Senior Research Paper Final Requirements

I posted a handout on Studywiz that should answer many of your questions.

Otherwise, you can read the entire handout right here. It's a little messy here at S-ville, but it "works."

Senior research paper—Fiorelli 2011

Paper is due to receive extra credit on Thursday, April 14.

Paper is due to receive full credit on Friday, April 15.

To hand in your paper:

1. You need to buy a manila envelope in which to enclose your paper and your note cards

2. Put your name and section color on the outside of that envelope

Requirements for your paper:

1. Length: 5-8 pages of text formatted in MLA style

2. paper must include a "works consulted" page (the works you used even if you did NOT cite them in your text) in MLA form

3. Minimum research requirements: minimum of 6 sources, 60 note cards

Plagiarism is a crime and will result in a zero

1. Plagiarism is submitting work that is not your own—this includes using Internet papers, your sister’s college research paper, having your mother write your paper, etc. This will result in a grade of zero.

2. Failing to cite sources correctly is plagiarism-- in college and in the world of research, this is just a serious as the first type. This type of plagiarism most often occurs by failing to cite one’s sources properly in the text. Researched material that is NOT common knowledge must be cited whether it is quoted or paraphrased. To differentiate between “common knowledge” and information that must be cited, use the “source test.” If you are able to find information in a variety of sources (more than 3), it is likely that the information is common knowledge, and does NOT need in-text citations. Otherwise, cite the source in the text using MLA style.

3. Poor paraphrasing—this type of plagiarism is when your paraphrase borrows too much of the language and syntax from the cited text. To avoid this type of plagiarism, make sure that your paraphrases on your note cards do not use words, phrases, or the sentence syntaxes of the original texts.

Weight of grade for final paper: 40% of fourth quarter grade

Works consulted page and in-text citations

I am NOT going to show you MLA works consulted form and citation form—that is your job---Go to Son of Citation Machine http://citationmachine.net/ , plug in the info, and your in-text citations and works consulted will be done for you.

Remember that the works consulted page should be done in “hanging indents.” See the sample papers I’ve provided for examples.

Begin every body paragraph with a TOPIC SENTENCE

Make every body paragraph begin with a topic sentence that states the main point of the paragraph

NOT

Professor Donald Blake was born on July 24, 1897.

BUT

Poverty and hard times marked the early years of the life of Professor Donald Blake.

Never use HANGING QUOTES, also known as DROPPED QUOTES

(Quotations can NEVER STAND ALONE AS YOUR SENTENCE)

Work them into YOUR sentences.

I will take off many points for this error.

"Cite" is a verb.

It means to provide a citation for.

MLA allows citations in parenthesis in the text (older folks like me had to do "footnote" citations at the "foot" or bottom of the page)

You must cite ALL quotations.

You must cite all information that is NOT COMMON knowledge.

How much cited material should we have?

You are using cited material (paraphrased & quoted) to support your original ideas. Therefore, no paragraph should be made up entirely of quotes and paraphrases. In fact, the majority of each paragraph should consist of your ideas, and NOT cited material (either quoted or paraphrased).

DO NOT cite and NEVER QUOTE common knowledge

Paraphrase common knowledge.

Wrong "Professor Donald Blake was born on July 24, 1897."

Why would you ever QUOTE this?

Quote ONLY when the exact words are completely necessary to prove your point

OR

If the words are so good that you NEED to use them

Where do the periods go?

Periods go AFTER the parenthesis in a citation (except for extended quotations).

"Professor Blake . . . . the Nobel Prize for Science" (Smith 6).

If you absolutely have to use Wikipedia, then

Use Wikipedia for common knowledge, NEVER for authoritative support

Cite Wikipedia by the article name, NOT Wikipedia

("Lucille Ball") not (Wikipedia)

Quoting verse or song lyrics

In poetic quotes less than three lines, we put a slash (/) between the lines to mark the line break:

In "The Poem," when William Carlos Williams writes, "It's all in/the sound" (1-2), he is arguing for the lyrical quality of words.

Block Quotes

Current MLA style states that prose text over four lines should be put in a block quote (poetry is handled differently, as we discuss below).

Once upon a time, teachers taught their students that visually a block quote needed be single- spaced and indented five spaces from the right and left margin.

Nowadays, though, the MLA wants us to DOUBLE-SPACE the block quote and indent TEN spaces from the LEFT margin, as is shown in the following example:

Notice how the text is indented ten spaces from the left margin (an effect you can get in most word processors by typing the text, highlighting it, and then clicking on FORMAT--> PARAGRAPH-->INDENT two times) and that it is double-spaced.

Notice too that the block quote is technically part of the preceding sentence because of the use of a colon at the end of the introductory statement. We also do not indent the text after the end of the block quote; we are still in the same paragraph. Be aware that the parenthetical citation goes outside the final period. Finally, note that we do not use quotation marks in a block quote; the indentation tells readers that it is a quote.

In poetic quotes three or more lines long, we need to block quote them by indenting ten spaces from the left. Unlike a prose block quote, however, we use a line of text for each line of the poem. Also, we do not double space a block quote from a poem. Instead, we need to attempt to recreate both the line spacing and the horizontal placement of a poetic line in relation to the lines that come before and after it, as is done in the following example: