How to Write a Term Paper

I. Choosing a Topic:

For this paper you get to choose your topic, so pick something that interests you. Once you have decided what you want to write about in general terms, refine that general idea to a specific topic for your paper. Keep in mind that you have a maximum of 12 pages of text to work with, so your topic is going to have to be pretty narrow in its focus. Also bear in mind that this is a research project, not a high school report; it should center around a thesis that you will prove in your paper. Example:

I am interested in World War II, but I’m pretty sure that I can’t cover six years of global warfare in fifteen pages of text. Let’s see...I’m more interested in the War in Europe than in the Pacific, so that narrows that down some, but I need something tighter. I like airplanes, so something about the air war would be interesting, and there was this documentary on the History Channel about the Battle of Britain last month...but even the Battle of Britain is too big for twelve pages. Right, have to narrow it down some more here...do a little preliminary research and reading. Ah, here it is: the German Air Force started out trying to destroy the Royal Air Force by bombing RAF airfields, but then switched to targeting British cities. This decision cost them the battle, because it let the RAF rebuild its fighter strength and shoot down enough German bombers to force the Germans to call off the offensive. Wait a minute. That would just be a report. Got it! WHY did the Germans decide to change targets? There’s a thesis.

And so you would write your paper on “Why did the Germans decide to change targets during the Battle of Britain and what effect did this decision have on the outcome of the battle?”

II. Writing an Abstract:

Once you have a topic and a thesis, you need to work that question into a positive thesis statement. To continue on with the example above:

During the Second World War Germany tried to force a British surrender with an intensive bombing campaign that began in late 1940 and continued on into 1941. The initial focus of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) offensive was to destroy the Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command by attacking RAF airfields and to establish air superiority for an invasion of England, but that focus shifted to attacking British cities to force a surrender through outright air power alone. This decision led to a German defeat in the battle, as it took the pressure off of Fighter Command and allowed the British to shoot down enough German bombers to force the Luftwaffe to call off the offensive.

Notice that you are going to have to do a bit of research even before you write the abstract and have to have reached a preliminary conclusion on your topic. Yes, I realize that further research may modify your conclusions in subsequent drafts, but you need to present a positive statement of intent in the abstract. Notice also the implied question in the above paragraph: WHY did the Germans make this decision? This will be the central theme of this paper; although it will require an exposition on the origins of the German air offensive and an analysis of the effect of changing targets, the pivotal moment is the decision itself.

In addition to providing a thesis statement, the abstract (for this assignment at least) must also include a preliminary bibliography of sources. List them, in proper Turabian form for a bibliographic entry, immediately after the body of the abstract paragraph. Like the thesis itself, these are subject to change in the final product; they may not be the sources you thought they were, and your research will turn up additional material you didn’t know about when you wrote the abstract. For proper Turabian style, see the “Paper Assignment and Turbocite” document on e-reserve.

The finished abstract should look like the example provided on the next page.
Your Name
Your Class number and section (HIST XXX-XX)
Day and time class meets (MWF or T-Th X:XX)

Abstract

CRITICAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

During the Second World War Germany tried to force a British surrender with an intensive bombing campaign that began in late 1940 and continued on into 1941. The initial focus of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) offensive was to destroy the Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command by attacking RAF airfields and establish air superiority for an invasion of England, but that focus shifted to attacking British cities to force surrender through outright air power alone. This decision led to a German defeat in the battle, as it took the pressure off of Fighter Command and allowed the British to shoot down enough German bombers to force the Luftwaffe to call off the offensive.

Preliminary Bibliography:

Air Ministry. Bomber Command Continues. London: H. M. S. O., 1942.

Bond, Brian, ed. Fallen Stars: Eleven Studies of Twentieth Century Military Disasters. London: Brassey’s UK Ltd., 1991.

Churchill, Winston Spencer. The Hinge of Fate. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948.

Gibson, Guy. Enemy Coast Ahead. London: Michael Joseph, Ltd., 1946.

Harris, Sir Arthur. Bomber Offensive. London: Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Ltd., 1990.

Parkinson, Roger. Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat: The War History from Dunkirk to Alamein, Based on the War Cabinet Papers of 1940 to 1942. New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1973.

Wells, Mark K. Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War. London: Frank Cass, 1995.

(Note: You may use italics instead of underlining for the titles.)

ABSTRACT CHECKLIST:

(Print this page out, tic the appropriate blanks, and attach to your abstract before handing it in.)

_____ I have chosen a topic that can be done in 15 pages.

_____ My abstract has a clear and concise thesis statement.

_____ My abstract includes a preliminary bibliography of potential sources.

_____ My bibliography is in proper Turabian format for a bibliographic entry.

III. Research

This is the packrat phase of the project. There is no such thing as too much information or too much research when it comes to writing an academic paper; every fact that you can come up with is useful.

Finding Sources: Step one is GO TO THE LIBRARY. It is NOT sufficient to sit at your computer screen and Google-search websites. Get into the library’s search engines and look for your topic in CC Cat, World Cat, Net Library, History E-Books and EBSCO HOSTS. If your original search does not turn up any sources, modify your search terms...we have access to the world from this library, and somewhere out there are the sources you need. Do NOT use internet websites. They are not uniform in their quality and the vast majority do not even approach scholarship...the difference between standard internet drivel and a scholarly source is like the difference between a nuked convenience store burrito and a seven-course meal.

Exploiting Sources: Once you have a source or two in your hot little hands, realize that they are useful in ways additional to the simple text. If it is a scholarly source, it will have footnotes or endnotes or parenthetical citations and a bibliography. Mine these for additional sources relating to your topic...and the more sources you consult, the better off you will be (more on this later).

Mining Sources: Everyone has their own style when it comes to data mining–some people like to use index cards (I don’t, mainly because I wind up losing some between research and writing phases) some use spiral notebooks, some carry a laptop with them to the library, some Xerox entire chapters or articles. I am not here to dictate what style of note taking/data gathering you use. I am here to dictate that you take notes and gather data. Regardless of the style you use, there are certain things you need to include in your note taking:

1. An accurate COMPLETE paraphrase or direct quote from the source. Avoid using half sentences or fragmentary quotes, as these can distort the source’s original meaning. If something from your source is worth quoting directly, it is worth quoting in its entirety.

2. Accurate and complete bibliographic data for the source of the information. When you get to the writing phase you MUST provide a citation for the information you are using. Going ahead and writing this down during the research phase saves a lot of trips back to the library to look up publication data.

What I do when I’m researching a project is use either a spiral notebook or a ring binder. When I open a new source the first thing I do at the top of the page is write out a proper Turabian-style bibliographic entry for the source; that way I have all the information I’ll need when it comes time to write the endnote. Then for each piece of information I take, I write either a direct quote or a paraphrase of the passage I’m using, followed by the exact page number it came from (you need that too for the note). In the example on the next page paraphrases are full margin and direct quotes are double-indented:
Lionel Sotheby, Lionel Sotheby's Great War: Diaries and Letters from the Western Front, Donald C. Richter, ed., (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1997).

Lionel Sotheby was twenty when the war broke out. Having spent three years at Eton, he left in 1913 to seek employment in the civil service. When war broke out he joined immediately, as befitted the son of a family that had included a number of officers. He became a second lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.

^ Sotheby, 4.

Sotheby discovered rather quickly that not everyone regarded the war as a great game. While waiting in draft for assignment in January 1915 he recorded the following incident:

I boarded a Harfleur train at 7.30 P.M. & had a most interesting talk with some Tomies back from the front. I think they said they were from the Munsters, but am not sure....The stories they had to tell were very interesting & extremely hard to put down on paper. All 6 declared themselves fed up with the war, much to my surprise.

^ Sotheby, 7.

To Sotheby life in the trenches (even before he had experienced it) represented a certain kind of heroism in and of itself. Reflecting on those men who had suffered self-inflicted wounds or purposely exposed an extremity to enemy fire to "catch a Blighty," he could not bring himself to class them with the malingerers and deserters who had never seen the front.

There can be no doubt that it needs & calls for exceptional endurance and fortitude to live through 36 hours & sometimes many days in a trench with mud to your knees, a drenching rain, perhaps a sharp frost, & little or no food, when there is exceptional vigilance on the enemy's part against relief & food supplies coming up. So people in England, if they hear of these people, should not condemn them without giving them a hearing as all people are not blessed with the same endurance & vitality.

The cure for such malaise was in his opinion, "an advance & none of this trench warfare."

^ Sotheby, 16.
IV. Analysis of Data

Your job as a researcher and writer in historical writing is not just to report what happened, but to arrive at a conclusion as to why it happened the way it did. To do anything less is simple chronology, and that’s just not good enough. Once you have compiled your data, you must subject it to a critical analysis to arrive at a synthesis called “truth.” There are two main tools that can be useful in this process.

Critique your sources. Most writers, no matter how objective they hope to be, are writing with some bias, and all writers are trying to construct an argument to support their conclusions...you included. Be skeptical of your sources and take into account the spin that the author is placing on the facts he or she provides...do not simply take it as Gospel because it is in print. Subject their arguments and analyses to the acid test of logic and remember that they are guilty until proven innocent!

Compare your sources. This is why the more sources you have, the stronger your analysis (and thus finished product) will be. Compare both the facts presented and the analysis of those facts between different authors. If there is consistency and consensus among your sources you can be pretty sure that you have a viable fact. If there’s one author out of a dozen who differs from consensus, then you either have someone who has discovered some new data or a new approach that is valid, or you have an idiot who thinks the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. You have to decide, based on the evidence the author provides, whether or not the argument has merit or if it is just a crackpot assessment of the event (and take another look at “critique your sources”). If...and this is more likely...you have a few sources that say one thing, a few more that say something else, and a few more that go a third direction entirely, you have to decide which analysis sticks closest to the facts as you understand them. Do NOT simply pick one main source and follow it blindly. A paper that has a long string of citations from a single source only indicates that you are parroting the ideas of one single author and not doing your job of comparative analysis.

V. Writing the Paper

The Introduction: The introduction is exactly that: it introduces your reader to the topic that you will cover in this paper, the points that you will make, and the conclusions that you have reached. For a paper of this length it should be a single paragraph that includes your thesis statement. It should also serve as a tacit outline of the paper itself, constructed in the same sequence as the main body of the paper. It is one of the most important parts of the paper, as first impressions count for a lot: most readers make up their mind as to their interest in the topic, the validity of the argument and the general intelligence of the author before they have finished the introduction. Following on with the “Critical Decision Making in the Battle of Britain” example used above, here is an example of an introductory paragraph:

In the period between the Fall of France in 1940 and the invasion of Russia in 1941, Britain stood alone as the single opponent of Nazi Germany. Any invasion of the British Isles would require air superiority over the English Channel, so in the summer of 1940 the German Luftwaffe began an air offensive designed to destroy the British Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command with intensive bomber raids on RAF fighter bases. Fighter Command suffered heavy losses during this phase of the battle, a rate of attrition that would have soon used up both the supply of replacement aircraft and the skilled pilots needed to fly them. In September 1940, as a response to a British air raid on the German capital of Berlin, the Luftwaffe shifted its emphasis from airfields to urban centers. Although the subsequent bombing campaign burned the heart out of London and other British cities, the shift in focus gave Fighter Command the opportunity to rebuild its numbers and inflict increasingly heavy losses on the attacking Germans. These losses grew to such an extent in early 1941 that the Germans were forced to suspend the bombing campaign and abandon any hopes of a cross-Channel invasion. The decision to target British cities in retaliation for the air raid on Berlin was the critical element in the successful defense of the British Isles.

A good introduction offers specifics without getting too specific. Notice the absence of any hard dates in the example above. Those do need to show up in the main body of the paper, but not in the introduction. Likewise, the men who made the decisions are not named in the introduction, but will be in the body of the work.. Notice that each sentence introduces another element for the body of the paper, and that the final sentence summarizes the thesis of the paper.

The Main Body: In the main body of the paper you will clarify and expand the points you made in the introduction. If you have constructed your introduction properly, each sentence in the introduction provides the starting place for (at least) one paragraph in the body, addressed in the same order as they appear in the introduction. The paragraph is the basic building block of writing. The topic sentence is the point you are going to prove with the paragraph, and should be a clear and concise statement. It should be followed with sentences that provide evidence to support the topic sentence. It MUST be logical in its construction. If your topic sentence was, for example “Launching an invasion across the English Channel would require air superiority over the embarkation ports, the Channel itself and the landing grounds in England,” then the rest of the paragraph should explain why this was true AND NOTHING ELSE. This “air superiority” paragraph is not concerned with bombing Berlin, or aircraft production figures for January 1941, or the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian, so none of that information should appear in that paragraph. PROOF-READ your paragraphs for logical consistency! Paragraph length is important. A good rule of thumb is that in a double-spaced paper any paragraph under a quarter-page long is too short, and any paragraph over a half-page long is too long. Paragraphs that are too short leave the reader with the impression that you are either glossing over something you aren’t too sure about or that you wanted to include something but really had no idea of how to work it in. Paragraphs that are too long tend to lose their focus and convince the reader that you are simply rambling and wasting time. Never confuse verbosity with scholarship. Single sentence paragraphs should be avoided, although they do have their uses to emphasize a point (they usually get red-flagged when I am grading a paper). And bear in mind this “quarter page, half page” guideline is just a rule of thumb, to which there are always exceptions. Paragraphs should flow logically from one to the next in the main body of the text. It helps to work from an outline of some kind...don’t just sit down at the keyboard and expect it to flow forth in a logical stream. While a formal outline may be best, it can be something as simple as a sequential bulleted list. Regardless of the type, I strongly suggest putting together some kind of framework before you sit down to type.

The Conclusion: The Conclusion is a restatement of your thesis and a synopsis of the primary points made in the paper. There is a cynical story about a Marine drill sergeant who said of talking to recruits: “First you tell ’em what you’re gonna say, then you say it, then you tell ’em what you just said.” With a grain of salt, this applies to your conclusion. It’s not just a rehash of your introduction, but it does have key elements in parallel with it. It doesn’t make all the points you just made in the body of the paper, but it does mention the elements key to your argument. And like the introduction, it is very important in the impression it leaves on your reader.

ROUGH DRAFT CHECKLIST

(Print this page out, tic in the appropriate blanks, and attach to your paper before handing it in.)

_____ My paper is at least ten pages of actual text.

_____ I have met the minimum required number of seven sources.

_____ I have NOT cited any textbooks or encyclopedias, nor counted them toward the minimum requirement.

_____ My paper is left justified.

_____ My paper meets the 1-inch side margin requirements throughout.

_____ My title page is in proper format.

_____ My page numbers are all in the correct location.

_____ I have used Times New Roman 12-point font throughout.

_____ The body of my paper is double spaced, except for block quotes.

_____ I used proper Turabian style endnotes (not footnotes) for all citations; there are no parenthetical citations in this paper.

_____ My endnotes are all single spaced within the note, double spaced between the notes.

_____ I used proper Turabian style bibliography format for my bibliography.

_____ My bibliography is single spaced within the entry, double spaced between the entries.

Block Quotes: Any time you use a direct quote that takes up more than four lines of text in a double spaced document, it should be “block quoted,” which means you single space and double indent the passage so it looks like this:

The administrative machinery in London quickly developed an unfavorable opinion of the practice of provisional bestowal of the Victoria Cross. Peel took exception to a General Order issued 21 September 1857 from Headquarters, Delhi City, by Major General Archdale Wilson, detailing the provisional award of the VC to Bugler Robert Hawthorn and Lance Corporal Henry Smith. He sent a directive to Sir Colin Campbell, the Commander-in-Chief, India, to limit the number of Crosses conferred provisionally: I am of the opinion that it would be attended by convenience to the interests of the public service that in the case of all claims which may in future arise to the distinction of the Victoria Cross during the progress of the present operations in India, the recommendations in any case should reach me through yourself, as the officer in supreme command; I have accordingly to express to you that it would be advisable that general instructions to this effect should be issued to general & other officers in command, so as to obviate the delay which must take place from the making of a reference back to India before the appointments in any case can be submitted to her Majesty’s confirmation.[i]

Peel did not prohibit provisional VCs, as they were statutory law in the warrant. The clause was, though, dangerously open to abuse, as can be seen in the case of Lieutenant Henry Masham Havelock. Creating block quotes in Word: Type the material to be quoted as a separate paragraph. Use your mouse to select the quote (right click at one end of the section and drag your mouse across it to highlight the passage to be blocked). Then click the line spacing icon and set line spacing at 1.0. With the passage still selected, click “Format,” select “Paragraph” and in the dialogue box that opens, set indentation for both left and right at 0.5". Click Okay. You might have to reset your line spacing to 2 for the document beyond the block quote.

Whatever word processing program you are using, you must place an endnote at the immediate end of the block quote. Look back at the example and notice the superscript number “1” at the end of the block quote. That connects to an endnote at the end of this document. This brings us to the section on how to do endnotes and citations in general.

THIS SECTION IS VERY IMPORTANT

The rules for citations are pretty simple. Any information that you get from another source has to have an endnote. Notice that this is not limited to direct quotes, but also includes paraphrasing somebody else’s work. Unfortunately, this leads some student writers into putting an endnote at the end of nearly every sentence out of fear of a charge of plagiarism. Wherever possible, combine endnotes into a single entry. If you are using the same source for all of the information in a paragraph, just cite it once at the end of the paragraph, even if the information came from several different pages in the source. If you are using two or more different sources to prove the same point within a paragraph, combine them all into a single citation. There are times when you will introduce some widely differing points in your text. On these occasions you do need to give individual citations at the end of the sentence in question, and all direct quotes have to be cited immediately at the end of the quote, but try to avoid a number at the end of each sentence.
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[i]PRO File WO/98/3. Letter from Major General Jonathan Peel, War Office, to General Sir Colin Campbell, New Delhi, India, 17 March 1858.