Research writing meeting

We had a great meeting last Friday, May 8. We covered how to format a research paper using APA style guide as well as the rules of thumb for in-text citations and the reference list.

While buying the APA style guide is a good idea, they are coming out with a new edition in July, so I’m not sure you would want to buy a copy at this point. However, the guide can be checked out at the library and most information can be found online.

Citing electronic sources can be tricky, so please dig around and find the proper way to do it. 

A few people asked about how often we should be citing in our papers or when we had to cite. In general, we should be citing anytime we write an idea, thought, or example that we have learned from someone else or from a collection of sources (you can cite all of them together). This includes direct quotes, indirect quotes, paraphrases, summaries of a situation, and the range of basic to complex ideas. Best rule is to over-cite rather than under-cite. 

Remember a research paper is showing that you've investigated what other people have thought, expressed, or posited  about a certain topic,  scenario, or case study. Your work, as a researcher, is to bring all those ideas into one place (your paper), explore them, weave them into a coherent and organized narrative that walks the reader along your thought process, and draw conclusions or make suggestions (using evidence) that are original, or furthers the discussion, based on what you have found. 

Additionally: Use of third-person is conventional in research writing. Use past tense when writing about findings/ideas that have already happened or have been published.

Below are a few links that I shared that should be helpful in writing and citing in our research papers:

http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html

http://www.apastyle.org/electext.html

http://www.wisc.edu/writetest/Handbook/DocAPA.html

http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

We also discussed formatting. Our papers should have a title page, a separate abstract page, and then on the third page your paper should begin. Please look at The Owl At Purdue Website for the correct formatting for your title page and abstract page.  The basic paper should have these level-1 headings: Introduction, Review (or Literature Review), and Conclusion. See APA style guide for heading levels.

--Jen Lovejoy