Term Paper Rules

Term Paper Rules

Points – This is worth 100 points

Due Date:  These are due The Wednesday of the senior’s last week of school.  Late papers will be docked.

Structure

-Minimum of four (4) pages of double-spaced 12 font content word processed or typed or whatever (not including the title page and the bibliography).

-Papers can be longer, but the content is what is significant.  I will not be throwing the papers down my stairs to see which ones travel the farthest and give them the best grades.  No papers should be longer than eight (8) pages long.  Work to write clearly and to-the-point. 

-I won’t be measuring with my ruler, but Indent about an inch on each side and at the top and bottom.  The first page can be about three inches (3”) down.  Use 12 font.  In other words If you hand me in something that has huge letters, and starts in the middle of each page – and if you draw lots of picture of trees and airplanes to use more space  -  I might get suspicious.

-Again - This would be double-spaced.     

Bibliography

-Bibliography of sources:  You need to have one of these

-In this you site your sources.  This might be books, articles, sections of books, magazines, interviews or artifacts.

-You can use the Internet to find your sources, but I want you to site them, from where they actually are.   Some sources “might” be exclusively from the internet such as some u-tube you found or something from a blog or whatever, but they need to be credible – and not something made up.  Just because someone said the sky is green, doesn’t mean it is.

Style

-This isn’t an English class, so I don’t really care what kind of style you use, but you need to be consistent nevertheless.  You need to show your sources, and site where you found them.  You can Google some styles (APA, Turabian), or you can just be consistent.

-Tables and Graphs:   You can have these if you want.  Tables have totals, graphs have conclusions.

-Quoting:  If you quote something someone else said, it needs to be in quotation marks and cited.  If you “paraphrase” something or say it in your own words, then you need to cite it as well.  You can’t change one “and” to a “but” in a fifty word quote and consider that a paraphrase.  A paraphrase is your own words about someone else’s work.

Other Rules

- I might use our computer program to check your paper if I think you may have copied it from someplace - so don't do that.  You can site sources and quote other works, but let this be your own paper.   

-Enjoy writing this.