First, let me answer the number one question about research papers:
Yes, you should be worried. If you are not worried about your research
paper, you will not do a good job of it. The purpose of the research paper
here at Northern High School is to prepare you for the papers will have in
college. On this site, you will find due dates and guidelines.

FOLLOW ALL GUIDELINES AND MEET ALL DEADLINES!

You will also find help for most of your needs. If you have additional
questions, please e-mail me.

What to Put in Your Envelope

• Note Cards (all of them)
• Source Cards (all of them)
• Plagiarism Sheet (signed by you and your parent/guardian)
• Rough Draft (with revisions)
• Rubric
• A disk (floppy or CD) with your paper saved on it
• Final Copy (duh!)

• NC Wise Owl Infotrac
• Northern's Library
• Find Articles
• Durham Public Library Search Station
• Controversial Ideas
• The Internet Public Library - Literary Criticism
• Links to Literary Criticism
• Literary Criticism Links
• Hot Topics

Search Engines:

• Dogpile
• Google
• Ask

• Northern Media Center Senior Paper Links
• Northern Media Center Literary Paper Links
• Online Writing Lab
• OWL Handouts
• Nuts and Bolts of College Writing
• Guide to MLA, APA, and other citation styles
• How to Write an A+ Research Paper
• Guide to Writing the Research Paper
• Teen Space Guide to A+ Research Papers
• University of Wisconsin-Madison's Approach to Research Papers
• How to Write a Thesis Statement
• How to Write the Introduction and Conclusion
• How to Write the Body of the Paper
• Homework Center

Sources

Honors Must have 8 sources total - one will be the book you analyzing.

Enriched Must have six sources total.
Of the six,

• 1 must be a book
• 1 must be a periodical (magazine, newspaper, NC Wise Owl Infotrac, or FindArticles.com) - this does NOT include a web page of a magazine of newspaper
• 1 must be a web page
  
  After those three, you have three more. These may be any other sources (books, periodicals, web pages, interviews, etc.).
  
  Keep in mind that you may have as many sources as you need. These are the regulations for the six that I will look for in your works cited page.
  

How do I do that on the computer?

Here are some common problems people have when typing the paper.

The page number can be put in the HEADING. Often the computer will doit automatically for you. If you are using Microsoft Word, the heading can be found under VIEW.

In order to print out a first page with no page number, print your paper then throw away the first page. Click anywhere on the first page and disable the numbering under header. Then click FILE. Under FILE, click PRINT. Click the button for CURRENT PAGE. Then hit OK. Use this as your first page. You should print the title page as a separate file so that it will not be numbered or affect the numbering of your paper.

To make your paper double spaced, do not hit enter after each line. Instead, highlight the entire paper, click FORMAT then click PARAGRAPH. Then you will see an option for line spacing.

On the Works Cited page, it is sometimes hard to indent the second line of a source. To do so, type you source and let it text wrap as normal. When you are finished, move the cursor to the second line and hit ENTER once. Nothing will appear to have happened. Then hit TAB and it should move the line automatically. If you have a third line, do the same. Sometimes just by hitting ENTER, it will automatically indent it to match the second line.

Also on the works cited page, when you type a web address, it tends to make it blue, small, and underlined. You do not want this. You have several options. You can disable the autoformat for hyperlinks, but this can be hard if you are not computer saavy. The other ways are to act after it makes it blue. As soon as it makes it blue, you can hit CTRL-Z. Also you can right click the hyperlink and select REMOVE HYPERLINK.

REVISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
REVISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
REVISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Signo 207 Uni Ball - A pen well worth the full 5 extra points

You won't believe that this is true, but the following is an actual e-mail from a former student who was in college at the time of this letter. This has no alterations to make me look good (I look good enough as is). So read this and then keep your handouts where you can get them.

Lord Alford!

Guess who it is??!! Your FAVORITE former student Adrian. I'd just like to take the time to thank you so much for giving us a research paper. I'd be lost already if I hadn't have used MLA and all that fun stuff.
My teacher tells us to research MLA in our handbook, but guess where I go to research MLA?????? That's right, Alford's guide to MLA Bliss is the best, just like the In-text ecstacy!!! I hope everything is going
well for you, and tell your students I say that they are fortunate to have the best english teacher who gives a solid research paper assignment.

Talk to you soon

Adrian

Thanks Adrian!

www.LordAlford.com

* every source ends in a period

* titles are properly capitalized, acccording to rules, not the way the title appears on the source

* titles that should be underlined while handwriting should be in italics when typing

* to remove all hyperlinks

* in-text of that source includes the first word of the source

Top Ten Reasons Students Get a Low Grade in their Writing:

1. Poor organization
2. Failure to support thesis
3. Misspellings
4. Inadequate citation of sources
5. Confusing sentence structure
6. Typos/sloppiness
7. Sentence fragments
8. Run-on sentences
9. Incorrect word usage
10. Little evidence of understanding the topic/ little evidence of research

See these in more detail plus more by clicking here.

Taken from:
Hansen, Randall S., Ph. D. and Katharine Hansen. Write Your Way to a Higher GPA. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1997