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Instructions for Writing Papers

Christian Perring, Ph.D.

The point of getting you to write a paper for this course is to get you to think carefully and deeply about the issues for yourself, and then to express your ideas as clearly as possible. Writing a paper is a sustained piece of work that should take you several days. It is also your main chance in this course to develop your own ideas and think them through.

Your paper should be typed, with double-spaced lines, so there is enough room for me to add comments on each page. You must keep an extra copy of your paper (either hard copy or on disc) in case I mislay your paper. Good spelling, grammar, and writing style are necessary for clear paper writing, and you will lose points if your paper is unclear.  You should do some research beyond the course book, and your paper should include references and a bibliography. You can do research on the Internet, but you should also use at least one book too. The Dowling Library staff will do their best to help you search for a book to help you write your paper, so do not be shy in asking for their help.

 
Extremely Important: Plagiarism
  • Whenever you copy another text, it should be clearly marked, either in quotation marks or in separate paragraph on its own, with the left-hand margin indented. 
  • You should give a page number for quotations from books or articles, or a precise URL if it from is a web page. 
  • If you include someone else’s writing in your own paper without acknowledging the author, it is plagiarism. This is also true even if you copy your own work that you did in another course, at Dowling College or elsewhere.  
  • It makes no difference whether the work you are handing in is a draft or a final version: you still need to explicity reference all your sources and include a bibliography. 
  • If you are paraphrasing or summarizing someone else’s work, you need to make sure that you use your own words. If you are not sure what exactly counts as plagiarism, ask my advice. 
  • Generally, if you are in some doubt, it is best to play it safe and include a reference in your paper to explain where your ideas come from. 
  • Plagiarism is a serious problem in college these days, and I will take whatever steps I can to prevent it and detect it. If I am not sure whether your paper is your own work I will ask you to come in to answer some questions about what you wrote, to see if you understand it. 
  • Note that plagiarism is generally very easy for a teacher to notice, and with search engines, it is mostly quite easy to find the original documents.
  • If you get caught intentionally trying to pass a substantial portion of your work off as your own when it is not, you automatically fail the whole course.
  • If you mistakenly quote a source as a substantial part of your paper without making clear that it is not your own work, (whether intentionally or not), you will get a zero grade for that work.
  • If you mistakenly quote a source as a small part of your paper without making clear that it is not your own work, (whether intentionally or not), you will get a whole grade penalty.
Using the world wide web for your research.
  • The web can be an extremely useful resource for research.  However, it brings many dangers, and requires intelligent use.
  • Often students use the web with little thought, and don't really understand the problem of quality control.  While in order to publish a book, authors need to have it read by a number of different editors and reviewers, which helps to assure the quality of the work, web page publishers can generally put up any old rubbish.  There quality of the web page design may give some hint of how much work has gone into the preparation of the page, but it is certainly not a guarantee of the quality of the content of the page.  Information available on the web is often inaccurate, biased, out-of-date, or incomplete.  
  • So when using information from the web, try to make sure that it comes from a reputable source.  If there is a chance that the information you find is biased, in your paper you should show some awareness of who provided that information, and what their agenda might be.
  • The most common problem with student papers these days is that they are basically just a collection of summaries of a number of different web pages.  This shows little originality of thought and often makes a boring paper.
  • Use of web pages also brings the danger of plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional.  (See above.)  If you copy text from a web page, and in an attempt to avoid being a plagiarist, you change around the sentence structure and change some of the words for near synonyms, the result will still be uncomfortably close to plagiarism, and it will probably also become badly written English which doesn't actually retain the original meaning.
  • So when writing a paper, remember that you are the author, and that your aim is to present a coherent set of ideas.  You need to show that you have thought hard about the topic at hand, and have not just borrowed (or stolen) other people's ideas.

 
You may discuss your work with friends and classmates. It is always a good idea to get someone else to read your work and give you critical feedback on spelling, grammar, style, clarity, and content, since these are important, and it is often difficult to spot one's own mistakes. On the web, useful resources include Serendipity's Common Errors, Paul Brians' Common Errors in English, and Grammar Girl's Guide to the English Language.  I have some of my own hints at the bottom of this page. You can e-mail your paper to me (cperring@bigfoot.com) as an attachment (a Word file or in Rich Text Format). Check to make sure that your e-mail did not bounce. I will reply to you confirming that I got your e-mail.  If you do not get an e-mail from me within 24 hours of your sending your paper, it is safe to assume that I have not received it.

You can fax your paper to me at 589-6123. Make sure that my name is clear on the cover sheet. It can take some time for a fax to get to me.


ANSWERING THE QUESTION

For any answer, make sure that you have addressed each part of the question, and pay attention to any hints or guidelines given in the question. If you omit parts and ignore guidelines given in the question, you can be sure that your grade will suffer.
 

CLARITY AND GRAMMAR

Summarizing an argument involves: Evaluating an argument involves: Style and Word Usage.

GRADING POLICY

It is hard to quantify the quality of work in philosophy. Roughly, grades have the following meanings:
A Excellent work, demonstrating a clear and near-perfect understanding of the text(s), and answering all parts of the question. The writing must be grammatical with correct spelling. If your own ideas or opinions are asked for, then you must come up with interesting and original ideas and defend them well.
B Good work, showing a strong understanding of the text(s) and demonstrating that you have worked hard on the assignment. The writing must be easy for the reader to understand, and you must have grasped most of the main ideas. Any assessment of it that you make must be well set out and at least address most of the issues raised in class lecture or discussion.
C Many problems with a paper can lead to it getting a C. It can show a poor or superficial understanding of the text(s) being discussed. Ideas in it can be confused, and the question not adequately answered. Spelling and grammar can be so bad that it is hard to work out what you are trying to say. If assessment or your own input was asked for, you may have simply stated an opinion without justification. Simply working hard on a paper does not mean it deserves better than a C.
D A D paper is either too short, very confused, involves a major misunderstanding of what the question was asking, or leaves out a major part of what the question was asking, such as assessment or your own ideas. Generally a D paper gives the impression that the writer did not put much effort into writing it, or should have known to ask for help but didn't.
F Papers rarely get Fs, but it is possible. This occurs when it seems that the writer has very little idea what the paper is meant to be about, has put hardly any effort into writing it, or has not made any attempt to answer the question.