THE RESEARCH PAPER

A research paper presents the findings and conclusions of a student's investigation into a subject. The purpose of such writing is to bring together information that has not previously been brought together, and to use such evidence in support of a thesis.

The writer of a research paper usually follows these steps: (1) selects a topic; (2) limits the topic to an aspect that can be successfully handled in the available time and with the available resources; (3) creates a working outline to guide the investigation; (4) compiles a working bibliography of potentially pertinent resources; (5) reads and takes notes from the pertinent material; (6) organizes the notes and prepares the final outline; (7) drafts, revises, and proofreads the paper; and (8) documents the resources used in the paper, including the preparation of a list of works cited.

The following section provides information on the process of documentation. The writer of a research paper must acknowledge the source of everything that has been borrowed from others–not only direct quotations and restatements of other persons' words, but also information and ideas. Common sense should dictate what needs to be documented. For instance, common knowledge ("The United States celebrates its independence each Fourth of July") and familiar proverbs ("Two wrongs don't make a right") rarely require documentation. But the writer must make certain that no borrowed material is mistaken for his own. When in doubt, cite the source.

MLA Documentation

Most schools, colleges, universities, and publications adopt one of three documentation systems for research papers: (1) Modern Language Association, (2) American Psychological Association, or (3) University of Chicago Press.

The first two styles, MLA and APA, both use parenthetical references in the body of the paper that correspond to sources listed alphabetically at the end of the paper. The principal difference between the two is that MLA citations include author and page number, whereas APA citations include author, date of publication, and page number. The third style, sometimes called Chicago or Turabian style, uses notes at the foot of the pages or at the end of the paper to cite the source of information.

Bozeman High School has adopted the Modern Language Association (MLA) style for writing research papers.

C.2

Plagiarism

To plagiarize is to use another's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source. Plagiarism is intellectual theft. You may certainly use another's words and ideas in your research paper, but the borrowed material must not seem to be your creation.

A type of self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits in a course a paper completed for a previous course. This constitutes cheating. If you wish to rework a previously submitted paper, secure permission from your current teacher.

With the use of Internet sources, the related issue of copyright infringement has become increasingly relevant. Many people seem to think that online material may be reproduced and distributed freely. However, most Internet material is protected by copyright law and should be treated by the writer of a research paper in the same manner as printed works.

The Internet

Electronic media, especially the World Wide Web, make available a vast array of primary and secondary source material. Effectively using such resources, however, requires special attention from the researcher – attention not usually required when using traditional print material. Evaluating World Wide Web sites, for example, requires careful determination of the author and authority of the information, as well as its accuracy, currency, and verifiability.

Using the World Wide Web for academic research requires training, practice, attention to detail, and patience. Consult teachers and librarians for guidance on selecting appropriate sites for your investigation. Certain online services, available through library subscriptions, often provide an avenue for quickly locating useful information from a variety of sources. Bozeman High School subscribes to various online reference centers that contain thousands of full-text files from magazines, newspapers, books, broadcasts, and more, on a wide variety of topics, including: SIRS Knowledge Source, InfoTrac, Encyclopædia Brittanica, and Opposing Viewpoints.

Whenever you find a potentially useful Internet site, create a bookmark. This will allow you to easily return to the document for additional consideration. If you cannot create a bookmark – for instance, if you are sharing a computer – keep an accurate record of the site's uniform resource locator (URL). Additionally, you should maintain a log of all sites viewed, as well as the date each site is accessed. The URL and access dates are necessary for your list of works cited. And since Internet sites sometimes disappear altogether, download or print any material you use, making later verification possible. This is especially important since many BHS teachers require that hard copies of Internet sites be submitted with the final paper. Caution: Carefully read the section of this handbook regarding plagiarism (see C.2), considering those issues particular to electronic publications.

Most teachers allow and many encourage using Internet sources. But relying on Internet sources alone is rarely considered adequate research for a paper. Most topics require the use of print publications. Electronic mail and online "chats" may prove helpful in sharing ideas but are not considered acceptable resources for academic research. Be sure to check with your teacher about using the Internet.

Format of the Research Paper

Leave margins of one inch at the top and bottom and on both sides of the text (see C.12–14). Number all pages, including the list of works cited, consecutively throughout the research paper in the upper right-hand corner, one-half inch from the top and flush with the right margin. Type your last name and insert a space before the page number. Do not use the abbreviation p. before a page number or add a period, a hyphen, or any other punctuation mark. Research papers are double-spaced throughout, including quotations and the list of works cited.

The editors of the Modern Language Association discourage the use of title pages. Therefore, beginning on the first line of page one only, flush with the left margin, type your name, your teacher's name, the course name/period, and the date on separate lines, striking one return between the lines. Strike one return after the date and center the title. Do not underline, italicize, make bold, increase font size, or put the title inside quotation marks. Set the title in title case (capitalize the first letter of the first word, the last word, and all principal words–including those that follow hyphens in compound terms; do not capitalize articles, coordinating conjunctions, prepositions, or the to in infinitives when they fall in the middle of a title). Strike one return between the title and the first line of text. Return to left alignment. Indent the first word of each paragraph one-half inch from the left margin.

Formal Outline

If a formal outline is submitted with the research paper, the identification heading should appear on the first page of the outline, not the first page of the body of the paper (see C.12–13). Strike one return after the date, and center the paper's title. Strike one return and return to left alignment. Type, in bold, the heading "Thesis Statement:". Turn off bold, strike the space bar twice, and type your thesis statement. Then strike one return and begin the outline. Capitalize the first letter of the first word of each item of the outline. Number the pages of the outline using lower case Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, etc.). Following the outline, begin the body of the research paper as a separate document, centering the title on the first line. Number each page of the body of the paper, beginning with a "1" on the first page of the body.

C.4

Basic In-Text Citation

The parenthetical citation located at the end of the following sentence exemplifies MLA style:

Because of its mathematical vagueness, Newton's clever attempt to solve the mystery of the creation of the universe is ultimately unsatisfactory (Davies 46).

The citation "(Davies 46)" indicates that the information contained in the sentence was derived from page 46 of a work authored by someone named Davies. More information regarding this source can be found in the works-cited list located at the end of the research paper. The following is an example of such information:

Davies, Paul. The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World. New York: Simon, 1983.

This entry indicates that the author of the work entitled The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World is Paul Davies. Additionally, the book was published in New York by Simon & Schuster in 1983.

The in-text citation in MLA style contains only enough information to allow the reader to locate the source in the works-cited list. If an author's name is included in the text of the paper, immediately before the information requiring documentation, only the page number should appear in the citation "(221)." If two or more works by an author appear in the works-cited list, a shortened version of the title (often just the first word of the title) is also included in the citation: "(Davies, Mind 86)." If you wish to include two or more works in a single parenthetical reference, use semicolons to separate the citations (see C.13).

List of Works Cited

The list of works cited appears at the end of the research paper. This list contains all the works that have been cited in the text of the paper. Start the list on a new page (insert a return and a page break after the final line of your text), continuing the page numbering of the text. Center the heading, Works Cited, on the first line of the page (an inch from the top of the paper). Strike one return between the title and the first work listed. Double-space the entire list, within and between entries. Each entry begins flush with the left margin. When an entry runs more than a single line, indent any subsequent lines one-half inch (i.e., set hanging indentation).

Alphabetize entries by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system:

MacDougal, Steve

McVickers, Colleen

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de

St. James, Claire

If the list contains two or more works by the same author, alphabetize these entries by title. Include the author's name in the first entry only. In subsequent entries by that author, type three hyphens followed by a period in place of the name; the three hyphens stand for exactly the same name as in the preceding entry:

Frost, Robert.

---.

If two or more entries by coauthors begin with the same name, alphabetize by the last names of the second authors listed:

Johnson, William, and Miriam Bourke

Johnson, William, and Earl Swinth

If no author's name is given, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any initial A, An, or The.

The Dictionary of Cycling

An Encyclopedia of Medical Procedures

Sample Works-Cited Entries

The basic works-cited entry contains the following information:

Author's last name, first name. Title of the Work. Place of publication: Publisher, year of publication.

Always reverse the author's name, placing a comma after the last name and a period after the complete name. Give the author's name as it appears on the title page. Omit titles, affiliations, and degrees that precede or follow names:

Jeanne H. Boyd, PhD [title page]
Boyd, Jeanne H. [works-cited list]

Sir Randolph Worthington [title page]
Worthington, Randolph [works-cited list]

A suffix that is an essential part of a name (e.g., Jr. or III) appears after the name, preceded by a comma:

Brown, David Franklin, Jr.
Rockefeller, John D., IV.

List the full title of the work, as it appears on the title page, set in italics and followed by a period. If the work has a subtitle, place a colon after the main title (unless the main title ends in some other punctuation mark) and a period after the entire title.

The place of publication and publisher (and sometimes the date of publication) should be taken from the title page of the work. Any information not located on the title page can usually be found on the copyright page (the reverse side of the title page). If multiple publishers or locations are listed, use only the first. For cities outside the United States, add an abbreviation for the country (or Canadian province). Shorten the name of the publisher (see C.10–11). Use the latest copyright year listed. Place a colon (followed by two spaces) between the place of publication and the publisher, a comma between the publisher and the date, and a period following the date.

If you are citing an article, an essay, a short story, a poem, or some other work that appears within a collection, you need to give the inclusive page numbers of the piece you are citing (following the publication date and a period). If an article is not printed on consecutive pages, give only the first page number followed by a plus sign (6+). If the collection arranges works alphabetically, you may omit page numbers.

In the list of works cited, abbreviate the names of months (except for May, June, and July) as follows :

Jan.	Apr.	July	Oct.
Feb.	May	Aug.	Nov.
Mar.	June	Sept.	Dec.

C.6/7

Book: One Author

Cook, Margaret G. The New Library Key. New York: Wilson, 1963.

Book: Two Authors

Houghton, Walter, and Robert Strange. Victorian Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1959.

Book: Three Authors

Allport, Gordon, Phillip E. Vernon, and Gardner Lindzey. Study of Values. New York: Houghton, 1951.

Book: More Than Three Authors

Campbell, Angus, et al. The American Voter. New York: Wiley, 1964.

Two or More Books by the Same Author

Cook, Margaret G. The New Library Key. New York: Wilson, 1963.

---. A System for Text Management. New York: Farrar, 1968.

Book: No Author

The National Lottery. London: Watts, 1932.

Book: Editor, No Author

Seltzer, Lawrence H., and Frances Thomas, eds. Economic Recovery Issues. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1974.

An Introduction, a Preface, a Foreword, or an Afterword

Elliott, Emory. Afterword. The Jungle. By Upton Sinclair. New York: Bantam, 1985. vii-xvii.

A Work in an Anthology

Allende, Isabel. "Toad's Mouth." Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. A Hammock beneath the Mangoes: Stories from Latin America. Ed. Thomas Colchie. New York: Plume, 1992. 83-88.

Article in a Reference Book (State volume number of a multivolume work.)

Brakeley, Theresa C. "Mourning Songs." Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. Ed. Maria Leach and Jerome Fried. New York: Crowell, 1950.

Kermode, Frank. "A Babylonish Dialect." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 57. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale, 1990. 200-01.

Stark, John. "Thomas Pynchon." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Two: American Novelists since World War II. Ed. Jeffrey Helterman and Richard Layman. Detroit: Gale, 1978.

Pamphlet (Treat a pamphlet as you would a book.)

Best Museums: New York City. New York: Trip Builder, 1993.

Government Publication (often printed by the Government Printing Office, abbreviated as GPO)

United States. Dept. of Labor. Child Care: A Workforce Issue. Washington: GPO, 1988.

The Bible [mention title of edition in the text of your paper; list chapter and verse in parenthetical citation, e.g. (Ezek. 1.5-10)]

The Holy Bible. Revised Berkeley Version. Nashville: Gideons International, 1993.

Encyclopedia Article

Carter, J.W. "Geometry." The World Book Encyclopedia. 1988 ed.

"Sitting Bull." Encyclopedia Americana. 15th ed. 1993.

Magazine Article

Howe, Irving. "At Ease in Apocalypse." Harper's 16 Sept. 1968: 76-78.

Newspaper Article

Fuerbringer, Jonathan. "Budgetary Rhythms." New York Times 20 Mar. 1987: A8.

Film

It's a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. RKO, 1946.

Film on Videocassette

It's a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. 1946. Videocassette. Republic, 1988.

Interview

Nought, John. Personal interview. 2 May 1994.

C.8

Electronic Resources

Electronic publications (especially World Wide Web pages) are not as fixed and stable as print material. Therefore, additional information about electronic works is required.

A typical entry for a World Wide Web page contains the following information:

Author's last name, first name. "Title (or main heading) of web page." Title of web site. Date webpage was accessed <complete URL>.

If no author's name can be found, begin with the title of the page. If the information contains a publication date (e.g., copyright date, date modified, date uplinked), include this date after the name of the page or after the name of the site, whichever applies. Always include the date the site was accessed, immediately before the web address (Uniform Resource Locator). Enclose URL in angle brackets. When a URL must be divided between two lines, break it only following a slash. When word processing, insert a "soft return" to break lines by striking SHIFT + RETURN.

Since web addresses can change frequently, and their length and complexity can result in typographical errors, accuracy in supplying other information (e.g., author's name, title of site) is vital.

The following are examples of works-cited entries for several types of electronic publications commonly cited in research papers. If you cannot find some of this information, cite what is available. Do NOT include page numbers in Works Cited entries for electronic resources.

If you cannot identify the source of the information on a World Wide Web site or the credibility of its authorship, do not use the information in an academic research paper.

A Publication on CD-ROM

"Albatross." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd. ed. CD-ROM. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.

Braunmiller, A.R., ed. Macbeth. By William Shakespeare. CD-ROM. New York: Voyager, 1994.

InfoTrac (Use the URL in this example for all works located via the BHS subscription to InfoTrac.)

Nash, Steven. "The Japan Syndrome: The Nation's Worst Civilian Nuclear Disaster." Time 11 Oct. 1999. InfoTrac. Gale. 8 Nov. 2001 <http://infotrac.galegroup.com>.

Opposing Viewpoints (Use the URL in this example for all works located via the BHS subscription to Opposing Viewpoints.)

Chafetz, Morris E. "Alcohol Advertising Does Not Cause Teens to Drink." Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. 2004. Gale. 2 Dec. 2004 <http:// galenet.galegroup.com>.

SIRS Knowledge Source (Use the URL in this example for all works located via the BHS subscription to SIRS Knowledge Source.)

Levins, Harry. "The Birth of India." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10 Aug. 1997. SIRS Knowledge Source. SIRS Publishing. 27 Mar. 2004 <http://sks.sirs.com>.

A Work from an Online Encyclopedia

"Costa Rica." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. 3 Jan. 2006 <http://school.eb.com/eb/article-9110096>.

A Single Document within a Larger Website

"Lesson One: Greetings." Portuguese Language Page. U of Chicago. 1 May 2004 <http://humanities.uchicago.edu/romance/port/>.

An Article in an Online Newspaper

Markoff, John. "The Voice on the Phone Is Not Human, but It's Helpful." New York Times on the Web 21 June 1998. 25 June 2000 <http://www.nytimes.com/ library/tech/98/06/biztech/articles/21voice.html>.

An Article in an Online Magazine

Kinsley, Michael. "Now Is the Summer of Too Much Content." Slate 20 June 1998. 25 June 2004 <http://www.slate.com/98-0620/Readme.asp>.

A Document within an Online Information Database

"City Profile: San Francisco." CNN Interactive. 19 June 1998. Cable News Network. 26 Nov. 2004 <http://www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/CITY.GUIDES/WTR/ north.america.profiles/nap.sanfran.html>.

An Online Scholarly Project

Victorian Women Writers Project. Ed. Perry Willett. June 1998. Indiana U. 26 June 2003 <http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/>.

An Online Book

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Twice-Told Tales. Ed. George Parsons Lathrop. Boston: Houghton, 1883. 1 Mar. 2000 <http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/ttt.html>.

Email Communication

Danford, Tom. "Monday Greetings." Email to Terry Craig. 13 Sept. 1993.

A Personal Web Site

Lancashire, Ian. Home page. 1 May 1997 <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/ ~ian/index.html>.

C.10/11

Abbreviating Publishers' Names

In the list of works cited, shortened forms of publishers' names immediately follow the cities of publication. In shortening publishers' names, keep in mind the following guidelines:

• Omit articles (A, An, The), business abbreviations (Co., Corp., Inc., Ltd.), and descriptive words (Books, House, Press, Publishers). When citing a university press, however, always add the abbreviation UP (Ohio State UP) because the university itself (Ohio State U) may publish independently of its press.
• If the publisher's name includes the name of one person (Harry N. Abrams, W.W. Norton, John Wiley), cite the surname alone (Abrams, Norton, Wiley). If the publisher's name includes the names of more than one person, cite only the first of the surnames (Bobbs, Dodd, Faber, Farrar, Funk, Grosset, Harcourt, Harper, Houghton, McGraw, Prentice, Simon).
• Use standard abbreviations whenever possible (Acad., Assn., Soc., UP).
• If the publisher's name is commonly abbreviated with capital initial letters and if the abbreviation is likely to be familiar to your audience, use the abbreviations as the publisher's name (GPO, MLA, UMI). If your readers are not likely to know the abbreviation, shorten the name according to the general guidelines given above (Mod. Lang. Assn.).

Following are examples of how various types of publishers' names are shortened:

ALA......................	American Library Association
Basic......................	Basic Books
CAL......................	Center for Applied Linguistics
Cambridge UP.......	Cambridge University Press
Eastgate.................	Eastgate Systems
Einaudi...................	Giulio Einaudi Editore
ERIC.....................	Education Resources Information Center
Farrar....................	Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc.
Feminist.................	The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Gale.......................	Gale Research, Inc.
Gerig.....................	Gerig Verlag
GPO......................	Government Printing Office
Harper...................	Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.; HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
HMSO..................	Her (His) Majesty's Stationery Office
Houghton...............	Houghton Mifflin Co.
Knopf....................	Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Larousse................	Librairie Larousse
Little......................	Little, Brown, and Company, Inc.
Macmillan..............	Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
McGraw................	McGraw-Hill, Inc.
MIT P....................	The MIT Press
MLA.....................	The Modern Language Association of America
NCTE...................	The National Council of Teachers of English
NEA......................	The National Education Association
Norton...................	W.W. Norton and Co., Inc.
PUF......................	Presses Universitaires de France
Random.................	Random House, Inc.
Scribner's...............	Charles Scribner's Sons
Simon....................	Simon and Schuster, Inc.
SIRS.....................	Social Issues Resources Series
St. Martin's............	St. Martin's Press, Inc.
UMI......................	University Microfilms International
U of Chicago P......	University of Chicago Press
UP of Mississippi...	University Press of Mississippi
Watts.....................	Franklin Watts

C.12

Josephson i

Laura Josephson
Mrs. Jones
English II/4
25 October 2004

Thesis Statement: Still little known are the many ambitious orchestral suites Ellington composed, several of which, such as The Liberian Suite and The Latin American Suite, explore his impressions of the people, places, and music of other countries.

Josephson 1

Ellington's Adventures in Music and Geography

In studying the influence of Latin American, African, and Asian music on modern American composers, music historians tend to discuss such figures as Aaron Copeland, George Gershwin, Henry Cowell, Alan Hovhaness, and John Cage (Griffiths, Greenberg, and Olander 104-39). They usually overlook Duke Ellington, whom Peter Gammond rightly calls "one of America's great composers" (318), probably because they are familiar only with Ellington's popular pieces, like "Sophisticated Lady," "Mood Indigo," and "Solitude." Still little known are the many ambitious orchestral suites Ellington composed, several of which, such as The Liberian Suite and The Latin American Suite, explore his impressions of the people, places, and music of other countries.

Not all music critics, however, have ignored Ellington's excursions into longer musical forms. In the 1950s, for example, while Ellington was still alive, James C. Baker compared him with Ravel, Delius, and Debussy:

The continually inquiring mind of Ellington [. . .] has sought to extend steadily the imaginative boundaries of the musical form on which it subsists. [. . .] Ellington since the mid-1930s has been engaged upon extending both the imagery and the formal construction of written jazz. (133-35)

Ellington's earliest attempts to move beyond the three-minute limit – imposed on popular music by radio station programmers – sound disorganized and self-conscious. The Liberian Suite, for instance, contains erratic orchestral layers as well as changes in key and time signature which add little to the emotional effectiveness of the work (Freidwald). Another early orchestral composition, The Latin American Suite, switches so frequently among rhythms and tones as to produce little more than confusion and exhaustion in the listener (Hitchcock et al. 26-7; Marsalis 13).

C.14

Josephson 15

Works Cited

Baker, James C. Masters of Jazz: Lives That Shaped American Music. New York: Random, 1959.

Ellington, Duke. The Latin American Suite. LP. RCA, 1965.

---. The Liberian Suite. LP. Philips, 1947.

"Ellington, Edward 'Duke.'" Britannica Book of Music. Ed. Benjamin Hadley. Garden City: Doubleday, 1980.

Friedwald, Will. "The Essence of Duke Ellington." An Appreciation of the Great Duke Ellington. The Duke Ellington Society. 21 Sept. 1998 <http://duke.fuse.net/ essence/index.html>.

Gammond, Peter, ed. Duke Ellington: His Life and Music. New York: DaCapo, 1977.

Griffiths, Paul, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander. A Concise History of Avant-Garde Music: From Debussy to Boulez. New York: Oxford UP, 1978.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley, et al. "Duke Ellington–Seriously." Time 23 Oct. 1994: 24-27.

Kermode, Frank. "A Babylonish Dialect." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz. Vol. 57. Detroit: Gale, 1990. 200-01.

Marsalis, Wynton. Foreword. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. By John Edward Hasse. New York: Simon, 1993. 13-14.

"Music Theory." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. 1997 ed.

Stark, John. "Thomas Pynchon." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Two: American Novelists since World War II. Ed. Jeffrey Helterman and Richard Layman. Detroit: Gale, 1978. 411-16.

Yardley, Jonathan. "Duke's Place." Washington Post 28 Sept. 1998: C2.