Organizing Your Paper

Now it's time to organize your thoughts in planning your paper.

1) You need to outline at least five points from each article you've chosen. That means you need to find the main idea and supporting evidence for the important points of each article that you will be using.

2) You need to develop the structure of your paper. The paper will, of course, need to have a beginning, middle and end. We commonly refer to these as the introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion. Your paper will be five double-spaced pages, in Times New Roman or Arial, with no bigger than a v12 point font. Likewise, don't begin your paper a third of a way down the page. The paper starts at the top of the page. You will have a title page for the title. The paper will include in addition, a bibliography or "works cited" list at the end. You will learn how to cite works in the bibliography AND within the paper using the MLA format. This is a format that most colleges and universities want students to use, as they begin writing their college-level papers.

3) You need to change your research question into a thesis statement. See the form here and on the side under handouts to make a record of that change. Your thesis statement will form the basis for your essay, and will be the key sentence in your introduction.