English - II

Research Paper Glossary

  1. Research—The process of finding, evaluating, and using information on a given subject; writers may quote from, summarize, or paraphrase information they have
  2. Paraphrase Restatement in your own words of a phrase or idea that you found in your research sources.
  3. Quote—Using the exact wording of an author; We do this to create authority or preserve an author’s language.
  4. Plagiarism—Knowing or unknowing presenting other people’s ideas and words; not properly citing your sources when you use other people’s words. Placing an in-text citation after the exact words does not remove the plagiarism, but putting quotation marks around all of the quoted words does.
  5. Thesisstatement- a clear statement of the principal point you intend to make in your paper.
  6. Topic Sentences - The topic sentence is usually the first sentence of the paragraph. It gives the reader an idea of what the paragraph is going to be about.
  7. Topic General subject area chosen or assigned for preliminary research.
  8. MLA—The style guide for the Modern Language Association, used commonly in documenting sources for literature and languages
  9. Citation—A reference note that includes the title, author, publisher, year, and page number of a source;
  10. Source—Origin of material used in writing and research, such as a book, interview, or article
  11. Printed Sources—Sources that appear in a printed format (on paper).
  12. Introduction—Refers to the structured way to begin a research paper; presents the problem, purpose, and focus of the paper and summarizes the writer’s position
  13. Documentation—Acknowledgment through proper citation to certain sources for particular ideas and quotations used in your writing
  14. Editing—Process of revising a written paper to improve clarity, correctness, and consistency
  15. Final draft—The final written product turned in for a grade or other evaluation
  16. Reverse(or hanging) indent—Bibliography style where second and subsequent lines of a bibliographic entry are indented
  17. Outline- an informal or formal way to organize your ideas in the planning stages of writing
  18. Database - a collection of information in electronic relating to books, articles, and other published material such as ABC-Clio, Gale, Facts on File and Ebsco
  19. Internet—The globally interconnected "network of networks" that provides access to a wide variety of information sources
  20. Search engine - a program that searches for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents, or Web sites, where the keywords were found. Google and NetTrekker are examples of search engines which look for documents on the Internet
  21. URL (Uniform Resource Locator) —address for a Web site. It usually begins with (
  22. In-Text Citation – A brief citation within the body of a text that indicates the source of the information being used and that clearly refers to the full citation in a Works Cited list