Writing a Paper for Me

Writing Papers for Me

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Ordering your paper

Table of Contents

Writing A Research Paper for Me

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How to write an academic paper (doc file)

How to write an academic paper (a bit briefer, ppt)

Avoid accidental plagiarism

Quick Stop: Compare formats for end- footnotes, parenthetical citation, and Works Cited/Bibliography pages.

The Basics

Layout and Design

Always rework your research questoin and thesis statement after you have written your conclusion. You may need to readjust them. They should also be the last things you check as you finish up the paper. Are they still valid and appropriate as written?

If you work from an outline, set each heading up at the appropriate level. The table of contents will assemble according to these headings.

As you insert tables, figures, and annotations if you are doing footnotes/endnotes to cite your sources, or use informational notes to explain the logic of your paper, Word will automatically keep track of them, changing numbers as necessary, and creating the list when you are ready.

Section Breaks. If you set up your paper in sections, you will find it easier to manage such things as page numbering. Just place your cursor within the first section and set the pagination as Roman Numerals. Then, move your cursor to section two, which begins with your Introduction, and set pagination for Arabic numerals, starting at #1.

Illustrations

Always provide full bibliographic information in your captions. Many people do not read the text in a linear fashion, and often peruse the illustrations separately from the written text. Thus, a parenthetical citation of your source in a nearby paragraph may be missed.
Illustrations is a generic term covering both tables and figures. Remember that a table is any list of characters and numbers, while a figure is any illustration that is not a table. In general, tables have their titles above them, while figures are titled below.
Use the Microsoft Work captioning tool (on my machine it is under Insert -> Reference -> Caption. Always give your illustration a title. There are separate placement choices for a figure or a table.

Now let's think what's less than satisfactory about this table of contents taken from an empirical term paper.

Inappropriate
table of contents

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Categorization
3. Results
3.1 The German data
3.2 The British data
4. Evaluation
5. Literature

The first question you should ask yourself is whether all the necessary parts of a table of contents are present. The answer is, of course, no. There is no conclusion, nor is there a review of previous literature. A section on method is also missing. The section entitled "categorization" should rather be a sub-point of a chapter on methodology. Finally, there is no appendix which would include the data collected in the empirical study.

Next question: Do you know what the term paper is about? Well, it appears to be empirical and contrastive, does not it? However, you will admit that this table of contents could have been taken from a number of contrastive empirical studies from one on speech act realizations to the use of language in the media across cultures. In other words, it is too vague and, therefore, does not serve as a good guide for the reader.

Appropriate Tables and Lists

Table of contents

1 Introduction......................................    1
2 Apologies............................................ 2
    2.1 What is an apology?..................    3
    2.2 Apology strategies...................... 4

3 Method...............................................   6
    3.1 Instrument...................................  6
    3.2 Informants.................................... 7
    3.3 Data collection procedure........... 7
4 Findings..............................................  8
    4.1 Frequency of apology
strategies..................................  8
    4.2 Illocutionary ..........................    10
5 Discussion......................................    12
6 Conclusion .....................................   14

Works Cited .....................................   16
Glossary ...........................................    17
Appendices.........................................   18
   Appendix 1 Apology speech .........   18
   Appendix 2 Questionnaire.............   19

List of illustrations

Figures

Figure 1. Copy of survey instrument........................... 6
Figure 2. Informant criteria................. 7

Tables

Table 1. School literacy rates by district..................................... 9

Table 2. School literacy rates by
Income ..................................14

What else can we say? Well, let us put ourselves in the reader's position again. Do you think this table of contents will be useful in helping your readers navigate text? To a certain extent, yes: The results come after the introduction, etc., but there are no sub-points included to make the reader's job easier except those which differentiate between the presentation of the German and British data. Even here, however, the structuring is not ideal. Indeed, it appears rather simplistic and less than reader-friendly to structure an empirical study around the German and British data rather than around a specific linguistic strategy or feature of the data at hand. No page numbers have been included - the reader has to flick through the text to search for some orientation.

Finally, of course, you haven't helped you reader find desired illustrations. These days, people often browse specifically for data presented that way. Help them out by providing a paginated list.

Now, let us turn to a more suitable Table of Contents:

Microsoft Word will keep track of your sections for you if you use Headings, and generate your TOC where you put your cursor. It will do the same thing with your List of Illustrations if you use Caption as you go along. Remember that if you add anything, you'll need to generate new lists. Note: If you have Microsoft Word print your table of contents, then you won't have the problem I did over on the right getting the page numbers to line up correctly. Because letters of the alphabet are not uniform in width, you'll find it impossible to line up the numbers by hand unless you use a tab. It's far easier to set headings and let Word do it.

Table of contents - A Reminder

Include all pertinent sections in the table of contents (i.e. Introduction, Literature review, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Bibliography, Appendix)

Page numbers of your table of contents and list of illustrations
are in Roman numberals

Include page numbers

Use sub-points and indent these

Use explicit but brief titles and subtitles

Structure your paper according to your focus of interest

2002; Last revised July 14, 2008
Dr. Bonnie Duncan
bduncan@millersville.edu
1-717-871-2080
English Department
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551

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