[SOLVED] Proper Documentation

The body of the paper (5-10 pp. is the norm, depending on the topic). Proper Documentation

A well-written conclusion that neatly summarizes your findings.

Notes. You paper MUST include proper documentation of all quotations and all ideas that are specifically indebted to a certain author. You need not provide documentation for things such as biographical items that are common knowledge and reprinted in many sources. It is your choice whether to cite your sources in footnotes or endnotes, or notes within the body of the paper (MLA style); just make sure you keep to one type of notes.

Bibliography. A listing (alphabetical by author’s last name) of ALL items consulted for the paper. This should be provided in addition to notes because there may be items in the bibliography that were important to the formation of the paper but never needed to be mentioned in the notes.

Make sure your paper is organized around your interpretation of the material; the paper should not consist merely of (correctly) footnoted sentences taken from other sources. Offer us your own original insights inspired by the material.

Style Manuals

You should consult a manual of writing style to deal with questions of format. Three are particularly recommended:

The Chicago Manual of Style. 13th ed., revised and expanded. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 5th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 6th ed. Revised by John Grossman and Alice Bennet. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Each of these manuals has slightly (sometimes more than slightly) different ways of doing things such as footnote entries. You should feel free to choose whichever style manual suits you best, as long as you stick consistently with that one throughout the paper.

Assorted Writing Tips

In this Appendix you will find witty but wise guidelines for writing which were created by Austin Caswell, Professor Emeritus at Indiana University. Some will have more relevance for you than others, and there will be times when such things as passive voice (#2) and alliteration (#28) are very appropriate. You want to make sure your paper is written in a lively and active–but scholarly–style, and these maxims will help you to reach this goal.

Nitpicking Points

As Caswell notes, be sure to supply diacriticals, i.e., accent marks in other languages: é, è, ë, and e are all separate letters in French, as are o and ö in German, and you have often created another word in that language when you spell the word without the marks. At any rate, you have misspelled the word