Writing tips

Preparing papers

Here are some general rules on preparing a well-formatted paper. Professors differ somewhat in what they expect, but most of these rules should be useful for papers written in any course. The details may seem familiar or obvious to some people, but experience shows that they are unknown or unclear to many others. And they matter.

1. Format: Please observe the following:

• Spacing:  Type double-space, not single space or 1½ space. Not only does this look better, it gives me room to make comments.
• Margins:  Allow generous margins on both sides as well as top and bottom, for the same two reasons as double-spacing.
• Page numbering:  Number all pages after the first.
• Title:  On papers longer than two or three pages, find a title that conveys something of the line of argument. Put the title on a cover sheet.
• Stapling:  Put the paper together with a staple or a paper clip. I won't accept papers without one or the other. Stacks of papers are hard enough to manage without loose sheets!

2. Footnotes: Provide references for any quotations, paraphrases, or unusual information. In short papers, where you use only the assigned reading (and therefore where I know what you are referring to), you can do it the easy way, just inserting a note in the text, in parentheses, after the sentence to which it refers, like this: (Djilas, 27) Where that would be ambiguous, because we have used more than one book by the author, the form is this: (Rothschild, East Central Europe, 93) If you prefer to use notes at the foot of the page or at the end of the paper, you can also use that simple form (without parentheses, of course) as long as they refer to assigned books or articles. Any other sources need to be identified in full footnote form.

In the final research paper you will need full footnotes, either at the foot of the page or at the end of the paper. The footnotes in Rothschild's books are good ones to imitate. See the brief introduction to Footnoting below.

3. Bibliography: You don't need a bibliography in two- or five-page papers, if you are citing only course readings, which is all I expect. But if you choose to refer to other readings, these should be fully identified somewhere -- in the footnotes themselves, or in a brief list at the end. 

For the final research paper you will need a proper bibliography. Unless you have done this often before, use a model from somewhere and proceed with care -- it's a fairly technical exercise.  See the brief introduction to Bibliographies below.

4. Quotations:

• Precision:  Quote exactly in every respect, down to capitalization and punctuation. If you leave out something from the middle of your quotation, indicate the omission with dots ....  However, we don't normally use dots at the beginning of a quotation (since the fact that you are starting in the middle is generally obvious) or at the end.
• Insertions:  If you insert something into a quotation, put the addition in square brackets [ ], not ordinary parentheses. (If you're not using a computer, draw in the square brackets by hand.)
• Block quotations:  If (and only if) the quotation is four typed lines or longer, use the form of a block quotation, which is single-spaced, has all lines indented from the left margin, and does not have quotation marks around it.

5. Foreign words: Italicize or underline them. Italics are always used for foreign words in a printed text, and underlining is an acceptable equivalent.

6. Don’ts:

• No abbreviations With very few exceptions, abbreviations are not used in formal writing. Write "twentieth", not "20th".
• No contractions (like "didn't"): Formal writing is different from speech, and this is one prominent way in which they differ.
• No split infinitives (an adverb between "to" and the verb, as in "to boldly go"): There are some exceptions to this prohibition, but not many.

There are variations in footnote style, but if you remember certain main points you should always be within the acceptable range:

• A reference footnote is treated as a sentence: it begins with a capital letter and ends with a period. (This may be because some footnotes do consist of, or include, regular sentences.) It follows that the parts of a footnote reference are separated by commas, not by periods.
• Give the author's name in normal order, first name first. There’s no reason to do otherwise, is there?
• Put the publication data of a book inside parentheses, normally in one of these forms: (City, date) or (City: Publisher, date). I don’t care whether you give the publisher, but other professors may be more finicky. Either way, be consistent. As with parentheses used elsewhere there is never any punctuation right before the parentheses, but there may be a comma or other punctuation right after them, as needed.
• Use Ibid. or ibid. (capital "I" if it's the first word in the footnote) to indicate the same source as in the previous note. If you are referring to the same page in the same source, then you can use just ibid., standing alone; otherwise, give the page number. (Note that ibid. is an abbreviation, always followed by a period. It’s Latin, but it isn’t usually italicized.)
• The abbreviations op. cit. and loc. cit. aren't used any more. When you come back to cite a work cited earlier, just use the author's last name followed by a page number; if you are citing more than one work by that author, give the author's last name and a short version of the title, then the page number.
• The abbreviation for "page" is "p.", and for "pages" it is "pp.". It is acceptable to omit these and just give the number.

Some examples:

1. Milovan Djilas, The New Class (London, 1957), p. 53.

2. Ibid., pp. 78-79.

3. Mark Frankland, The Patriot’s Revolution (Chicago, 1992), p. xvii.

4. "The Tito-Stalin Correspondence, March-June 1948," in Gale Stokes (ed.), From Stalinism to Pluralism (New York, 1991), p. 59.

5. Misha Glenny, "Yugoslavia: The Revenger's Tragedy," The New York Review of Books, August 13, 1992, pp. 33-35.

6. Djilas, New Class, pp. 30 and 97, and Glenny, p. 35.

As with footnotes, small variations in style don't matter so long as you understand the basic rules:

• Unlike a footnote, a bibliographical entry is not a sentence. Its segments -- author or editor; title; publication data (for a book); journal title with issue; page numbers in the case of a journal article or a distinct chapter in a book; and there can be others -- are separated by periods, not commas. There is also a period at the end.
• Since a bibliography is in alphabetical order by the author's or editor's last name, the last name goes first. If there is no author, alphabetize by the first significant word in the title.
• Just as in a footnote, you may give the publisher in the publication data of a book, or not, as you choose (as far as I am concerned) -- just be consistent. Parentheses are not used.
• There are fancy ways to avoid using the same author's name repeatedly when you have more than one title by the same author, but these are not required -- generally it’s best just to repeat the name.

Some examples:

Djilas, Milovan. The New Class. London, 1957.

Djilas, Milovan. Wartime. New York, 1977.

Frankland, Mark. The Patriots' Revolution. Chicago, 1992.

Glenny, Misha. "Yugoslavia: The Revenger's Tragedy." The New York Review of Books, August 13, 1992. Pp. 32-43.

"The Tito-Stalin Correspondence, March-June 1948." In From Stalinism to Pluralism, ed. by Gale Stokes. New York, 1991. Pp. 58-65.

Weschler, Lawrence. The Passion of Poland. New York, 1984.