Writing the Reasearch Paper, Part IV: Matters of Style

Writing the Research Paper: A Series in Four Parts

Writing the Research Paper, Part IV: Matters of Style

by Susan Wise Bauer

Read Part I: Preparation
Read Part II: Choosing the Topic
Read Part III: Proving Your Point

No student should begin writing the research paper until she can answer “yes” to every question on this checklist:
— Have I completed at least one year of a comprehensive, college-prep grammar program?
— Have I read through Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style?
— Do I know how to construct a proper outline?
— Have I spent some time learning how to construct an argument (through a logic course, or through reading Anthony Weston’s Rulebook for Arguments)?
— Am I accustomed to writing short factual papers for history, science, and literature?
— Have I selected a general topic and done three to four weeks of pre-reading to narrow it down?
— Do I have a thesis statement that needs proving?
— Have I constructed an outline of the main parts in my argument?
—Have I written down quotes and points that support my argument (using index cards, notepaper, or a word processing program)?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” I strongly suggest that you go back to the first three chapters and catch up! Writing is a difficult skill, learned through practice and instruction—just like figure skating. Attempting to write a research paper without doing all the preliminary steps is like trying to skate an entire long program without rehearsing one of the major elements. You’ll fall down.

If you’ve done the preparatory steps, though, you’re ready to write.

Sit down with your outline and with the cards or sheets of paper on which you’ve written information from your sources. With these notes in front of you, simply write one paragraph about each major and minor point on your outline. Don’t worry about your opening and closing paragraphs; you’ll write these when the body of the paper is completed.

Whenever you need information from the sources to support a point you’ve just made, quote from your notes. As you write, follow these rules for quoting from sources:
Works Cited

The last page of your paper must be a “Works Cited” page. On this page, you must list each book from which you quote, directly or indirectly. The proper form for citing a book is:

Author last name, Author first name. Title in italics. City of publication: Publisher, date.

The commas, periods, and colons must be used exactly as illustrated above. For example:

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. New York: Penguin Books, 1985

All of this information is generally listed on the book’s title page and on the following page. If the book has a subtitle, place a colon after the the main title and then write the subtitle. If the title page says, “Revised edition,” or has an edition number (”Third Edition”), this information should follow the title (with a comma between title and the edition information):

Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Frontier Women: “Civilizing” the West, 1840-1880, revised edition. New York: Hill and Wang,     1998.

When you’re citing a classic text, don’t try to find the original publication date. Use the city, publisher, and date of the particular edition you’re using. If the book had a translator, use the original author’s name and put the translation information immediately after the title:

Homer. The Odyssey, trans. E.V. Rieu. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.

On your Works Cited page, list all books that you’ve quoted in alphabetical order, by the last name of the author. Each book’s information should be single-spaced. Double-space between books:

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

Homer. The Odyssey, trans. E.V. Rieu. New York, Penguin Books, 1981.

Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Frontier Women: “Civilizing” the West, 1840-1880, revised edition. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.

In-text Citations vs. Footnotes

Each direct quote must be documented with an in-text citation. Citiation styles keep changing, but the current accepted standard for student papers is the use of in-text citations rather than footnotes or endnotes (which should be used only for extra information which, while useful, breaks up or is irrelevant to the flow of the argument).

An in-text citation is simple: the last name of the book’s author, a comma, and the page number where the quote is found, enclosed in parentheses. The citation should come AFTER the quote’s closing quotation marks, and BFORE the period that ends the sentence:
Austen writes that Anne’s misfortunes “affected her spirits exceedingly” (Austen, 77).
Jeffrey argues that frontier women, “like Christ, humbled themselves so that they could be exalted” (Jeffrey, 15).

If you are using two books by the same author, include the title of the book quoted:
Austen writes that Anne’s misfortunes “affected her spirits exceedingly” (Austen, Persuasion, 77).

Remember: A direct quote is the exact arrangement of words used by another author. That arrangement of words belongs to the writer. If you use them without proper documentation, you are stealing.
Proper Usage for Direct Quotes

Introduce direct quotes by putting them into a sentence that you write yourself. Don’t just drop a complete sentence from another writer into your paper. This is the wrong way to quote from Jane Austen:

Austen’s heroines often showed unhappiness with their circumstances. “This affected her spirits exceedingly” (Austen, Persuasion, 77).

This is the correct way to quote:

Austen’s heroines often showed unhappiness with their circumstances. When Anne found the letters Captain Wentworth wrote her, rereading them “affected her spirits exceedingly” (Austen, Persuasion, 77).

Giving Credit

Give credit when you paraphrase someone’s idea. When you are rephrasing what someone else has argued, you don’t need to quote exact words. But you do need to tell your readers that this insight belongs to another thinker:

According to critic Harold Bloom, Anne Elliot represents liberation from a corrupt set of social conventions (Bloom, 96).

Generally-Known Facts

You don’t have to document generally-known facts. “Jane Austen was born in 1775″ needs no citation.

When you have written one paragraph about each point on your outline, read back through your paper several times. For the first reading, ask yourself: Do these paragraphs seem to belong together? Are the connections between the paragraphs clear? Or does the reader have to make a mental “leap” from one paragraph to the next? If the paragraphs seem disconnected, you may have to write an extra sentence or two to act as a bridge.

Let’s say that you’re writing about Antiochus IV’s madness. A paragraph about Antiochus’s unreasonable demands on his servants is followed by a paragraph on his lack of popular support. If these two paragraphs don’t seem connected when you read back through your rough draft, you will need to provide a connection between the two thoughts:

Antiochus’s demands on his servants made him unpopular. He was also unpopular among the general population.

Work on these connections until each paragraph has a clear relationship to the paragraph before.

Then read through the paper a second time, looking for grammatical errors and awkward sentences. Use Strunk and White’s Elements of Style to identify weak sentence beginnings (”There were” and “It was”), unnecessary words (”This was the reason that” can generally be replaced with “Because”), and cliches (”Mad as a hornet” should be replaced with “enraged” or “angry”). The Elements of Style provides a detailed and invaluable checklist for style errors like these.

Finally, read through the paper and restate your thesis sentence and your main supporting points in three to four sentences. This summary will act as your introductory paragraph. A research paper should always begin by telling the reader what it will set out to prove. Don’t write unnecessary phrases like “This paper is about” or “This paper will show that.” Instead, get directly into your subject matter. Your thesis sentence should appear first, with the main supporting points following it.

After you’ve written your introductory paragraph, write a second summary for a closing paragraph. This paragraph should restate (in slightly different words) your thesis and main supporting points, in backwards order: write your main supporting points first, and then restate your thesis statement as the final, concluding sentence. If, for example, you’re arguing that Jane Austen’s novels reveal the triumph of character over circumstance, your introductory paragraph might sound like this:

Jane Austen’s novels reveal the triumph of character over circumstance. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth makes a happy marriage due to the strength of her character, displayed in her dealings with Mr. Darcy and her sister. In Persuasion, Anne Elliot makes a happy marriage because of her faithfulness to her family and her steadfast love for Captain Wentworth. Austen’s life itself demonstrates the triumph of character over circumstance; she lived with a hypochondriac mother and brothers who refused to support her, but she became one of the great novelists of all time.

After you have explored each of these supporting points (sentences 2, 3, and 4), your conclusion might sound like this:

Austen’s life, then, showed her personal triumph over terrible circumstances. She also praised character and its power to defeat bad situations in her two most famous novels, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice. It is clear that the victory of character over circumstance stands as a central theme in Jane Austen’s works.

Your restated thesis should be the final sentence in your paper. By writing a final paragraph in this way, you are telling the reader that all the evidence you’ve given leads to this one, inevitable conclusion.

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