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Writing a Successful Research Paper

© Bonny Yokeley

The dreaded research paper... Sometimes it is difficult to determine who stresses about this paper more, the student or the parents. How many memories do you have of staying up all hours of the night helping your children type that final draft or document that last required article? Have you found yourself frantically searching for the newest method of internally documenting a web site? What about running up to a 24-hour Wal-Mart to buy another ink cartridge? Each time this happens, you are probably promising yourself that you will never let this happen again. Hopefully, after this article, this time you can hold true to that promise. I have written the body of this article to your teen instead of to you, the parent, because the assignment is ultimately the student's responsibility.

Resources? An interesting Houston-based cite that may be useful for students writing essays about novels is Questia.com. This cite has a digital library with 35,000 complete books. For $9.95 a week or $149.95 a year, a student can do an electronic search for books on a specific topic, read them online, mark appropriate pages, write notes in the margins, save the work, and print out the bibliography.

A word about plagiarism. . . The offence for plagiarism varies from teacher to teacher and school to school, but plagiarism is never acceptable. To learn how to avoid making such a mistake, you should go to two web sites. First, "An Antidote to Plagiarism" has a lesson and activity that shows students how to write a research paper without copying. Its web address is http://ousd.k12.ca.us/~copypren/antidote... . Second, "Documenting Electronic and Traditional Sources: A Lesson in Research" involves a four-week teaching unit for middle school students on how to conduct Internet searches and properly cite the findings. Go to http://www.nyit.edu/0695/slessons/doc.ht... for this guide.

MLA or APA? Once you have the content for your essay, you need to ensure that the format in which you write your final draft is done correctly. APA format is typically used for science-based classes, and while it is very common at the collegiate level, it is not used frequently in high schools. MLA format is used in all English classes at all levels, and since most research papers at the high school level are written for English class, I will go into more detail on this style.

To get you started, I will discuss how to layout the paper, internally document sources, and prepare a works cited page. The paper layout for MLA has actually become simpler over the years. Just remember these five guidelines: use 1" margins on all four sides, double space the entire essay, indent ½" for each new paragraph without skipping additional spaces between them, center the title but do not italicize or underline it, and place a header ½" from the top, right side that includes your last name and page number on all pages. Next, when internally documenting for APA, you would place the author's last name, publishing year, and page number in parentheses immediately after the direct quote. For example: (Smith, 1998, 128). If it is a paraphrase, you omit the page number. For MLA, you would place the author's last name and page number in parentheses immediately after the direct quote or paraphrase. For example: (Smith 128). Notice, both require you to place the quotation mark before the internal documentation and place the period after the internal documentation; however, you do not use commas to separate the author and page number with MLA. Also, with MLA, if a quote is five or more lines in length, you will indent the entire quote an additional inch on the left only instead of using quotation marks, and you will place the period before the internal documentation. Next, when writing a bibliography for APA you will state the author, year, title, publishing city, and publishing company. For example: Smith, J. (1998). A complete guide to mammals. New York: Major Publishers. Notice that you do not provide the author's full first name or capitalize the title, pay attention to periods, and remember to reverse indent. For MLA you will use the same information but in a slightly different format. For example: Smith, John. A Complete Guide to Mammals. New York: Major Publishers, 1998. Notice the differences? While creating a works cited page for MLA, you must remember five rules. First, alphabetize all of your sources by the first word in each entry, which is usually the author. Second, title the page Works Cited, but don't underline or quote it. Third, continue the header that you have in your paper so the page number should follow the last page of your essay. Fourth, begin each entry at the left margin and indent ½" for all subsequent lines, which is called reverse indenting. Last, double space the entire page, but do not skip additional spaces between entries.