CON Laws Research/Discussion

Required Writing for Assignments and Papers

Don’t just cut and paste sources or quote verbatim: At this point in your academic career, your skills should be higher than simply finding and transferring information without thoughtful processing. Your work is only 50% done once you have found the information to answer my questions. You must then organize and present this information in a way that makes sense to the reader.

· Show me that you have processed the information and thought through it

· Paraphrase and summarize in your own words

· Make your own arguments and draw your own conclusions

· Organize and present the related issues so they are connected to each other while falling under an overall coherent theme; don’t jump around

· Use of introductory paragraphs, summary paragraphs, concluding paragraphs and transitional phrases (used to guide the reader from one thought to the next)

· Ex: In addition, furthermore, for example, in comparison, therefore, on the other hand

· The concluding paragraph should only be a place to summarize the information in your paper and what your key takeaway is. It is NOT a place to introduce new ideas or references.

Formatting and Proofreading

· Look out for spelling and grammatical errors

· Sloppy, inconsistent, or unprofessional looking formatting is unacceptable

· Any assignments that are sloppily formatted will be returned and will not be graded until the issue has been fixed.

· Is everything presented in a logical and coherent fashion?

· Are there duplicative parts or contradictory statements?

· Long paragraphs and sentences are hard for the reader to follow. Break them up into multiple, shorter sentences and paragraphs.

· May ask another person to proofread for you (take advantage of the GSU Writing Center)

Citation and Plagiarism Issues

· Use of in-text citations AND references list/bibliography

· Paraphrasing and/or using direct quotes

· Cite evidence and sources when presenting your own statements

· Cite cases, laws, statistics, data and any ideas or statements that are not your own

References: avoid repeatedly making the same mistakes

· Use APA 7 for all assignments/papers and refer to the APA Publication Manual or Purdue Online Writing Lab for how to format references correctly

· https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_the_basics.html

· https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_electronic_sources.html

· Make sure you clean up the references list to ensure all references are correctly and consistently formatted; do not rely solely on software

· For example, capitalization and abbreviations should be consistent (not some titles in caps while others are in lower case). If you use Refworks it will not automatically do this for you; you must manually clean up the list.