| Writing Research Papers |
|
There are many methods of researching and writing papers. The important rule to remember is to do them now to avoid cramming later. Unfortunately, most people, especially students, seem to ignore this rule constantly. Furthermore, research papers are supposed to be informative and full of details in relation to the subject. In the case of research papers for classroom assignments, students seem to want to skim and skip as much detail as possible. Before, the libraries, bookstores and encyclopedia volumes were the only resources available for research material. This made researching a tedious job as the material would have to be read, written down in summary and, finally, collated and composed into the paper. Things are a lot easier today due to the presence of the internet. Surfing the internet for information and details is as easy as cutting and pasting and doing a little editing to present a valid research paper. The first thing to do is to note down the details of your resource. Taking note of the author's name, the title of the book, magazine, article, page number and date of publication is a good way to make sure that, if something happens to your resources, you can look for them in other places. For example, you've been researching in the school library. Without your knowing it, the library decides to replace their shelves with new material and subsequently donates the old stuff to other libraries. With this done, you would have lost your source material. If you didn't take note of the details of the article, you would have to look for another article and start all over again. Whether you put the details onto a piece of paper or save it in a text file on your computer, taking down article details is important to maintain the continuity of your research. There are many ways to prepare the body of your research paper. It can be written down as an historical review, problem to solution, cause to effect and solution or as an argument for or against the subject with your reasons for your point of view as the main body of the paper. Once you determine which way you are going to write, you can proceed to creating an outline of your paper. Writing an introduction containing a brief summary of the subject at hand is a good way to start. For a better idea on creating outlines, you can study several samples in the internet or library and read about the methodology of creating outlines as well as to get tips on making an outline that will keep the text of the paper flowing from one section to the next in a seemingly seamless manner. When quoting a source, be sure to place quotation marks before and after the text of the source. For example, "Just do it", says Michael Jordan. You may even be compelled to include your references in the paper which means that you will probably use footnotes. To get a better idea of document writing styles, Check Purdue University’s OWL (Online Writing Lab), Dartmouth’s Writing Center, or another reputable source for your source-citing, outlining, writing and other how-to-write-research-paper advice. |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|