On writing a research paper

Dave The Rave

I have an assignment due this Tuesday on a topic of my choice. I chose Fear : It’s effect on the mind and body.
I have a good amount of research, plenty of sources and the interwebs if all else fails.
I am stuck however on how to cite the works I use, quote from them properly and overall format a research paper.
This is my first one and is basically the decides whether I graduate from High School this June.
Help and/or advice?

RepoMan1023

Ask which style your teacher wants and how to do it. There are also several books out there that teach you certain style, such as the MLA. Each style is slightly different in formatting and how to cite references.

In general, you only "quote" people, not passages from other sources. Everything else must be paraphrased or rewritten in your own words. Unless the sentence you are writing is completely your own thoughts, you should cite where you got it from. Again, the different styles will have different methods of doing this. General formatting is one inch margins all around with size 12 Times New Roman at double spacing.

supabeast

Your teacher should have told you how to handle citations, and all other formatting issues, when the assignment was given out. Given that you're in high school it's probably MLA format, you can get the MLA Handbook at any bookstore for about $20, but what you really need to do is get the teacher to explain to the class how he/she wants citations handled in these papers. You should also submit a written complaint about the teacher not doing so to the school principal, because for a high school teacher to give out an important research paper without clear format requirements is a sign of gross incompetence at worst and inexperience at best.

D.T.

Your safest bet is to go with MLA style. If you're referencing a source for the first time, then you begin the reference with an acknowledgement phrase.

IE: "According to Jim Johnson's Time Magazine article, "Computers and You", the internet will become self aware in five years and kill us all."

The first time you reference an author, you state their name exactly as it appears in the header for the article. The publication is always underlined and the article itself is always in quotations.

You end a reference with a parenthetical citation, which should contain as little information about the source as possible. The rule of thumb with these is to cite the author properly, but while drawing as little attention away from your own writing and interpretation as possible. If the material you're referencing is taken from a hard source like a book, magazine or journal, or a decent PDF file, then you'd simply put the page number(s) in parentheses at the end of your reference. If it's an internet source, you can put (internet) or (no pag.), which means "no pagination" - or no page numbers.

IE: "According to Jim Johnson's Time Magazine article, "Computers and You", the internet will become self aware in five years and kill us all (56)."

Dave The Rave

Thanks.
My teacher did give us information and explained how to cite and quote and what have you, I sadly forgot.
Very useful information all around.