for Egypt by Laurel Bestock)
I. GETTING STARTED
Once you have decided on a research topic, you will want to start gathering information about the subject you are looking to address. You will want to find out what has been written about this topic already and what kinds of questions and arguments scholars have been asking or making about it. You will also want to get a sense of how much information on this topic is available in English (and any other languages you may be able to read comfortably).
A good way to begin your research is to look at general sources and let them lead you to more narrowly focused work.
General Sources
Use the reference room in the library. Reference material, such as specialized encyclopedias (i.e. not the Encyclopedia Britannica, but the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptor theLexiconder Ägyptologie– many articles of which are in English - volumes, for example) contain short, scholarly summaries of a wide variety of topics, with bibliographies. These can save you a lot of time and energy. Most importantly, reference librarians are often extremely knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful.
Once you have found a few reference sources, you can use their bibliographies to find books and articles that are more specialized. The reference book will generally not be part of your final bibliography.
Regarding the Internet
The internet is both an extremely valuable tool and a minefield of misinformation. It can be very useful for helping you track down publications through collections like Google books, JSTOR, and other databases (again, reference librarians can help you navigate these), but it is also chock full of websites and articles written by hacks (this is particularly true of ancient/religious/archaeological subjects, which people feel free to write about on line after seeing one show on the Discovery channel).
NOTE:
Google books is a repository of scanned books, not a publisher, so when you find and/or want to cite a book that you found on Google books, cite the BOOK, as you would one that you found in the library in hard copy (see below for citation guidelines). Be a bit careful using Google books as often it will give you a preview of a book that does not include all or even most pages. This can be terribly misleading – you may think you know what an author says about something, but he may be presenting old interpretations of evidence prior to advancing a new theory, say. If you don’t have his conclusion, you will misrepresent him. Thus Google books can be an excellent way of identifying useful sources, but in cases where only a preview is available, get your hands on a physical copy of the book.
JSTOR is also simply a collection of scanned articles from scholarly journals. When you use an article from JSTOR, you must cite it the way JSTOR does—using the journal title, volume number, pages, etc., NOT with the link to JSTOR.
WIKIPEDIA, while handy at times, is NOT a reliable or citable source. Do not use it in your bibliography or citations. If you find information on Wikipedia that you think is true and/or you would like to use as a source in your paper, track it down in another published source. Often Wikipedia itself has citations (if not, be wary!), which can help you find your way to a scholarly source.
Reliable Sources
No matter where you find them, your secondary sources (i.e. not ancient texts) should bework produced and reviewed by scholars working in your field of interest.
For instance, you will want to use articles published in peer-reviewedjournals (academic periodicals in which articles are submitted and then reviewed by experts in the field before approval for publication), edited volumes of articles, or monographs (books on one topic) published by publishers which peer review their manuscripts (academic publishers, university presses, etc.) Most of the non-fiction books from the university library will fit these criteria; if you’re not sure, check to see if there are footnotes and/or a bibliography or Works Cited section in the book—if not, you may want to find other sources to use along with or instead of it.
As a general rule, you want to rely on material produced by people who are doing the thinking about a particular topic, not just compiling information from others (compilers are writers of encyclopedias, etc). These are the sources which you can read critically and assess yourself, because they will include evidence to back up statements and arguments, not just tell you their conclusions. (You should also try to do this in your paper!)
II. TAKING NOTES
As you are gathering information and especially once you decide on sources that you think you will use in your paper, start TAKING NOTES while you are reading. You will be glad you did. These notes are going to be the basis for your paper, and if you keep track of them as you go, writing the paper—and especially citations—will be MUCH EASIER.
It is better to take notes and then write your paper largely from them, rather than from the books/articles directly. You are more likely to form your own ideas and to be able to combine information from several sources, rather than just regurgitating authors’ ideas one after the other.
When you start taking notes on something, WRITE DOWN (or type) the full bibliographical information for that source. Then, as you are reading and taking notes, WRITE DOWN the page numbers from your source as you go. A sample:
p.2) really keen on the note-taking thing.
If you are writing about objectsor buildings as part of your paper, take a good long long at those objects or the images and plans of those buildings and take detailed notes on what you see as well as what you are thinking about as you look. Write down as much descriptive information as you can as well as any ideas or questions about the object that come to mind. Don’t expect to remember everything you see and think when you are looking at things. Write it down. If you discuss an image in your paper, you should include a copy of it with your paper, label it, and refer to it clearly in your text (fig. 1, for example…).
III. ORGANIZATION
Do not simply start writing and see what happens. You will cheat yourself out of the ideas which you would have had if you had organized your thoughts and allowed patterns to emerge from the facts. It will also be much easier to write well if you know where your paper is heading. If a paper is not well organized, your ideas may be lost in the shuffle, leaving your reader less impressed with your thoughts than s/he should be.
Making an outline is the easiest way to organize a paper before writing it. An outline allows you not only to figure out the order of your statements, but it also gives you a chance to look at your work as a whole, which will help you figure out which areas need more information or clarification. It will also help you see how your thesis (see below) works with the information you have gathered and how best to arrange your paper to back it up.
In making your argument it is usually best to start with larger themes and then go on to more specific points. It is also usually most effective to start with your strongest evidenceand to work your way down to the weakest ones.
Every formal written paper or essay (which is almost everything you write in school) should have three main parts: Anintroduction (in which you state your thesis and how you intend to prove it), a body (in which you make your argument, progressing logically from point to point), and a conclusion (in which you restate your thesis and sum up how you proved it).
Yes, I know you have heard this before. That is because it is true.
IV. THE THESIS
Your paper must have a thesis.
Your thesis is a concise statement of the main argument of your paper.
Your thesis and your argument should bedrawn from evidence found during your research, not imposed upon it. While you may have ideas about what you hope to say, prove, show, or argue when you start your paper, you should think of these ideas as questions you want to ask of the material¸ not something you will find material to prove.
Research is about asking questions and finding answers. Sometimes those answers aren’t what you think they will be when you start. That is the point and the pleasure (really!) of research.
In the search for your thesis, ask yourself what you are trying to find out and this will lead you to what you are trying to prove (and you should be trying to prove something). The point you are trying to prove—your main argument—will become your thesis.
Defining your thesis is the most difficult part of writing a paper. Don’t worry if it is not perfect right away, but always have a working version in mind. Often, as you write, your original thesis will be refined or changed. If this happens, go back and put the new version in theBEGINNING.
V. WRITING
Speaking of the beginning, do not wait to tell your reader what your purpose is. State your intentions IMMEDIATELY.
While you may be hesitant to “give away” things too early, don’t be. There should be no surprise endings. It is more interesting to read a provocative introductory paragraph and look forward to the proof of your argument than it is to read several pages wondering what the point is.
In your introduction, jump right in. This is often difficult to do—one is tempted to start a paper with overarching statements, broad historical background, or other ways to “ease into” the topic at hand. Resist the temptation. These types of openings (and closings) are usually unnecessary, distracting, and/or include overly broad generalizations (see Grammar and Style, below).
Your paper should progress in a logical manner, and every part of it should be relevant to your thesis. While you need not (and indeed should not) introduce every point with formal phrases like “I will now discuss...” you should make sure that the reader always knows where you are going. One way to do this is to carefully organize your paragraphs, and to start your paragraphs with topic sentences, which tell the reader what the rest of the paragraph is about.
QUOTES from ancient texts should be used sparingly, to illustrate specific points, and should be discussed. They should generally not be inserted into your text as stand-alone sentences. Long quotes (of more than two or three lines, say) should be set apart from the rest of your text, indented, as below:
I have seen many beatngs –
Set your heart on books!
I watched those seized for labor –
There’s nothing better than books!
[…]
See, there’s no profession without a boss,
Except for the scribe; he is the boss
Hence if you know writing,
It will do better for you
Than those professions I’ve set before you,
Each more wretched than the other.
(“Satire of theTrades”, Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature vol. 1, 185-89)
When you insert a quote into your text, you should adjust it so it fits into the syntax of your sentence. To do this, replace the part of the original quote you changed or omitted with new material in brackets [ ].
For example:
Original quote:
Agamemnon to Clytemnestra: “I was wondering if you could pass me the soap.”
Your sentence:
Just before he was murdered, Agamemnon asked Clytemnestra if “[she] could pass [him] the soap” (Agamemnot 345).
If you want to skip part of the quote in the middle, you can insert […] in its place.
Direct quotes from secondary sources should be avoided as much as possible (you should be synthesizing and paraphrasing, with proper citations, most of the time).
VI. GRAMMAR AND STYLE
Your aim is to convey information. Confused wording, bad grammar, and bizarre sentencestructure do not help this cause. Be clear and concise.
Some tips and pointers:
1. Avoid broad generalizations. Statements about ancient people/Egyptian civilization/religion as a whole, or those that include phrases like “throughout history...” are often irrelevant to the topic at hand, and more often than not, inaccurate (“the Egyptians never/always...,” based on reading a couple of books).
2. Generally it is best to avoid writing in the first person (I think, I see, It seems to me). Sometimes this can be appropriate (when you are proposing a brilliant new theory), but you should remember that your paper is about the topic, not about you. Try to think if others would have had the same reactions to the question/text/artwork as you did. See if you can explain, for example, what the author has done to make his reader (i.e. not just you) react a certain way. On the other hand, do not go out of your way with bizarre sentence structure to avoid using the first person. It is sometimes necessary.
3. Do not use conversational and slang expressions in your writing.
Written language is not the same as spoken language. Words like “kind of” or “like,” when used in writing in the way that they are used in conversation, sound stupid. “Agamemnon is kind of a jerk,” is not very informative. In addition, vaguely vulgar words and sayings, while expressive, are also largely inappropriate and less effective in non-fiction writing.
4. Do not make statements about what an important or great piece of literature the book was or how brilliant or idiotic the author was. While this may be a tempting way to open or close a paper, it is unnecessary and usually seems like filler.
5. Try reading your work aloud (really out loud, with your voice).
This will help you to catch awkward writing and bad grammar that you might miss when reading it silently. It will also help you with punctuation, helping you to hear where pauses should be (commas), and when you have a run-on sentence (if you run out of breath before you hit a punctuation mark, it’s a run-on).
6. Use a dictionary.
If you are using a word which you don’t use often, look it up in the dictionary, and make sure that it means what you think it means. (As a rule, it is best to use words you are comfortable with. It is not true that larger words and more complicated sentences make for better academic writing.)
7. Always write in complete sentences.
Every sentence should have at least a subject and a verb. This means a person, place, or thing which is doing something. (“The grass is green.” The subject is the grass (a thing) and the verb is is (what the grass does). Yup, it’s basic, but important.
8. Underline or italicize the titles of books and plays. (pick one and stick with it)
9. Do not mix up it’s and its.
It’s = It is. (It’s a green table = It is a green table)
If you have written “it’s,” try substituting “it is” in the sentence to see if you have used the word correctly.
Its = belonging to it. Like hers and his, it is a possessive pronoun. “The dog has blue eyes” could be changed to “Its eyes are blue.”
10. Apostrophes do not indicate a plural, ever. They indicate possessives.
cats = several cats; cat’s = belonging to one cat; cats’ = belonging to several cats
11. Avoid using contractions (it’s, don’t, can’t, etc.) in formal writing.
It is better to sound more formal than less, so write out the words. (it is, do not, cannot)
12. Hyphens are used to connect two words that together modify another word (usually a noun). For example:
Hera has white arms.
White-armed Hera is coming for you.
The great pyramid was built in the third millennium.
The great pyramid is a third-millennium tomb.
This is not true when refering to Dynasties:
The great pyramid is a Fourth Dynasty tomb.
Dynasty is always capitalized, as is the number, when written out. It is appropriate to say Fourth Dynasty or Dynasty IV. It is not considered proper to say Dynasty 4, and 4th Dynasty is marginal.
13. Even when comparing things, never use “vs.” in a paper. (“Horusvs. Seth.”) It is an abbreviation, and stands for the word “versus.” However, you should not use the word “versus” repeatedly in a paper either. Instead, try to say something meaningful about the comparison instead of just noting that it exists (which is all the word “versus” can do).
14. Learn the differences between Effect and Affect.
These two words sound the same, have related meanings in many contexts, and are often mixed up. To help you avoid this, here are a few samples of how they are commonly used.