There’s an art to writing a great paper. It takes only a little more effort to turn a B or C paper to an A. Here are some basic tips and instructions. Follow these and your grades will improve!
1. Make it look good!
You don’t need a fancy title page, but your paper should look like an effort was made to produce it! Run it through spell check. Correct any major grammatical errors.
Refer to the authors by name rather than referring to the “yes” or “no” article.
Put your name in the upper right or left hand corner. Write the date and Issue number. (Issue Six). Write which assignment you are doing and keep them in sequence. Here’s a sample:
Joan Student November 14, 2010 Issue Seven Paper Three
Organize you paper using paragraphs to indicate each idea you develop. Double space your lines.
2. Give it great content!
Talk about each article, not just one article. Since you are comparing the quality of one against the other, make sure you discuss the strengths and weakness of each!
Quote at least twice from each article to indicate key passages that help you assess each articles strengths and weaknesses.
Show in every paper what evidence is used or misused. Is the evidence reliable? Is it being used correctly? Distorted? Manipulated?
Describe the tactics each author is using to convince you! Learn to recognize Ad hominem arguments for example (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem for a good explanation).
We’ll start with these. I’ll add more