Some Guidelines for the Term Paper 1
SOME GUIDELINES FOR THE TERM PAPER
PHILOSOPHY 308 – 11/04/10
Some of these instructions are rather elementary, but I need to touch bases so that everybody will follow them.
1)Be sure your paper has a title (a title PAGE is optional), is double-spaced, and has PAGE NUMBERS. (Needless to say, don’t omit your name. Believe me, it happens.)
2)Headings are not required, but if they help you organize your paper better, by all means use them. They also help the reader.
3)An outline is NOT required, but if you want to provide one, feel free to do so. Keep in mind that the outline does NOT count in calculating the total number of pages of your essay.
4)You are encouraged to provide a GLOSSARY of technical terms or TABLES and CHARTS, or even a TIMELINEAS NEEDED, depending on your subject, to help the reader understand what you are talking about. These can be placed either in the body of your essay or at the end, just before the bibliography.
5)BE SURE TO PROVIDE A BIBLIOGRAPHY, EVEN ON THE FIRST DRAFT.The entries in the bibliography should be in ALPHABETICAL ORDER, and in hanging indentation. (Under “Paragraph” in Word, click “Special,” and “Hanging” appears as one of the options.) The bibliography for the term paper should include the works cited and consulted to write the term paper.
If you are using MLA style, which a lot of people use, the MLA title for a bibliography is “Works Cited,” but many people include in their bibliography sources they consulted, but did not cite, along with the sources they actually cited. If this is what you did, the title “Works Cited” is incorrect. Just call it “Bibliography.”
6)Be sure to cite sources when you use them. If you are in doubt whether a citation is needed, you probably should provide one. Better too many than too few. It is much easier to remove excessive citations than to go through the process of providing them when they are lacking.
7)When you are directly quoting a source, provide a “lead-in” of some kind. Don’t “drop” quotes into your narrative without one. Most of your paraphrases will also require a lead-in.
8)Avoid DISGUISED DIRECT QUOTES: i.e. presenting source material as a paraphrase when it is word for word (or almost word for word) what the source says. This is presenting someone else’s words as if they were your own. Even if you provide a citation for the material, omitting the quotation marks is still a form of plagiarism.
If you are conscientious about doing this, you may find that your first draft has a lot of direct quotes. This is a barometer of where you are in your essay. As you get further into your research, you will bring more sources to bear on your topic and you will find yourself “digesting” the sources and combining them with each other in such a way that you won’t need to directly quote them so much. Many of the direct quotes will thereby turn into paraphrases and summaries as you integrate your various sources.
9)Cite sources by referring to whatever is in the LEFTHAND MARGIN of your bibliography (either author’s name or title of article or name of web page, etc.) In citing online sources, do NOT citea source by using the URL. The URL is indeed a part of the bib entry, but is not the part you cite.
10)An article or web page is listed in your bibliography with quotation marks. For example: “Comparison of Firewalls.” The name of the web site on which the web page appears should be in italics. For example: Wikipedia. When you cite an article or web page,please KEEP the quotation marks. The citation would look like this: (“Comparison of Firewalls.”)
11)Sentence end punctuation: try to avoid “comma splices,” a common error. A sentence ends with a period, not a comma.
12)Introductory adverbial clauses are preceded by a comma, unless they are very short.
13)Before you turn in your paper, please PROOFREAD it to eliminate obvious errors like typos and incorrect spelling.
That’s it. Good luck!
Philosophy 308, Fall 2010
Robert Greene, Instructor
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire