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    How to Write an English Paper: Argue, Research, Format, and Edit
    How to Write an English Paper: Argue, Research, Format, and Edit
    How to Write an English Paper: Argue, Research, Format, and Edit
    Ebook193 pages1 hour

    How to Write an English Paper: Argue, Research, Format, and Edit

    By Barry Pomeroy

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    About this ebook

    This guide is meant to assist those who want to learn the basics of writing English essays, as well as how to use research to support their academic arguments. Accordingly, it explains the general purpose of the academic English paper, the rationale for its structure and how to incorporate quotes and separate arguments, as well as offers research tips. Many guides on the market are full of information the student does not necessarily need, and tend to be expensive books whose rationale for existence is hundreds of pages devoted to primers on sentence structure, conjugation of verbs, and arcane use of punctuation. This project is meant to answer the need for a quick, coherent guide that focuses more on argument than grammar, and more on research and literary terminology than parts of speech.
    With the notion of research changing as quickly in the academic world as it is in the mind of the general public, this guide takes on the task of explaining the different resources available as well as their relative strengths, and how to incorporate material into the essay using both MLA and APA format.
    Lastly, the guide gives an editing checklist the reader can use to double-check their own work, offers a description of how their paper might be graded, and takes on the task of explaining constructions as prosaic as punctuation and as arcane as fake transitions and the incorporation of quotes. I also have a list of literary terms commonly used in undergraduate English papers, and offer a few fun exercises to tease your brain, test your knowledge, and boost your self-esteem.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarry Pomeroy
    Release dateMar 18, 2017
    ISBN9781987922493
    How to Write an English Paper: Argue, Research, Format, and Edit
    Author

    Barry Pomeroy

    Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

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      Book preview

      How to Write an English Paper - Barry Pomeroy

      When you need to write an English paper, you must decide what you are trying to accomplish. To do that, you need to know what the paper should look like (in structural and mechanical terms), as well as understand something about your audience.

      The audience of an academic paper in English ostensibly consists of those who have read the primary text, and understand it well enough, but do not know what argument you intend to make in your paper. This saves you from summarizing the text, but not from summarizing your argument.

      Like all academic work, a structured English paper is meant to make and prove an argument and deliver its information in as concise a manner as possible. In that way, it is no different than similar exercises in the sciences, engineering, or medicine. Some might say that the subject matter we deal with in English—novels and poetry—is so amorphous that our papers are necessarily equally convoluted and vague. Although that is an evocative criticism that speaks volumes about those who suggest it, it ignores that an academic English paper must satisfy the same rigorous criteria for presentation and proof as any academic discipline.

      You must introduce and structure your argument in a clear and concise manner, prove it using relevant evidence, and cite your sources parenthetically—after the quote—and in your Works Cited page for the edification of future scholars. That lays the groundwork for your paper. The different disciplines handle their structures and proofs differently (for example, in the social sciences they use APA format), but the essential core of what you are trying to accomplish remains the same.

      The Process of Writing the Paper

      There are a series of steps that a student should follow if they want to write an essay that will both make a contribution to research and earn a high mark. The following steps do not guarantee higher grades but even by perusing them you can learn a lot about how papers should be approached. I will follow this description by step-by-step instructions with examples.

      Usually the professor will provide topics and although those can sometimes be daunting, it is important to examine the topics at least two weeks before the essay is due. That gives you a chance to think about the topics, read over the texts in question, and ask the professor for more information so that you can ensure that you are making the best choice.

      Although this might seem obvious, you should choose a topic that you find interesting. If your choice is based on what texts you enjoy—which typically are also ones you find easy to understand—then you will likely work harder on the paper and make more evocative readings of the material.

      Once you have chosen a topic, you should brainstorm for ideas that you might want to talk about that are related to the text. Although this might seem pre-emptive without examining the text or texts more carefully with the topic in mind, brainstorming can reveal interesting connections that you might miss if you are scouring the text for proofs.

      Search the novel, film, or essay for quotes that relate to your topic. Note that you are not yet researching the topic by way of secondary sources, but rather you are examining the primary texts for information that might answer the topic and looking for quotes which will inform your argument.

      Once you have a long list of quotes that are relevant to the question you are addressing, you should begin to see patterns. Look through them on the page to see if they can be categorized by type or argument. It might be useful to look ahead to Useful Literary Terms, and their use in interpretation.

      Once you have a few categories that you can use to answer the question, discard those quotes or ideas that are not as useful to your paper. Your paper should not include every quote relevant to the topic; it should only make use of those which make your argument stronger.

      Organize the broad categories roughly into what your essay will look like. This is more difficult that is sounds. You need to take the rough groupings of quotes loosely arranged around central ideas, and decide what order they need to be in to make an effective and logical argument and enable you to make good transitions between ideas. If your ideas do not have a coherent and logical order, they will likely not easily connect to each other and that will undermine the entire paper. You can think of a paper as a narrative. You are attempting to prove an argument, but to do that you need to tell a story about your argument, a story which progresses organically from one point to the next.

      Make up an outline. This will enable you to envision the paper before you start the labour of writing it, and it also means that your ideas will be codified enough that you can bring your paper to your professor to ensure that it makes sense. A clear outline should contain all the elements of the arguments in a logical order.

      Once you have your outline, writing your introduction should be relatively easy. You are merely following the format that you laid out in your outline, although you are incorporating those notions into sentences, bearing in mind author, text, and your argument. Make sure your introduction is structured the same as the paper will be, which is usually in accordance with your categorization of your quotes. This also gives you a document you can bring to your professor for feedback and to ensure you are still on the right track.

      Research your topic, looking for academic journal articles which concern your author, text and topic, or failing that, at least on your author and topic. The academic sources—which can be either academic refereed journal articles or academic refereed books—should be literary in orientation. See more about the use of research in How to Research an Academic Paper.

      Once you have collected your information, write your first draft. You should be paying particular attention to the structure and logic of your argument, ensuring that the structure follows that of your introduction, and whether your arguments support your claims.

      Incorporate the quotes into your text where they best help your argument, by beginning with quotes from your primary texts that support your paper’s main points. You should integrate your quotes from your primary sources first, and then incorporate those from your research that support the arguments you are making: See Using Quotes.

      Your draft is nearly done, so it is now time to look back through the entire paper, first paying attention to your argument. Write in the margin beside each paragraph or sentence what they are arguing. See Appendix 2: Editing Checklist for more about this procedure.

      Look at the margin gloss you have just created and see if it makes sense, examining each sentence in terms of the argument of the paragraph as well as to see if it fits into the paper’s thesis.

      When the logic of your argument is cumulative and coherent, work on the editing. Make sure there are no contractions, use of idiom, inconsistencies, punctuation errors, style errors, poor diction, misspellings, comma splices, redundancies, sentence fragments, non-referring pronouns, syntactical and agreement errors, rhetorical questions, and grammar problems.

      When your draft is finished, and perfect, have a friend read it and see if they can make sense of it. They should be able to follow your argument and find your evidence convincing. Write your title page and works cited page at this time.

      If your professor is open to the extra work, bring the final draft to him or her and see if they have recommendations. Act on the professor’s recommendations and then put the paper aside for a week in order to clear your mind of the arguments.

      After a week, return to the paper and make what changes occur to you make sense in accordance to what you have most recently learned in class and what you recognize from reading it with fresh eyes.

      Paper Structure

      Note: If you are interested in paper format in terms of the structuring of prefatory information, font and margin size, please skip to Appendix 3: Formatting the Essay.

      Introducing a Paper: Two Different Formats

      There are two principal ways to introduce a paper in the humanities. The discussion of these two is particularly relevant to the undergraduate English student because in their other classes, such as psychology and sociology, they may have taught to use an APA style introduction in order to position their argument within a larger context. If you have been taught to write a paper using the hourglass format, be aware that this format does not make the best English paper.

      The Hourglass Format

      The so-called hourglass format in one in which you slowly get to the point of your paper by introducing the topic in a roundabout fashion and then giving more detailed information until finally, at the end of the introduction, you say what you are actually going to talk about. This more journalistic approach to structure is useful for explaining the background to the question you are answering although it says little about the structure of your paper. Instead, like clickbait on a website, it leads the reader to the thesis statement at the end of the introduction; it offers tantalizing hints but does not show in detail what will be discussed in the paper itself.

      This format is useful in the social sciences, largely because it positions your argument within a broader field of study. For example, if you were going to discuss the relative strengths of Emile Durkheim’s notions about suicide, you might want to begin by contextualizing his work in subsequent research in the field before you introduce your own analysis. The hourglass format makes sense in that context.

      An Example of an hourglass introduction that is too vague for the English literature reader to follow the argument:

      Although historically authors focused on their geographical location as their main concern, that is slowly changing as the world becomes more globally connected. Many critics have denigrated Canadian authors for being insular and provincial. In fact, while some authors make Canada and Canadian stories their especial concern, Thomas King is a world class Canadian author who directly addresses the concerns of Aboriginal people in his texts

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