Writing Assistance

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and plagiarism are rampant in college now, so here's my take on these issues.

2. Everyone can improve their writing skills.  Great resource: Elements of Style by Strunk and White.  A short book with simple rules.  Read a page a day and you’ll be done with it in no time.  Then read it a second time.
   You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=strunk+and+white&qid=1600364538&s=books&sr=1-3.
   A quick Googling offers a free version: https://faculty.washington.edu/heagerty/Courses/b572/public/StrunkWhite.pdf.

3. Become familiar with a college paper writing guide now.  Chicago, APA, Turabian, and MLA are all acceptable.  They have guidelines for formatting papers with headings, margins, fonts, citation format, and more.  Beyond that, they have rules for how to cite resources. 
   You can find tons of useful information at the NOVA Library website: https://www.nvcc.edu/library/students/citation.html.
   Want to cut through all of the options and looking for a recommendation?  HERE: Use the Chicago/Turabian guide - it’s more popular with political scientists: https://libguides.nvcc.edu/ChicagoTurabian  

4. My colleague, Professor John "Kinch" Kincheloe, has a great writing guide HERE.

5. Required format:
   11 or 12pt.  font

Calibri or Times New Roman

1 in. margins around all of paper (no more)
Double spaced

Indent the first line of every paragraph

Every paper or assignment should have proper citations (in-text references AND the list of references at the end).

6. All sorts of great writing support can be found at Purdue’s OWL site: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/teacher_and_tutor_resources/writing_instructors/non_purdue_users.html
   Citation guides, paragraphing, outlines, and so many other important issues to writing can be found at that website.  

7. Zotero is a free program that helps you collect your resources and does formatting of citations for you.  The program works with Word and Google Docs. 
   https://www.zotero.org/

8. In some classes, I assign annotated bibliographies.  Annotated bibliographies include properly formatted citations (like APA, MLA, etc) with a couple of sentences to a full paragraph summarizing the useful information from the resources.
   Here is additional information about annotated bibliographies:
   https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/annotated_bibliographies/index.html
   Some samples of annotated bibliographies: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/annotated_bibliographies/annotated_bibliography_samples.html
   Additional information: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/cite-write/citation-style-guides/annotated-bibliography 

9. The Democratic and Republican Parties should be capitalized.  A democrat (with a small "d") favors democracy, and a republican (with a small "r") favors republics.  Some Democrats and Republicans are NOT democrats and republicans.  

10. When first mentioning a person in a paper, write out the full name and title of that person.  For example, if you're discussing Ronald Reagan as president, the first time you mention him, you should write out "President Ronald Reagan."  Thereafter, you can refer to him as Reagan.  

11. When discussing something well known for its acronym, assume the reader is not familiar with the acronym.  For example, if you want to discuss the Affordable Care Act, you write this: "The Affordable Care Act (ACA)."  This tells the reader that future references to the Act will be made with ACA.  Or you can write, "Affordable Care Act (ACA, or often known as "Obamacare")," and then you can refer to the Act as ACA or Obamacare.  

12. Periods should come BEFORE closing quotation marks that end a sentence.  For example, "I am not the king."  NOTE that the period comes BEFORE the closing quotation marks.  In Europe the period comes last.  But since this class is in the US, do as the Romans, er, the AMERICANS do.

13. When a sentence ends with a parenthetical in-text citation at the end of a quote, the order of finishing that sentence up goes like this: closing quotation marks, parenthetical citation, period.  For example, "Washington was a great president" (Smith 2009, 18).

14. Outlines should be created before writing essays or research papers.  Creating outlines helps the writer to think and plan in advance about the entire writing project.  You can adjust the outline as you move forward.

15. Introductions are, in the opinion of many, the most important part of any research paper.  The introduction serves as an outline for the reader, letting the reader know what s/he is about to embark on.  Since research papers are not mysteries, there should not be any surprises, so laying out the purpose or thesis of the paper is important, along with the supporting evidence or information, and the ultimate conclusion.  Furthermore, introductions set the tone for the reader, so make sure it's a grammatically perfect paragraph.   

16. PROOFREADING is a vital and under-appreciated component of paper writing.  A writer MUST re-read his or her work MULTIPLE times.  It's also important to do so ON PAPER, as opposed to just proofreading on the computer screen.  Using a red pen and taking the time to critique one's own work will undoubtedly lead to a higher quality paper.  It's also helpful to have friends, family members, or WRITING CENTER staff look over a paper to catch mistakes. 

DON'T EVER PLAGIARIZE, DON'T EVER CHEAT, AND DON'T EVER TAKE PARTS OF SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK WITHOUT GIVING THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR HIS OR HER DUE CREDIT.  It's FAR better to write something poorly than to submit someone else's fantastic work.