Content and Structure in Research Papers (General Guidelines)
\nCitations:
\nAs a general rule, you should have at least one citation (footnote or endnote, Chicago
\nManual of Style) per paragraph except for interpretive paragraphs in the introduction and
\nconclusion. You should also have about as many sources as you have pages of the paper.
\nYou should try to have two or more sources per footnote. In other words, you should not
\nhave a series of notes drawn from one source only, followed by another series drawn from
\nanother source. Rather, you should have multiple sources to support most sections of your
\nargument. After all, the one book upon which you are basing six pages of the paper could be
\ndead wrong!
\nYou should always give a full citation of a source the first time it is cited. After that you can
\nuse an abbreviated citation (author, short title, page).
\nYou also must include a bibliography, also following Turabian or the Chicago Manual.
\nDo not confine citations only to quotations; cite paragraphs where you synthesize
\ninformation from several sources also.
\nAnnotate your bibliography, and especially the more significant sources (this means that
\nunder the sources you write one to three sentences describing the source and its role in your
\nresearch.)
\nAs a rule, four or five quotations in a twenty page paper is plenty, especially if the
\nquotations are from secondary sources.<\/p>\n
Content and Structure:
\nYour paper should be structured as an argument answering a question. You should
\nbegin, therefore, with an introduction in which you state the question or problem you
\naddress, lay out your argument, its significance or how it fits into the context of the
\ntopic you are studying, and explain how you intend to go about answering the question
\nusing your sources. (“This paper is a study of women\u2019s hair styles in early modern
\nEurope. Its purpose it to understand why women\u2019s hairstyles changed, and how those
\nchanges reflected the changing work status of early modern women. This question is
\nimportant, because it gives us an understanding of how much manual labor women
\nfrom various classes performed. My sources are drawn primarily from . . . ). This
\nsection of the paper is about 1-3 paragraphs for a paper under eight pages, about 3-5
\nparagraphs for a paper of eight to twelve pages, and about three to five pages for a
\npaper longer than twelve pages.
\nThe body of the paper is where you lay out the evidence and construct the argument
\nyou are using to answer the question. You should not, therefore, be merely reciting
\n“facts” you have found in your sources. Rather you should construct an argument
\n(because – therefore). Use subheadings that reflect the sections (premises) of your
\nargument that you are supporting in this section of the paper to be sure that you have
\ncovered all the material necessary and offered all the evidence possible to support your
\nconclusions.
\nYour paper should conclude with a conclusion in which you recap your question and
\nargument, and show how your evidence supports the answers you have offered the
\noriginal question you asked.
\nYou may want to use subtitles or asterisks to separate the sections of your paper and
\nthus ensure that you have all the needed components of your argument. Outlines can
\nalso help to ensure that your paper is well structured and coherent.
\nAnother good clue to whether or not your have actually built an argument is to see
\nwhether you use words like “because” and “therefore” in the paper, and whether or not
\nyou can summarize your basic argument in a paragraph or so. If you haven\u2019t and you
\ncan\u2019t, your paper probably rambles and does not include an argument or support it
\neffectively.
\nOrganization
\n:
\nEvery paragraph must have a topic sentence. Every sentence in the paragraph must
\nrelate directly to that topic sentence. Avoid rambling paragraphs with multiple topics,
\nor no topic at all.
\nParagraphs one or two sentences long are probably too short and should be integrated
\nwith another paragraph, or lengthened. Paragraphs longer than one side of the page
\nprobably need to be broken into two or more paragraphs.
\nParagraphs should relate to the topic of the paper or of the subsection they are in as
\nsentences relate to the topic sentence of the paragraph. In other words, you should
\nbuild your paper with a distinct structure that includes an introduction, a body of
\nevidence divided with subheadings, and a distinct conclusion. Each of your paragraphs
\nshould build on the previous paragraphs to construct your argument. Paragraphs
\nshould not be placed randomly! Your paper should not read as if you shuffled the
\nparagraphs like a deck of cards or tossed the pages down the stairs.
\nTo avoid problems 1-3, use conjunctive adverbs such as because, therefore, thus,
\nsince, although, and however to organize your ideas and evidence, and to transition
\nbetween ideas. These words show cause and effect and thus are essential to building
\nan argument. Use an outline to organize your ideas into coherent paragraphs and
\nsections of the paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Content and Structure in Research Papers (General Guidelines) Citations: As a general rule, you should have at least one citation (footnote or endnote, Chicago Manual of Style) per paragraph except for interpretive paragraphs in the introduction and conclusion. You should also have about as many sources as you have pages of the paper. You should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"disciplines":[28],"paper_types":[],"tagged":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/24503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/questions"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/24503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=24503"},{"taxonomy":"paper_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper_types?post=24503"},{"taxonomy":"tagged","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tagged?post=24503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}