(Note: These guidelines are for the Position Papers for the Early American Republic course.)
Three times during the semester, you will submit a 2-page “Position Paper” both on paper and to the D2L dropbox. The schedule in the course syllabus specifies the due dates and topics.
Follow these guidelines for each position paper:
Begin with a brief introductory paragraph that introduces the topic and provides basic historical context.
State your thesis at the end of the introduction. Rather than vaguely signaling a position, your thesis statement should be quite specific.
Somewhere near the beginning of the essay, define the key terms in question. For the first paper, for instance, you will need to define democratic. (It’s best to use your own words or to quote a historian, rather than quoting a dictionary.)
Your essay should BRIEFLY quote (and paraphrase) the assigned primary and secondary sources in order to provide evidence and examples for your claim.
Adhere to the Writing Rules posted on this site.
In order to keep the attention focused on the subject at hand (events that transpired long, long ago), please avoid using the first person.
Avoid oversimplifying the issue in order to put up a strong argument; instead, show various perspectives on the issue at hand. Strengthen your argument by qualifying it, rather than by exaggerating its merits.
Use Chicago-style footnotes or endnotes to cite your sources. See p. 193 (section 42) of Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual, which is a required text for the course. Be sure to format your notes using footnote/endnote style, rather than bibliographic style. Also, be sure to observe the rule (42a) about subsequent references. The first citation of every source should give complete information. Subsequent citations should include only the author’s last name, a shortened title, and the page number. Finally, don’t torture yourself by trying to format footnotes manually; your word processing software should have an “insert footnote” function. (Click here for help with inserting notes in MS Word.)
Take care to avoid plagiarism. Review my plagiarism guidelines. Remember that you must use quotation marks to indicate that you have borrowed language directly from a source, and you must quote accurately. Stick to the assigned readings as your sources.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 7:53 am and is filed under Early American Republic, Writing.
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