Table of Contents
Contributors 9
Introduction 15
Chapter 1 What is a Research Paper? 17
Thinking About Research 20
Identifying cause and effect 21
Analyzing a work 22
Solving a problem 23
As You Begin 24
Asking for help 24
The research process 27
Chapter 2 Planning Your Paper 31
Choosing Your Topic 32
Narrowing a broad topic 33
Broadening a narrow topic 33
Organizing Your Research 34
Taking good notes 34
The Thesis Statement 37
Thesis statement formulas 38
Example thesis statements 39
Preparing Your Ideas 42
Brainstorming 42
Chapter 3 Conducting Research 49
What Counts as a Source? 50
Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources 52
Evaluating sources 53
Bias 56
Go to the Library 58
Books, books, books! 60
Internet Research 62
You can't believe everything you read on the internet 62
Concluding Your Research 66
Chapter 4 Avoiding Plagiarism 67
What is Plagiarism? 68
Obvious plagiarism 69
Paraphrasing and summarizing 70
Consequences of plagiarism 72
Citing Your Sources 73
Citation styles 74
Quoting and misquoting 77
Check yourself 79
Chapter 5 Introductions 81
An Introduction's Purpose 84
The inverted pyramid 86
The book 86
Completing your introduction 94
Chapter 6 The Body 97
Supporting Your Thesis 97
Backing up your claims 98
Structuring Your Paper 99
How should you organize your ideas? 100
Paragraphing 102
Writing Style 106
Research paper style 106
Types of sentences 108
Incorporating quotes 115
(Maybe) not just words 119
Keep in mind 121
Chapter 7 The Conclusion 123
Ideas in Your Conclusion 123
Restating your thesis 124
Going over key points 126
Making it Memorable 127
Loose ends vs. big ideas 128
Conclusion techniques 128
Chapter 8 Editing and Revising 133
Editing vs. Revising 136
Questions to ask while you are revising 137
Editing techniques 139
Chapter 9 Common Writing Mistakes 145
Things to Watch Out For 145
Homophones 146
Grammar tips and tricks 151
The Power of Less 160
The word count issue 161
Writing concisely 162
Chapter 10 The Finishing Touches 167
The Title 167
Formatting Your Paper 170
Why formatting matters 171
How to format 172
Afterwards 173
Don't stop learning 174
Conclusion 177
Author's Note 181
Glossary 183
Bibliography 189
Index 191
About the Author 193
