Research Papers

Where you get information from Sources: Where you get information from

Primary Sources First-hand information An example is a personal interview with an expert who “has been there” Are not always avaliable

Secondary Sources: Provides an interpretation of the information in primary sources Examples include: textbooks, encyclopedias, journals, newspapers, and etc.

Illegal Sources: Wikapedia Generated Essays Encyclopedias Sparknotes and Cliffnotes Monarch Notes

Things to remember: Every single time that you use a source, make sure you record the author’s or authors’ name, name of the source (book), type of source, and the publication information. If you use a website, make sure you record the URL and the date that you looked up the information.

Things to remember (cont.) When you take notes from your sources, always try to paraphrase or summarize the information. Always give credit to your source. If you do not give credit (even if you paraphrased or summarized the information), then are you plagiarizing

Common Formats for Papers: MLA (Modern Language Association)- Commonly used in the Language Arts APA (American Psychological Association)- Commonly used in the Social Sciences CMS-(Chicago Manual Style)-Commonly used in Communications/Sometimes used in Language Arts.

General Rules to formatting: Whatever format your instructor requires, you must use! You must use parenthetical citations (this differs slightly depending on the required format) You must have a list of the sources that you used (the formatting of the list depends on the required paper format)

General Rules (cont.) If in doubt, look through your resources and ask your instructor

Websites that will help you on Formatting: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ http://old.oslis.org/ http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/format.shtml

Citation Maker Steps: Go to: http://old.oslis.org/ Click on <MLA CITATION MAKER> (will be in the yellow box on the upper right hand corner) Follow the directions on the page! On the right-hand side, select the type of source that you used. Type in the information that the site asks for

Citation Maker Directions (cont.) Click on <Create Citation Below> Click on <Save All> For your next source, repeat steps 3 on After you saved all of your citations, click on <Sort All> Copy and Paste the information that the Citation Maker gave you into Word

Citation Maker (cont.) You have to make sure that make sure everything is double-spaced and that the second line on is indented.