The mechanics of a paper refers to formatting, grammar, usage, spelling, etc. I have written an essay to help you with this, cleverly titled The 500-Word Essay. I am not requiring your essay to be 500 words - it can be more than that, a lot more than that, or a little less than that. What is important is quality of writing, not quantity of words. Also note that I am not requiring parenthetical citations or a bibliography (Works Cited). Please click here to read my essay for details on mechanics.
Although this is not a massive term paper, it is still important to avoid plagiarism. It is expected that you do all of your own work on this paper. As part of the assignment, you may choose to refer to your notes, or to the handouts, or you may do some online research. But it should aways be clear what is your writing, and what information came from an outside source.
Here is an example of how to make it clear what is yours, and what is part of your research.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, plagiarism is defined as "the action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own." An honest student will make every effort to write their paper so the teacher can easily recognize what is the student's original work.
See what I did there? I used a direct quote, but I gave credit for it. It's that simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment