Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome
to my course on academic writing and how to structure an academic arguments. My name is Max, and for those
of you who are new here, I've been in school
for a very long time, not because I'm not good at it, but because I like it enough
that I keep coming back. I have earned three separate
bachelor's degrees. I'm nearly done with my masters. Some of you also know me as a professional fiction
writer, which I am. So I like to think
that I can cover all aspects of not just how to structure
and arguments it, how to write about it in an
intuitive and fossa away. This course is going
to cover pretty much every aspect of constructing
an academic papers. Start to finish. We're going to start with how
to structure an argument. We're going to cover all of
the different structures and analysis tools you can use. We're going to talk about
how to develop a thesis, how to write a
proper introduction. Outside of that, we're
also going to talk a lot about outlining
and organization, especially, especially
in the humanities. That's really important. We're going to talk about how to find and vet your sources. That's important for
any given discipline. We're also going to talk about
how to write a conclusion. There'll also be a section
on issues to watch out for. So even if you know how to
do all of those things, that section might be
really good for you just in case there are
things that you're missing. And finally, we will
have a final project. The end goal here is that you're going to write
a thesis driven essay that synthesizes
a collection of sources on a given topic. So I think that this
course is designed for anyone and everyone
who's looking to make their argumentative
skills stronger. I definitely don't think that. I definitely don't
think that it's just for people who are in academia or people who are going into the subjects that I
study or that I teach. I think that these are skills and tools that
everyone can use, largely because it makes you
a more persuasive writer. And that is a really
important skill to have without any further ado. Let's get into it.
2. How to Structure an Argument: So less than one, how to structure an argument? The easiest way to structure an argument that
most people learn is what I would call the hamburger structure or a five-paragraph
essay structure. A lot of people call it
the hamburger structure because it kind of looks like hamburger when
you draw it out, it's like the top piece of
bread is your introduction. Then you have your lettuce, which is your first paragraph, you're tomato, which is
your next paragraph. And then you're sort of meat
section, paragraph three. And then bottom bun conclusion. That's not a bad structure. It's a little bit simplistic. The structure that
I think I have seen most frequently is a
comparative structure. And this comes up a lot
in visual analysis. Papers. With this, you get feces like x is similar to why? Because of this, but they're
not the same because of fat. Or similarly, X and Y seem
different because of this, but actually they're
similar because of that. And I use that a lot when I was working on my
Art History degree, it still comes up
now when I'm working on book reviews or
when I'm getting ready to present at a conference explaining why what
I do is unique. And other structure
that people often use is a source analysis structure. When you're doing
something like that, you have a general thesis. Then you have your first source, you analyze that source, your second source, you
analyze that source. In our third source,
you analyze that. And then you do
another paragraph or two that are a
collective synthesis of each of those sources in a way that relates back to
your original thesis. And placing each of
those sources or those authors in conversation
with one another. Then at the end you have a
conclusion that wraps up all of that and
brings it back to your initial general thesis. Another structure
that I used when I was a competitive
policy debate or a long, long time we go is a
persuasive essay structure. And this is what I
think you will use most frequently if you
are not in academia, if you are not a
professional researcher or right, or like I am. This comes up a
lot if you're just trying to make a good
persuasive arguments. For that. You have a thesis or resolution, which is your thing
that you want to do, then you have whatever
the current state of things is before you set
out to do that thing, we call that inherently
or the current state. Then you go into
the disadvantages, which are the bad things
that will happen. If you don't go along with
your arguments of what to do your thesis, then solvency, which is how your result thesis, prevents all of those disadvantage
issues from happening. And then you wrap it all up
with a rebuttal arguments, which is effectively conclusion. And the idea of that is to combat potential issues that you might have with your
initial resolution. So you sort of imagine
other people are going to argue with you, how can you push back
against that preemptively? That is something that my undergraduate writing classes always called the They say, I say structure, which I don't love that
way of talking about it. But the idea is basically the people arguing
with me will say this. I say this in advance
before they can argue with me to explain why their argument is invalid before they even get
the chance to say it. There are a few items that
you're always, always, always going to need to
incorporate in any given essay. You need a thesis, you need an introduction that
your thesis is inside of. You need multiple sources. You need to analyze
each of those sources. You need an area for
sources synthesis, which is putting it altogether. When you've done that, you
need a strong conclusion. If this is anything that is
getting published anywhere or anything that anybody might
want to check your work. You need citations
and a bibliography and we're gonna talk about
how to do those as well.
3. How to Craft a Thesis and Introduction: Okay, I mentioned that every
strong paper needs a thesis. And every thesis needs
to be either contained within or at the end
of an introduction. For this, we need to talk
about how to construct an argumentative or
analytical statements. Everything starts there. You need to have something
that you are setting. A thesis statement can't
just be the sky is blue. A real thesis statements
surrounding that would be more like the sky is blue because of some scientific
argument that I don't do. I may have mentioned
that everything I studied humanities, or more accurately, it would be interpret that the
sky is blue for the sake of some cultural
importance thing. It doesn't need to
be groundbreaking, but there doesn't need
to be an argument there your thesis can't just be
stating a simple fact. Like I mentioned, in terms of how to
structure your argument. You can have a
persuasive structure, which is, we need to do this. You can have that
comparative structure, which is these two things
we assume are different. They're actually very similar. Or your statement
can be something as simple as everyone thinks that these two
things are the same. They're not. And here's why. And that's sort of what
you're always doing. It is you're always
trying to get someone to agree with you
a thesis as an argument, you always need one. Now if we're gonna
talk about how to write an introduction, the first thing that you
usually need is a hook. And that's just a way to get someone invested in
what you're writing. That's really easy to do in that comparative structure where you're saying everybody assumes
this and they're wrong. Here's why. That's a catchy way to
get people into it. You can also just come out with a relatively
provocative statement. And I don't mean start talking about inappropriate subjects
in the middle of your paper. I just mean, if there is a common assumption that you are overturning state
that you're doing. And that sort of brings
me to my next point. You need to contextualize what you're doing
and you need to explain why it's going to be relevant for the
rest of the paper. I've always found it very helpful to include what I call a roadmap in my introduction or in the paragraph
directly following it. This makes it really easy if I'm submitting to conferences or if I'm trying to get
this published anywhere, it makes it really easy to
convert that into an abstract. All a roadmap really is, is explaining the basics of my argument in
very short summary. So you don't have to
do it that precisely. But I will say through all
of my experience working on literary journals
and academic journals, as well as throughout
my academic career. Every time that I've read a paper and there
wasn't a roadmap, I always ended up confused
by the third paragraph. And every time that I have submitted an article or
a paper for publication, I've gotten feedback that says, Hey, you put in a roadmap. Yeah. I think that that is just really important things
to keep in mind. Your goal is to not
confuse your reader. The more structure
that you put into it starting in
your introduction, the easier it will be for
your reader to stay on top of what you're covering
and understand what you're talking about
and why it's important. I'm just going to
reiterate again. It's really, really
important that they understand what you're
talking about and y, and that all comes
down to the thesis. You need an argument, it needs to be a
strong argument, and it needs to be present
and easily identifiable. In that first paragraph. I usually try to end my first paragraph with a
one-to-two sentence thesis. Some people put it in that first paragraph and then reiterate it in the second two. Those are both very
valid strategies. But I cannot emphasize enough. It is important that it is there and that you
follow it with a brief summary of
what your analysis is going to look like.
That's your roadmap.
4. How to Organize and Outline Your Paper: How do I construct
a roadmap you ask that comes into
organization and outlining. I personally find that
having an outline is the most helpful
thing that you can do for a longer form
piece of writing. Any of you who've been watching these videos for a while
longer or who've taken my other classes know that I live and die by
a good outline, whether that's for a novel, for an academic
paper, for a thesis, for a dissertation for portfolio defense.
Any of the above? I realized so hard
on that outline. So first thing that
you need to do is understand what the
structure of your essay is. I will put them right up here. But if you have a five-paragraph
essay, that's great. You know that you
don't need more than those five paragraphs. And thanks to that
lovely idea of a hamburger essay concept, you know, more or less what
that's gonna look like. You need an introduction. That introduction needs
to have a thesis. You know that, you're
gonna put that as point number one
on the outline. Point number two,
you need to know that that's gonna be
your first paragraph, which is going to be a
given point or a source. And then throw in a
couple of bullet points about what that is
going to be about. Same thing for paragraph two, same thing for paragraph three. Ideally, those points will
build on one another. And by the time you get to your concluding paragraph,
that bottom button, what you can do is say, okay, this was my
initial thesis. This was my first paragraph, second paragraph,
third paragraph. Wrap it up in a neat little bow. You might not even
need to put that on your outline because
it's all there. In the introduction in the
first three little sections. Ideally for an outline, It's just a sentence or
two to describe what each of those
paragraphs is gonna be. Bullet points or two
underneath those. Just to jog your
memory a little bit when it comes to writing
the actual thing. It gets a little bit
more complicated when you start dealing with source analysis
papers or synthesis CSS-based papers where you're dealing with multiple documents, multiple frames of analysis, and trying to tie
them all together. Ordinarily, those papers tend to be anywhere from eight
pages to 25 pages. So you can imagine
that the outline is a little bit trickier
to come up with. But it's that same general idea. You want to know what your
introduction is going to be. You need to know what your
thesis is going to be. I started every single
outline with a thesis. And then you build out
your bullet points. You say, here's the source
that I'm going to use. These are the
important points of analysis surrounding the source. And here is why it is important
to my larger argument. Any of you who have done an annotated bibliography may recognize that kind of idea. What you're really doing
is making sure you know why your writing
about the source. And that hopefully should build out longer paragraphs
for a larger arguments. You can do the exact same
thing for comparative essay. And the idea for all
of this is just to really give you a framework
and a structure to go off of. You might need to turn
it in. You might not. I haven't had to turn
one in in a while, but I keep making them, I keep writing them. And the reason for
that is that it gives a structure to go off of and it allows me something to come back to when I'm not sure what
I'm writing about or when. I don't remember why I was looking at the source
in the first place. And that has turned out to
be a really helpful tool. Every single essay
that you write should contain an introduction, an abstract, or a roadmap
with a solid thesis in there. And then you need your sources. You might need some methodology, especially if it's
more scientific paper. Each of those sources or a
methodological steps needs a full discussion of what
each of them is uncovers. And then each of those sections should also link back into your main topic or
interweave with one another in a way that
supports your thesis. And that can also be
in your outline in those bullet points that
you build out in-between. If you have images,
if you have tables, if you have figures that you
need to insert in there, you're going to want a
couple of bullet points for analyzing each and
every one of them, and every source, every table, every image needs a citation. I have found that
it's much, much, much easier to do
your footnotes or your parenthetical citations in your outline before you
get to the final paper. And I know that
seems like you're just going so far out of
your way and so annoying. But it will save you
so much time later on. I can't even begin to tell you. The other thing that you're going to want to make sure you do is build out a bibliography which makes sense if
you're citing your sources and you're marking them down in the footnotes are
the parentheses. Just having a bibliography
on hand is really helpful. You don't have to annotate it. I usually do just so that I remember who wrote which
source who the authors were, why I care about it, why I'm incorporating it into the paper in the first place. Especially if you're still in
the early planning phases. I've found that that's a
really helpful thing to do. The actual outline that you're building can be pretty simple. Just thesis, main
points, quotations, central evidence
from each source, couple of bullet
points of analysis. For each point. Ideally, a full outline
should look like a midpoint between an annotated
bibliography and a first draft, which is basically what it is. You're just building out
a skeleton frame here.
5. How to Find (and Vet) Your Sources: Okay, So we've talked
a little bit about a bibliography and citations. Now I think we need to talk
a bit about how to find good sources and make sure that you're really using top tier evidence for what you're doing. Especially within academia, not all sources are reliable,
which NO sticks. There are a few things to look out for just in terms of knowing that something is good
and reliable and usable. Anything with a.edu tag is good. I always like to double-check
and make sure that it's not somebody's undergraduate thesis or somebody's masters thesis, just because those are usually gonna be
secondary evidence only. And you're probably going to want to just look
at their bibliography, see what they use in
borrowed from that instead. But in general,
a.edu tag is good. It's even better if it's
from a university press. Academic journals are also good. Those are usually going to
have the word review in there somewhere or the
name of the discipline. Those you can probably
find on larger databases. It's also really
good to look at who funded the research if you
really want to get picky, if you're writing a paper
about pharmaceutical thin and you look for a paper on the
pharmaceutical industry. You're looking for that paper
on pharmaceutical industry. And it's so good and it supplies the evidence that you really
want to be writing about. And then you get to the bottom. And there's a little note in
there that a study was paid for by one of the companies that really
wanted to get that result. That's gonna be a
sign that maybe you don't want to use that piece. As far as art and
art history goes. Anything where you're
using an image, I think that it can be
important to make sure that you cite who owns that image and also making sure that the
version you're looking at is the actual piece
or the actual image, rather than a random edit. Just because things
like color can change, things like display
contexts matter. In general, you're going to want to make sure
that you're finding images that are
owned by museums, that are under a custodianship, that are in a gallery or that have been published by
a research journal. And even better is if you can find something that is
from its original source. If you can go there and
take the photo yourself. Because then you know for sure. I'm also just going to
put it out there that primary sources are almost
always better than secondary, like the art history sources, these are almost always going
to be owned by a museum or an archive unless it's
in a personal collection. For that, you're always going to make you're always going
to want to make sure that you have permission to be dealing with inciting
all of these things. Sometimes that requires
a permission request, sometimes it's as simple as making sure that
you know who owns it, who published the picture or the image or the source
that you're dealing with. And just making sure
that you have it all written down correctly. Something like Google Scholar
is absolutely are framed. It's just a good way to get
a hold of books and titles, even if you can't get a
hold of the full thing, at least you know the title. It allows you to
filter by journal. It's a really helpful tool
if you're working through a university system or you have access to a university library. Worldcat is your best friend. It's gigantic research database. It's absolutely awesome. And also, librarians are really helpful and if you ask them for help, they will help you. I'm also just going to save that Wikipedia is not the
end of the world. All of your middle school
and high school teachers probably told you never, ever, ever use Wikipedia. I'm over here as a former
tutor, multiple times, published writer,
perpetual student, working on a grad degree. I use Wikipedia
from time to time. Not to cite what the
actual page is saying. But because they're surprisingly
good about citations, you can almost always scroll all the way down
to the bottom of the Wikipedia page and
look who they cited, followed that, and then cite that if it has what
you're looking for. In general, bibliographies on previously published
work are awesome. If somebody wrote a
really good analysis of a bunch of other analyses
of what you're looking at. Maybe somebody reviewed
two or three books and those books sound
interesting to you. Look at that person's
bibliography, check what they were reading, what their other sources were, and see if those will be
useful to you as well. I will also say
journal collections are absolutely wonderful. Research databases are awesome. Something like JSTOR, even
just going to a library, these things can
really help you out. Again, can't emphasize
this enough. Ask a Librarian, it is their job to help you
track down information. They want to do this for you. If you don't understand how a library system is set up and you can't find
what you're looking for. As a result, ask the librarian
they wanted to help you. They don't get enough
research questions. They will help you, I promise. I will also say if you
are reading books and journals and maybe have
limited access to something, or if you have the physical
book and it's 800 pages long, like some of the texts
sitting back there. And it's just sitting
on your desk. Keep track of your quotations
and your page numbers. Like working on that bibliography
in the outline stage. Just do it from the start. It'll save you so
much time later on because then you
have the quotation, you know what page number is on. And you can just go from there. You're not going to have
to go track down the book, Double-check your page number, triple check that
you worded it right. Every single time you want
to go back and reference it. I will also say, if you know that the book talks about what you want
to write about, but you haven't necessarily got the time to read all
eight or 900 pages of it. Look at the index in the
back and see if you can find a specific page number
for what you're looking at. Especially if it's an anthology that covers a lot of
things or it's a journal. Welcome back At the end, ducks, look for the page number
that has what you're looking for and check that
it's just a quick shortcut, but it saves you so
much time in the end. I will also say, if you have a way to mark
your sources physically with a sticky note or to save your digital sources
in a citation manager. That will also save you
a lot of time later on. I personally use a
source called Zotero, which is just a
citation manager. There are lots and lots
of other ones out there. Many of them are free. I highly recommend
just poking around and figuring out one that
suits what you need. Again, all you're doing with
that is saving yourself, him later on and building up
a bibliography as you go. And it keeps your quotations in your sources already organized. If you don't want to do that, then I would recommend
making sure that you mark up your books
with sticky notes. That way you're not
damaging the pages. If it needs to go back
to the library, it can. But you know which pages
you need to reference. And you can even mark what line you're working
on with something like a sticky note with
your notes on it just off to the side so you know why you marked it
in the first place. Again, just saving
yourself time here. Little things that
will make it much, much easier for you by the time you get to that final draft.
6. How to Analyze a Source: We talked about how
to find your sources. Let's talk a bit about how
to effectively analyze them. And this is something
that we call synthesis because you've read it,
you've processed it. You're working on
analyzing it and you're building up your own
arguments around it, you're creating something new. The first thing that
you're gonna do is choose a source. From there. You're going to find
the quotations that loop back to your thesis
that proved your point. The first thing you need
to do is make sure that you understand what
that source is saying and what those quotations
mean in their context. As you're writing and as you're building out that outline, you need to explain what that
source is for your reader, why that author is significant, especially if you're
bringing in information from a source outside of your
central discipline, you're going to pull
up your quotation. You're gonna summarize what
that quotation is saying and why we're not gonna do is restate that you're not
going to just paraphrase it. You're going to
explain what it means in the context of
its original source. And then in your paper, the big question that you
always need to be asking is, what does it mean? Again, make sure that
you're jotting down page numbers just so
you have it in there. And the big thing here is making sure that
what you're saying is either original or
that you're citing. And if it's not making
sure that you are looping it back into your
thesis and central argument. There are some really important
questions that you can ask to keep yourself on track. The first one is,
what is the document? What is this thing that you
are looking at? Is it a book? Isn't a manuscript? Is it a piece of bone that somebody else wrote
a short dialogue on? And now you want to look
at the primary source. Next question is,
are you handling an original, copy,
a translation? And if it's not the original, then how might transcription
or translation or another space for somebody else to have touched
it and handled it. Mess with its meaning. Similarly, you're
always going to want to check what the date was of that original
documents are source. And you're going to examine what its original context was, what did originally meant. Another good question to ask is, are there any doubts
or issues out there with this work that
you need to consider? Has anybody else discredited
it at any point? Like I was saying earlier, they say I say is always
a valid course of action if you want to argue with other
folks in your field. But you always have to make sure that you can back yourself up. If you're saying those
guys over there, think that this
source isn't valid. This is why they're wrong. You need to have evidence to
back yourself up on that. You're also going to want to
make sure that you know why that document was written
or why that source exists. What were its initial
authors goals? What biases might they have had that you need to
take into account? Similarly, you're going
to want to look at the intended audience
for that document. Who would've experienced
reading it or looking at it in its
original context. You're also going to want to
make sure that you're paying attention to exact quotations, specific things that this
document says as opposed to implications and how it's been interpreted
over the years, those things don't
always match up. Sometimes the
differences between those can be really interesting. Another big question is, are you as a researcher, reading or understanding
the source differently than its original intended
audience would have. And that comes back down to who was the intended audience. Saying the source that
you're looking at is actually an image of a church, really gigantic,
gorgeous cathedral. First question that you
should be asking is, who was this built for? Why? Who funded it? Who would have been
allowed to go? If your source is a gorgeously
illuminated manuscripts. The first question
is, who would've been allowed to read it
in the first place? You're always going
to want to ask also, does this source or
this analysis of a source leave anything out that you would
want to consider? If it does, can you find out
information somewhere else? Are there other sources
that you need to examine to make this
one make more sense, and so on, etc. You don't have to write about every single one of
these questions. You don't have to put every
single one of them into your analysis in your outline or your annotated bibliography. But each of these questions
should be part of your thought process as you're putting together your research.
7. How to Write a Conclusion: We've talked about sources, we've talked about how to
analyze and synthesize them. Let's talk about how
to write a conclusion. Basically, what
you're trying to do here is sum up your arguments in a neat and tidy way that leaves your reader
with a strong feeling, not just that they
understand your arguments, but also that you are correct. The first thing
you need to do is recap your arguments
without copying it exactly. So you're gonna
restate your thesis. I know some people who actually copying their introduction make that most of their conclusion and then rewrite
their introduction. You don't have to do that. It's a good way of
sort of edit yourself and check that you're saying
what you want to say. But in general, you're
going to want to sum up why your main
argument is important. What you're looking for here
is a so what arguments? Why do you care about this? Why should anyone
care about this? Again, your goal here
is to synthesized, not to summarize, you don't
want to copy it exactly. But this is your chance to have the last word
about yourself. Ducts take advantage of that. One of the really big things
that people do here is pointing to broader
implications of your research. There are a couple of
things that I'm just gonna recommend not doing. Don't start your conclusion with in conclusion or in the end, in summary or in closing. Those all just kind
of come across as very trite phrase like
that has a tendency to take a good strong paper and make it feel amateur or unclear
when it doesn't have to. Don't do that. Even if you're tempted, there is a better way to
phrase it out there, I promise, or a stronger
way I should say. I'm also just going
to say don't end a very logic driven paper with
a purely emotional appeal. Your goal is to remind
your reader that you are rate using logic and evidence. You've spent so much
of this time and effort building up analysis and logic based understand of all of these sources
that you did all of that legwork to go
find, undo that. Anything that is just totally off track and off
tone from the rest of the paper is just
going to confuse your reader and leave
them with sort of a sour taste in their mouth. Upon finishing this paper, your conclusion is really
just a place to make that last strong statements, something that they
want to be breathing. You have that opportunity
to do that here as long as you can do it
without losing steam.
8. Issues to Watch Out For: All right, Let's talk about
issues to watch out for. Just things that I, as a tutor, as a writer, as an editor, tend to see people really messing up throughout
their whole paper. The biggest one is
total consistency. And it's sort of a big
pet peeve of mine. You want to maintain a
formal but not stuffy. You want to keep
it readable tone through the whole paper. And you want to make
sure that there's a general sense of fluidity
throughout the whole thing. You want it to be readable. I will also say
run-on sentences and fragments are both very common
with the style of writing, especially if you're adopting from bullet points
in and outline. Do your best to avoid them in general and to make
sure that you take the time to do a full
editing paths and make sure that you catch
all of them in revisions. In general, just try to make
sure that your spelling and your grammar are okay
through whole piece. I've always been a okay with using things like spell
check and grammar lead just to make sure that
you're not missing anything. Things slip through the cracks. It happens, I get it. But it can just undercut your authority
with the whole piece. If you're making
this really strong, awesome logical arguments, then you've messed up
the difference between there their and they're or 222 just takes a
good strong paper and makes it totally unreadable. The one that I happen to
be particularly guilty of, and it's made me a
little bit more vigilant about it is unclear pronouns. Using words like this, that thing to talk about specific concepts
that you can put a name to. So I can be talking about this thing that
I'm holding in my hands. But if I call it this thing, no one is going to know
what I'm talking about. If I make reference to this mug, all of a sudden it
makes a lot more sense and I'm not just
talking about this, that them, they, over there, It's a specific concrete image. A lot of times in
academic writing. This turns out to be,
see, I just did it. This issue is how it correct that I've been
talking about a book. Let's see. I have here a book called
logics of history. So anytime that I'm
referencing to Villa book, that book, I'm not going to call it when referenced in this. When they talk about it. I'm going to say when referenced
in logics of history, when the author William
soul talks about it, just adding more specificity is always, always,
always helpful. Another item in here
that's just important to keep track of is
tense consistency. Tense is a big, big deal. If the whole thing is taking
place in present tense, It's all about things that
are currently happening. Keep it that way. If
it's a history paper and everything that you're
talking about is things that have happened in the past, past tense done, just
keep an eye out for it. It can be really jarring when someone has
been very consistent the whole way through
and then they just shift and switch
and it's different. Talk about passive voice. It's just putting the
only way I can phrase it and it makes your
papers a significantly longer and clunkier
than they need to be. What I always do is I
do a full search of my entire document and I look
forward to Beaver verbs. So is R were, weren't. I just highlight them all. I took them and I tried to
make them active verbs. So instead of this post-it
note was put here on my desk, I shifted to I put this
post-it note on my desk. That makes sense. Another really big issue
that I've run into as an editor is when people don't cite a source that they use because they
think they can get away with it when they are
paraphrasing that source. That's called plagiarism. It is bad. I am begging
you do not do it. Formatting issues also
come up pretty frequently. For that, I'll just say make
sure that you're following the style guide for
whatever your field uses. Whether that is APA Chicago MLA, AAA, or any other
formatting guide. I follow Chicago pretty closely as you'll see in the
resources for the class. So I always make sure that I'm doing my title
page, my footnotes, my block quotes in my
bibliography correctly, those are sort of the
big items for me. But every format has
separate requirements. So I would make sure to have either a digital or physical
style dydt with you. Most of these are
gonna be available as books or online for free. In general, you're probably going to have one of two
issues with your work. It's either gonna be too
short and you're gonna need a combination of more evidence
and a stronger analysis. Or it's gonna be way too long and you have to figure
out some stuff to come. Either way. Make sure that you
know your word or your page length requirements and find a way to stick to them. Especially if it's an assignment
that you're turning into a professor or if it's something that you're
trying to get published, those length requirements
are a really, really big deal and I would
just make sure that you know, more or less what you're
doing around them. I think writing to
length is definitely a skill that takes time
and practice to develop. But you can do it.
9. Final Project: All right, Final Project time. I suspect that if you are
here taking this class, someone has probably
already assigned you a paper to write and you are looking for advice
on how to do that. But because I believe in
you and in your abilities, I'm gonna give you another
assignment on top of that, I know, I'm so sorry. For this. What I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna give you a mission. For this, your mission is to
write a thesis driven essay, synthesising a collection of documents or images on
a historical topic. Examples for this can include comparing Egyptian and
Greek canons of proportion. You're gonna need to
look up what those are or explaining the
similarities and differences between predynastic and 18th century Egyptian
religious carvings or biblical motifs and Leonardo
da Vinci's early work. Or if you want to
shift it hard history, you could do summarizing the differences and similarities between the revolutions of 1848. You could do a paper
on the topic of Victorian gender roles as
depicted in 19th century art. You can even talk about
post-World War ideas of the self as understood through sci-fi and fantasy literature
or something like that. You can compare the canons
of Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Narnia. It's really up to you. But whatever paper
you write here needs to include a thesis, an introduction that
includes a roadmap. More than two sources, preferably at least one primary source and two
secondary sources, each of which should have a full analysis that you
do that goes with it. You're going to want to
make sure that you have your own synthesis
of these materials and your own original
interpretation of the materials that
you are working with. You're going to want
to make sure that you have a clear conclusion. Additionally, because you're
going to be citing sources, you need citations according to whatever style guide you choose. A bibliography or
works cited section, feel super free to look into other resources and style
guides as you write. You might want to check
out the Purdue OWL or any other universities style
guides, grammarly, spellcheck the Hemingway up, any of those at least nominally
free resources are there, they are available
for you to use. Let them help you out. All right. Get writing and good luck.
Maxxe Riann, Author|Artist| Student
