Your papers are a major part of your grade for the course. I expect all the things that should be expected of good papers. There should be a clearly stated and sophisticated thesis that outlines your paper's objectives and the methodology to be followed. Also, your essay should be well written and well organized, efficiently and succinctly following logical arguments through to your conclusion. Spelling, grammar, sentence structure, clarity...they all count!
These stylistic rules should be followed:
1) Margins of 1.25 inches left and right, 1.00 inch top and bottom.
2) Twelve point font throughout text. Use a common typeset such as Times New Roman. This text is 12-point font Times New Roman. Footnote text may be 10 point.
3) Paragraphs should be indented 5 spaces.
4) Block quotes, which are quotations taken from secondary sources and are over three lines of text long, should be indented 10 spaces from the left and right of the main body of the text. Quotation marks are not required for block quotes. Single space them.
5) Quotations taken from secondary sources less than three lines should be enclosed in quotation marks [" "].
6) Footnote references must follow all direct quotes and any ideas, information, or paraphrased information from secondary sources.
7) Use footnotes throughout, with superscript number references in text. If you don't know how to do this with your word processing program, then learn to [See next page for style of footnotes].
8) Do not include a title page. Simply put the title at the top of the page, your name, date, course, and assignment ("First Paper") at the top left of the page.
9) Do not put your paper in a folder or binder. Just staple it on the top left corner.
10) Number your pages, though the first page need not have a page one number. Page numbers should appear in the top right corner of the page.
11) Underline or italicize titles of paintings or books in text.
12) Double space entire text, except footnotes and block quotes which are single.
Samples of Endnotes:
An endnote functions to tell your reader where you got the idea, information or quote from. It must include the author, the title of book or article, the place of publication, the date of publication, the publication company, and the page or pages on which the quote or information appears. Let's say I take some information from a book, and it happens to be this one.1 [Just click on the red footnote number and it'll take you to the footnote, click on "Return to text" to return here. Normally, number references in the text would be superscript, but I've made them red to make then easier to find here. This seems to work with IBMs but not Macs. Macs need to scroll down]. Note that the name of the author, first name first, comes first. The book title comes next, underlined, then in parentheses the place and publishing company and date. The page reference for the information comes last. Note every detail, including the commas.
Now let's say I take some more information from the same book. Do I need to write all of that out again? No, I only have to do this.2 Here, I just give the last name of the author and the page number. If I'm only using one source from this author then that will work fine. However, if I'm using two books by the same author somewhere in the paper, then I'm going to have to include the title so the reader doesn't get confused about which book I'm referring to. So in this case my second citation would be like this.3
How about if I want to use a quote from an article? The style for endnoting articles is a bit different. Maybe some author in an article has written that the painting "...has been almost unanimously acknowledged to be the portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini, a native of Lucca..."4 Here, the article title is in quotes, and the title of the journal is underlined. The volume number follows the journal title, then, if applicable, the issue number. In parentheses is the date, sometimes with the month or season (i.e. Fall, 1997 or October, 1987), depending on the journal. Page number or numbers come last again. Note that I've italicized the painting title Arnolfini. If I use more information from the Panofsky article I just do the same thing I did for the Welch book.5
Sometimes one gets information from books which have many articles in them and these books are edited by someone (or, often, a couple of people). These citations are done like this.6 Author, title of essay, name of book with the essays in it, the editor(s), then the publication information and page(s). Note that here too I've italicized the title of the painting, Sacred and Profane Love.
But endnotes can function in another way too, not just to give reference information. Let's say you are writing your paper and you have a comment or maybe some other information that is interesting but somehow it doesn't really belong in the body of your paper. It's good stuff but it just doesn't warrant a paragraph on its own because it's going to interrupt the flow and organization of your paper. Well, you can do something like this.7 This is sometimes referred to as an author's endnote. They are sort of like taking your reader aside for a second to comment on something of interest that doesn't quite make it into your paper's main text.
What this means is you'll have to make sure you get all this information from any book or journal that you take notes from or xerox. That way, when you write your paper, you won't have to go back to the library to hunt it down again. So get into the habit of writing this information down during the research phase of your paper preparation.
Generally, students use too many quotes from secondary sources. It gets to be an easy way to get somebody else to do the writing for you. Teachers never like lots of quotes from secondary sources. It is almost always better to put the other authors' ideas into your own words and just footnote the source. This helps keep the "voice" of your paper your own, and since quotes are often awkward to integrate into your text, just try avoiding them. The only time when you should use a quote from an author is when you are actually going to comment in your paper on what that author has said. Don't use quotes just because you think that they said it so well! It's your paper, you write it. When you have properly cited endnotes, a bibliography is not really necessary because it's merely repeated information. So I don't require bibliographies. Other professors might, however, and there are different styles for doing bibliographic references. It's always a good idea to ask your professors or TAs what style they prefer. Ask them for a style sheet if they have one.
World Wide Web Research and Citations:
Most of the information on the Web is very basic and fundamental, but there may nonetheless be something you find which you may want to use in your paper and make a footnote or endnote citation for. If you do find texts on the Web, even if information is from an online book, follow these forms which are from the Modern Language Association style sheet.
Example-Book:
Shaw, Bernard. Pygmalion. 1912. Bartleby Archive. 6 Mar. 1998 http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/shaw/.
This is for an online book. First is the author's name, then the title of the book underlined followed by the original publishing date of the book, the web source of the electronic text (Bartleby Archive), the date of electronic publication, and the web address.
Example-Article in Journal:
Rehberger, Dean. "The Censoring of Project Seventeen: Hypertext Bodies and Censorship" Kairos 2.2 (Fall 1997): 14 secs. 6 Mar. 1998. http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/2.2/index_f.html
The article from a journal includes the name of the author, the title of the article in quotes, the title of the journal underlined, the issue number (here, volume 2, number 2) the date of the article (Fall, 1997; usually refers to the hardcopy, paper publishing date), the number of sections or total page number of the article (here, 14 sections) and the date of electronic publication followed by the webpage address.
Endnotes:
1 Evelyn Welch, Art and Society in Italy 1350-1500 (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 130.
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2 Welch, 130.
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3 Welch, Art and Society in Italy, 144.
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4 Erwin Panofsky, "Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait" The Burlington Magazine 64, n. 372 (March, 1934): 117.
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5 Panofsky, 5.
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6 Rona Goffen, "Titian's Sacred and Profane Love and Marriage," in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 118.
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7 One is reminded of Rembrandt's earlier works where light is used differently, etc. etc.
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Your introduction and thesis statement is one of the most important parts of your paper. here are some links to pages that might help you in the formulation of a sophisticated and well organized thesis. Use your browser's 'Back' button to return to this page.
| Asking the Right Questions. | What should the thesis answer? |
| An introduction answering the questions. | A sample introduction & thesis. |
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
