Evaluating research papers for footnoting

[SheWhoWaits]

When you evaluate your children's writing, how do you determine where footnotes are needed? For example, if they're writing a biographical paper, do they need to footnote things like birth and death dates? What kinds of things do look to find footnoted? I'm evaluating my first high school research paper, and I'm just not sure how many footnotes to expect.

[Katia]

Sherri Barrett, of Barrett's Bookshelves, author of the Put That In Writing curriculum, says that anything that is not common knowledge needs to be cited. So, in a research paper there will be a lot of citations.

BTW, we use in-text citations with MLA documentation style since that is what the college the dc want to go to uses. Footnoting hasn't been used in a long time, the way I understand it. Anyone else have a different experience?

I know that the college my dh just graduated from (MA this time) used APA instead of MLA. You might want your dc to have a working knowledge of both documentation styles.

Things that wouldn't be cited would be how you put the information together, your thesis, and your conclusions and observations (opinions).

[HollyinNNV]

This website is my favorite resource for learning about plagiarism.
Holly
http://www.plagiarism.org/

[Michelle in MO]

Purdue Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/), which Cindy Marsch calls the "gold standard" of online writing labs. They have a link entitled "Plagiarism" to the right.

Essentially, anything that is not your student's original thought must be cited.

[AllSmiles]

The standard I usually use is that if I can find the information in three or more sources it is common knowledge. There are of course exceptions like when the additional sources all site the primary source.

I also agree with some of the other posters that most colleges are going to require MLA or APA documentation. The majority of my classes required MLA, but I believe I had some science courses that required APA.