Finding a topic when you have almost unlimited resources from which to choose can be an exhausting task. Taking a dive into the unknown can be rewarding when you take the opportunity to work with a topic you may not have given much thought to before. A lot of students, on the other hand, choose an author or a topic with which they feel comfortable. Sometime choosing a topic is just between you and your teacher.

The first item on your research agenda should be a narrowing of the topic. You can only accomplish this task by spending a day or two reading. As you read, you will start to notice certain facts, themes, or characteristics about your topic that appear over and over. Note these facts well for they may become the springboards for further research. You may be apprehensive at first about writing a paper of the required length; however, in the end, you will find that you will have to edit a lot of information you have gathered. Because information can be somewhat unlimited - or so it seems - it is really quite important to narrow your field of research now.

Your research paper will focus on what other people have to say about your topic; the paper is not an essay of personal opinion. Ideally, you begin with an idea, a rough thesis. You then begin to gently stir the waters to see if you feel a certain focus with your material. This focus becomes your tentative idea. You should have a rough thesis in mind by the end of your second day of your research. Simply put – a thesis is a one sentence explanation of your paper; it should also create a need for the paper to be written. Your introduction should funnel down into a thesis.

The following is a commonly used system of note taking that you may use if your teacher does not have another preference. Although the temptation is always present to use notepaper for notes, index cards are far superior because they may be sifted, shuffled, and spread out.

Ideally, you should purchase 3"x5" cards and 4"x6" cards. Use 3"x5" cards for bibliography and 4"x6" for note taking. Write all information on your cards in ink (pencil smears too easily) on one side only.

Your bibliography cards contain the information that you will later use in the Works Cited section. If you are not sure about what information to include, use the list that follows for starters and then check it against the proper form required by your instructor. Everything counts in a bibliography entry: periods, commas, and order of presentation. You must learn to be exact. Writing a proper bibliographic entry is not a question of personal choice or style.

In the upper left hand corner of each bib card place a letter of the alphabet, starting with "A." Each new source must have a new bib card. Letter these cards consecutively. This lettering saves you from having to put all the bibliographic information on all your note cards.

On your note card, put "A" in the upper left-hand corner of cards that contain notes from source A. In the upper right-hand corner of the card, put the subject of your notes. This subject should be as narrow as possible. For instance, if you are doing a paper on Emily Dickinson, putting "life" as a subject would be too broad. Consider such divisions as "early life" or "religious upbringing" instead. At any time when you are taking notes and find a different subject that relates to your topic, immediately start a new note card. Do not put more than one subject on any note card. Keeping to this system means that sometimes you may only have one or two sentences on your note card. The advantage of this system is that later you can combine note cards on the same subjects that you have found in different sources.

At the far left of your note card, leave a narrow margin. In that margin, you should place the page numbers from your source. You must know what those page numbers are because you must always give credit to your sources even when you are not quoting. Number your cards at the bottom. Always begin with "1" each time you start a fresh subject. You may have four note cards on "early life" and two on "religious upbringing." Sometimes you will take notes on several cards.

Below is a sample note card:

Here are some sample entries for bibliography cards. BHSS uses MLA form.

Lobdell, Jare. England and Always: Tolkien's World of the Rings. Grand Rapids: Erdmans,

1981.

Berry, Jason, Jonathan Foose, and Tad Jones. Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Music

Since World War II. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986.

Mowry, George E. "The Progressive Party, 1912 and 1924." History of U.S. Political Parties.

Gen. ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger. Vol. 3. New York: Chelsea, 1973, 2541-669. 4 vols.

Check to see if your book is an edition or translation since they require special forms as well.

Prince, Dinah. "Marriage in the '80s." New York 1 June 1987: 30-38.

(note: New York is the name of a magazine)

An article from a scholarly journal:

Cope, Jackson I. "Bernini and Roman Commedie Ridicolose. PMLA 102 (1987): 177-86.

"Bertha Advances toward Bahamas." CNN World News. 9 July 1996.

If the web site includes an author, the author comes first (last name, first name) just as in the example from the magazine.

Gibaldi, Joseph, and Walter S. Achtert. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 3rd ed.

New York: MLA Association of America, 1989.

You should provide the following information and incorporate it into the format that follows:

Anyone can post a web page; anyone can put any kind of information in that same web page. The web is a tremendous source of information as more and more scholars are posting their work and more and more journals are publishing online. Google is a part of a project to put books from major college libraries online. To deny the internet as a useful tool is to deny the progress of research and technology. But to totally embrace the internet without some kind of discernment is like eating food out of cans with no labels.

What’s a person to do? The authors of Writing Analytically (4^th ed.), David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen suggest that you search for the author of the website, which is probably on the home page, and determine his or hers expertise and affiliation. You will also want to check the URL and see where the site originates. If you have a long URL, you can backspace slash mark by slash mark to find the home page. You will need to determine who is responsible for the site, who posts to it, how the information is cited, and whether the website has an "agenda" or not. Can you determine if the information is accurate? When was it last updated? (Rossenwasser and Stephen 328-329).

Here is an example of website analysis:

A website exists that lists the ten most dangerous books. A conservative organization has posted the site; therefore, you should be able to deduce that it has a certain slant. Even if you have the same opinions as the website, you need to keep that in perspective. You can make this statement about any number of issues and websites. Be aware!

The most common URLs end in "org" (posted by an organization), "com" (posted by a commercial enterprise), "gov" (posted by the government) and "edu" (posted by an institution). Before you think that anything on an "edu" page is safe, think about all those students posting their high school papers online. Even if they have posted their works cited sections, you want to say away from those cites. High school and college students, even if they have researched their subjects well, are not experts.

I’m reluctant to "clear" a website, but you can generally trust museum websites, government websites, and medical websites without having to do a lot of close looking and asking. I often ask students why they think a website is good, and they often answer "Because it has a lot of good information on it," or "Because there is a lot of stuff here." Those answers do not validate the website. Be critical! Be suspicious! Be analytical!

If you are interested in more information on how to judge a website, follow this link:

http://dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Instructional_Technology/Evaluation/Web_Site_Evaluation/

Hopefully you can find much of what you need at South. Please see the librarian or your instructor when you feel you have exhausted the resources in South's library. The Monroe County Library and IU are available to you as well. All libraries, even IU, tend to be user friendly. Check with your teacher before using any kind of reference book for a source. High school students should not be using general encyclopedias such as World Book for sources or the more popular online Wikipedia. Why? The information in encyclopedias is too general; it provides a good background and a starting point for your reading. Wikipedia provides the same type of information, but at this point in time, the people who contribute do not have to be scholars in the field. (See above under analysis of a web site).

When looking at your source, you would be wise to copy down necessary bibliographic information before you start taking notes. If you don't know the form to use, make sure you get the following information so you'll have it when you have the proper form in front of you later:

1. Title of book

2. Author(s) of book

3. Title of article

4. Title of author of an article

5. Title of a series (such as European Authors)

6. Volume numbers

7. Pages on which an article is found (either in an encyclopedia or magazine)

9. Editor(s)

10. Name of magazine, newspaper, or journal

11 Place of publication (pick the place nearest to Bloomington)

12. Name of publisher

13. Date (pick the most recent date)

The form you will use for your bibliography card depends on what your instructor expects. The most common style books for this kind of form are the Modern Language Association, American Philosophical Association, and Chicago Style. English and foreign languages use the MLA for the most part; the sciences and social sciences tend to use the APA format.

After you have finished taking notes, it is important to familiarize yourself with what you have written down on those note cards. Read through your notes as if you were actually studying them for an exam. If you find that you have more than one topic covered on a note card, do one of two things; either make new note cards that separate those topics or include the second topic in the upper right hand corner.

You have already read through your notes slowly while doing Part Seven. Now, read through your notes a second time and listen to what your notes tell you. Then on a 5"x8" card or half-sheet of paper, form a new thesis statement which reflects the content of the notes you have researched. Underneath the thesis statement, write the major points you have covered in your notes. Put the note card to one side.

Take up your notes again and on a sheet of paper, copy down the list of all the topics you have on the upper right-hand side of your notes. Key this topic list with the cross-reference to your bib cards. For example: symbolism - A. If you have more than one source in which you had found the same topic, be sure to include that in your list: symbolism - A, C. This list is extremely important. Don't lose it.

You have now reached the actual prewrite stage. Some of us work better under different systems. The choice at this point is yours. You may use one of the following prewrite techniques: list, bubble, brainstorming, or outline. I would suggest one of the first three since it allows you to think without being constricted by order. Use the information from your topic list as a guide. Feel free to include other information from your notes.

At this point in your research the outline becomes a necessary tool in helping you to organize. Bubbles, webs, and brainstorming are great tools, but they do not help you organize!

One of the main purposes of the outline is to help establish logical order out of your prewrite. As preventive medicine, it will keep you on track as you actually do the draft of your paper and protect against digressions. Writing in a research paper should be linear; prewrites are often circular in nature.

You should have three things in front of you when you do your outline: the 5"x 8" note card from the prewrite, your topic list, and your prewrite. Use capitalized Roman numerals for your major topics. You may decide to use "I" and "III" as your introduction and conclusion and "II" as your body. The capital letters of the alphabet would head the individual topics of your research. For further information on outlining, please see the chapter on that subject.

An outline is exactly what the title implies, an outline or overview of your paper or the chapter in your text. You need not include everything in an outline, just the highlights of the subject. Deciding just what those highlights are is an important tool in studying an assignment or planning a paper. Sometimes how extensive an outline should be depends upon your teacher; be sure and ask before outlining.

The two basic types of outlines are sentence and topic. In the sentence outline, every entry must be in the form of a complete sentence, even the entries after the Roman numerals. Be careful not to include sentence fragments. And be careful not to mix sentence and topic outlines.

A sentence outline tends to be longer and more involved than a topic outline because of the nature of writing sentences. A topic outline is shorter but it is very demanding in its form.

Every word in the headings must be parallel to other words in the same headings. For example, I, II, etc. must be parallel and A, B, and C must be parallel under the individual headings. A under I must be parallel to B under I. But A under II does not have to be parallel to A under I.

To be parallel, the syntax of the topics must be identical. Look at the example below at A, B, and C under I. The analysis of the syntax is adjective, noun, and subordinate clause. You will see that the syntax is consistent throughout A, B, and C. You may add or omit adjectives. They are simply placeholders and do not actually require a corresponding adjective in another topic. The following is a sample of a topic outline written for a paper that discusses three main points.

Outline

Thesis Statement: This sentence tells what the thesis of your paper is.

  I. Introduction (You may use the word "introduction")

     A. First point you intend to talk about

     B. Second point you intend to talk about

     C. Third point you intend to talk about

  II. Body

      A. Actual discussion of first point

          1. Points you wish to get across

          2. More points you wish to get across

     B. Actual discussion of second point

         1. Points you wish to get across

         2. More points you wish to get across   

     C. Actual discussion of third point

         1. Points you wish to get across

         2. More points you wish to get across

III. Conclusion

    A. Summary of major points in your paper

    B. Establishment of your thesis.

Below is an extended form of an outline if you should need to be very detailed as when outlining a chapter in a history textbook. Try to avoid such detail.

   I.

      A.

          1.

              a.

                 (1)

                     (a)

                     (b)

                 (2)

             b.

          2.

       B.

  II.

Take up your note pages and cards and separate them out in the order of the topics of your outline. Do not worry about mixing the sources at this point since you have carefully documented each card.

Beginning to write the actual paper may seem like a huge endeavor, but actually you've already done most of the hard work.

Writing begins with reading. Once again, read through your note cards, which you now have separated out according to topics. Writing also begins with thinking. Give yourself time to think about what you have written in the notes.

The introduction to your research paper is very important. Here you establish the tone of the paper. Here you set out to impress your reader with the control of your research. Somewhere in the introduction you must include your thesis statement. Put it where you feel it is the most effective. Most writers will begin the paper with the thesis. If you do not choose that method, take care that you do place it strategically elsewhere in your introduction.

Remember that the introduction is an overview of your paper, not the actual research. Don't start revealing your secrets too soon. Introductions are tricky paragraphs; several different methods exist for successful introductions. You might want to think of some kind of "hook." Yes, even in a research paper, you will want to convince people to keep reading. Some introductions give an overview of the main points that you are going to discuss in the order that you will discuss them in the actual paper. Other introductions might be more general in nature – introducing the issue that is to be discussed and talking about its importance or relevance.

Looking at your outline, pick up the notes that discuss the first point you wish to discuss. Again, read through those notes and then lay them aside. Begin writing without looking at the cards. This step will help you to avoid plagiarism. After you have written down your thoughts, look back through the cards and check for omissions. Check and see if there is something there that you would rather put in a quote. Continue this process as you work down through the topics of your outline.

A carefully chosen quote in your conclusion can be a nice finishing touch, but the final words of the paper should be your own. Keep in mind that an introduction tells the reader where you intend to go in your paper and the body tells the process you used to arrive there. The conclusion should show that you have established your thesis. If a conclusion simply states the ideas of the introduction, you really haven’t moved the paper forward. Consider what final thought you would like to leave with your reader. It’s also perfectly acceptable to leave your reader with something thought-provoking – something you have not quite settled in your paper.

A research paper is just that: research. Hopefully, you started out with a germ of an idea on your own and sought to prove your idea by researching the thoughts of others. The use of sources to suit your purpose is the product and process of that paper. Your writing should guide the reader to your conclusions. How much of your own opinion enters the paper is dependent on the wishes of your teacher. High school papers tend to be driven more by research and less by independent thinking in the beginning with the balance shifting as you get older. Never make assumptions about the expectations of your instructor – in high school or in college.

Almost everything you say in a paper must be documented. The documentation is a tedious but a necessary task. Almost every sentence you write will be followed by documentation. Beware of the temptation to quote extensively. Reserve direct quotes for sentences that have such power that you feel that paraphrasing would only weaken. If an author uses a particular word or phrase that is singular to the topic at hand, you may use that word or phrase, but you should put it in quotes. If you quote a phrase, be sure that the phrase fits into the syntax of your sentence.

Your paper consists of three types of reporting: summary, paraphrase, and quotes. The first two are in your own words, but all three must be documented. If you do not paraphrase your source carefully, you are still guilty of plagiarism, even if you gave credit to your source. You have credited your source for the idea, but you have stolen the format! If you have several sentences from the same page, you do not need to document until you change pages, change sources, or change paragraphs.

The MLA system of documentation uses in-text documentation. Place the documentation in a parenthesis at the end of the sentence, after quotes (if it is a quotation), and before the period. Include the author's last name followed by the page number(s) (Gibaldi and Achtert 137). If you are using information from several consecutive pages, it is acceptable to hold off on documentation until you have exhausted those pages and then include them (137-140). Gibaldi and Achtert state that if you introduce the author of your source in the sentence, you need not include the name in your parenthesis (137-138). If you do not use the name, it must occur in the parenthesis (Gilbaldi and Achtert 138). If you have two or more sources by the same author, you need to include an abbreviation of the work after the last name of the author. If you have two authors from two different sources use a semi-colon to separate (Hansen 45; Hoagland 60). Basically, you document when you change page numbers, change paragraphs, or change sources.

Other systems of documentation require endnotes that are gathered together at the end of your paper. Instead of parenthetical information as explained above, you would follow your sentence with an elevated number or superscript. A note at the end of your paper by that number would list your source. That notation is comprehensive and in many ways is similar to a bibliographic entry. In fact, some teachers waive the requirement of a Works Cited section in view of the fact that the necessary information is included in the note. The form of the endnote depends on which system you are using (MLA, etc.).

Footnotes, for the most part, are outdated except for footnotes that may expand further on a point. Some instructors may still prefer footnotes, so be prepared and remember to ask first. Thanks to word processing programs, footnotes are fairly simple.

The Works Cited page is often the easiest of all the tasks you will accomplish in the paper. On this page, you will list only the resources that you actually used in the paper. Using "Works Consulted" or "Selected Bibliography" as a title allows you to include sources you read or from which you took notes, but which you did not actually use in your paper. To many, the title Bibliography implies that you have researched everything on your subject, a task far beyond what you are accomplishing here.

Take your bibliography cards and arrange them in alphabetical order. Look at the author's names to determine order, or, if there is no author, use the first important word of the title. Then type them exactly as they appear on your cards.

The Works Cited page continues with the numbering of your paper. If the last page of your paper was 5, then the Works Cited page is 6. Title this page Works Cited. Double space after the title and throughout this section. There is no extra spacing between entries. Remember that the first line of the entry is flush against the left margin and that subsequent lines of the same entry must be indented five spaces. The Works Cited page is double-spaced. No extra spacing is present between entries. You do not number your entries.

The MLA suggests that you not use a title page but rather put your title on the first page of the paper. Use the following method:

Place your name, your teacher’s name, the course, and the date on four different lines, each one flush with the left margin. Double-space throughout.

The next entry should be your title. Do not underline it! Double-space and begin your paper. Everything in your paper should be double-spaced.

All paragraphs should be indented five spaces from the left margin. If you have a quote that runs more than four typed lines, then you should set that quote off with ten indented spaces. In such cases, do not use quotation marks. Each subsequent line of the quote should also be indented ten spaces from the left margin. If you omit part of the quote at the beginning or in the middle, use ellipses that are a series of three dots ... to indicate the omission. Use four dots if the omission occurs at the end of the quote.

Your paper should be on 81/2"x11" paper. Your margins should be one inch on the top, bottom, left, and right. You may paginate in different places, but you should be consistent. You should also check with the specific manual of style that your instructor has asked you to use. For instance, MLA suggests that you number your paper in the upper right-hand corner. Typing your last name after the pagination is useful in case your paper comes apart. Most of you will be using a computer program where pagination is as easy as making a choice.

If you are turning in an outline, remember that you should double-space after a period and double-space throughout the outline. Please place the title of your paper on the outline. Your next entry should be the thesis statement, and then finally the outline itself. Number the pages of the outline with small Roman numerals (i, ii).