History

Guidelines

Your paper should include the following elements:

1.      It must move beyond a summary of a topic or a biographical rendering on a character.

2.      It must include an argument/claim to be proven in the body of the paper.

3.      It should use at least 5 reading sources and draw on all of them to support your claims.

4.      It should analyze evidence

5.      It should draw a conclusion that mirrors the argument/claim lay out in the introduction

Your paper will be evaluated based on four elements: content, organization, style and mechanics. There will be a rubric available on Blackboard that explains each of these elements in detail. The first draft will be graded the based on the rubric and the product that you produced.

Content

Your paper must have a thesis statement that contains an argument about the historical evidence. Your argument must be supported by evidence from both primary and secondary sources.

Organization

Your paper must have an introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs and a conclusion. Your thesis statement should provide some sense of the structure of your paper. Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence that supports the overall thesis.

Style & Mechanics:

•Your writing should be succinct, clear and free of grammatical errors.

•Your paper needs to be typed, double-spaced, 12 point font, 1” margins (double-sided printing is allowed.) I prefer Times New Roman font.

•Your first draft must be 3-5 pages, your final draft must be 7-10 pages.

•include a title-center your title on the first page (double space after title, no more)

•use a header, include page # only (do not waste space)

•include footnotes & a bibliography (bibliography is not a part of the page requirement, footnotes are)

•No formatting shenanigans.

Sources:

•For this paper you may use class sources and outside sources. All sources used must be either scholarly secondary sources or genuine primary sources. For this paper, you will be required to use a minimum of 5 sources, excluding our textbook by Sanchez, Spude, and Gomez. At least 1 of your sources must be primary sources, the rest must be scholarly articles, books or book reviews. Take care to use reputable sources—no Wikipedia, etc. The best historical work responds to the secondary literature on a topic and analyzes primary sources independently.

Citations:

•Cite all sources that are not common knowledge. Think of the most uninformed person you know. If that person would not know the information you are using then it is not common knowledge.

· You must use footnotes formatted with Chicago style. There will be a handout posted on Blackboard on footnotes and you can consult this website:

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

•All direct quotes must be enclosed in quotation marks with the exception of quotations longer than 4 lines. Long quotes should be formatted as block quotations. Both must have citations. If quoted material is not indicated as such and properly cited with a footnote then it constitutes plagiarism.

•Paraphrases must be cited. If you paraphrase something that is not common knowledge and you don’t cite your source then it constitutes plagiarism.

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