It's time to take a snapshot of your progress to this point. I want a copy of what you have regardless of whether it is done or not. You should have something intermediate between the annotated bibliography and a finished product. A rough draft, perhaps.
Please check the following items as you prepare this progress report. If your work has any deficiencies, please correct them quickly.
__ A copy of my work to date is stapled to this page.
__ I understand that copying the work of others is plagiarism regardless of whether I use footnotes or other citations. All my copying is in quotes, and quotes are not a major element of my paper.
__ I have numbered my sources in the bibliography so that I can use citations by number in my paper, avoiding footnotes and Latin. For example,
Senator Billy Joe Bob says we should close bases in somebody else's state [1].
would be compatible with a bibliography entry of the form
[1] Bob, B.J., Comments on Base Closures, in Senate Military Preparedness Subcommittee, Where to Close Bases, Hearings of July 4, 1990.
UNC GOV DOC # Y4 UNO Y 123.
If numerous sources are in the same volume, you can give the volume itself a number and then say "... in [5]".
__ Every item in my bibliography includes a meaningful author, title, page reference, and date of publication. Items in corporate works include the author (or organization) and title.
__ I have divided my paper into sections. Each section is numbered and has a title.
__ I have divided my sections into paragraphs. Every paragraph has a topic sentence, which almost always comes first, and everything in a given paragraph supports that topic sentence.
__ I discuss the two sides of my issue as objectively as possible in two separate sections. I then present my thoughts in an additional section.
__ The first two pages of my paper clearly state the point of the paper and summarize the results. If a reader reads only the first two pages, I have made my best possible presentation.
__ My paper is long enough to look like the serious work of a university graduate, but not long enough to make Prof. Parke feel bad.
Posted by bparke at December 30, 2002 09:52 PM