Business History research paper

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Hist 220 paper

"Paper Template" The introduction is the most important paragraph (or perhaps two) in the

paper. By the end of the introduction, the reader should know 1) the topic of the

paper, 2) the name of the scholarly secondary source historian and his/her thesis,

and 3) whether your primary source evidence agrees with, disagrees with, or

partially agrees with that historian's thesis. Your introduction should not cover the

back story to your topic; for example, if your topic is motorcycles in American

culture in the 1950s, then don't begin with earliest motorcycles and recount their

development to the 1950s. You may need that background later in the paper, but

don't put it in the introduction.

As you "test" the historian's thesis, you may find it easiest to organize your

paper along topical lines. Perhaps you have three points to make-‐-‐that your

evidence supports the other historian's thesis on points x and y, but your z evidence

suggests a variation on the historian's thesis. Perhaps your scholarly historian

argues that Americans on the east coast embraced motorcycles in the 1950s because

Hollywood made motorcycles "cool." But maybe you look at primary sources from

(or that discuss) the west coast, and you find that motorcycles were cool, but cars

were cooler and therefore motorcycles were less popular there.1 That adds to the

1 I am completely making this up. This kind of note is called a "discursive"

note, which you don't need but might find useful to clarify some point that matters. The notes that this assignment requires are "citation" notes, which can be either footnotes like these (located at the bottom of each page) or endnotes (located at the end of the paper before the bibliography). You need both notes and bibliography for this assignment. If you need help with MS Word's tools for formatting notes and bibliography, see the document on BbLearn called "MS Word for History."

collective understanding about motorcycles in American culture in the 1950s. Your

paper should not become a chronological list of this happened, and then this

happened, and then this happened.

Good organization of your paper is also helped by using strong topic

sentences at the beginning of each paragraph. The first sentence should be a clear

indication of the content and purpose of the paragraph. The first sentence should

not be the first of a series of chronological overview. For example, don't write

"Harley Davidson opened its factory in 1903 in Milwaukee" as your topic sentence

unless that paragraph is about that factory (or perhaps Milwaukee in 1903). Such

an opening sentence should not be followed by a paragraph that discusses the

Detroit police purchasing a Harley in 1909 and the company's 3-‐wheeled

motorcycle introduced in the 1930s.2

As described in the main assignment overview, one of the most important

elements to this paper centers on using the correct kind of sources: scholarly

historical secondary sources and original primary sources. Use the suggested

resources on the BbLearn page to search for each of them. The secondary source

2 http://www.harley-‐ davidson.com/en_US/Content/Pages/HD_Museum/explore/hd-‐timeline.html. For convenience's sake, I looked up the history of Harley Davidson on their company website. Should you use such a website or Wikipedia? It's fine to use them as an introduction to your subject and to help you find more appropriate sources for your paper. Don't use any information from the open web that you can't verify with the accepted sources for this paper (scholarly secondary sources, original primary sources). Do you include URLs in notes? Generally yes, but historians tend to use this rule of thumb: if the source exists only on the web (such as Wikipedia), then use the URL. If, on the other hand, the source exists in print, then you don't need the URL. For example, if you use a New York Times article from, say, February 2, 1952, which you found in the on-‐line database, then you must use the full print citation, but the URL would be optional (Joe Journalist, "Title of the Article," New York Times, February 2, 1952, p. 3.).

should be written by a professional (academic) historian, should be a peer-‐reviewed

scholarly publication, and should contain solid and complete citations. A book

published by a university press is likely to be a scholarly work. Publishers like

Harper & Row, Penguin, Harper Collins, Random House, or Simon & Schuster are

"popular," not scholarly, and you should not use their books. Rather than a book,

you may also use a scholarly journal article written by a historian. As discussed

elsewhere, you should use the library databases (not the front box on the library

homepage) to find such a source. America: History & Life is a good place to start.

The bulk of your paper should rest on your primary sources. In historical

study, primary sources are those documents and related material that date to the

time under study. If you're researching motorcycles in American culture in the

1950s, your primary sources date to the 1950s. If your topic is bicycles in the 1890s,

your sources date to the 1890s. A source from the 1930s discussing the 1890s is not

likely to be a primary source. If you're writing about World War II, bear in mind

that some subjects were secret during the war, and you may find primary

documents in the years following the war, rather than during the war.

Proper formatting has several parts to it. Include page numbers (I prefer the

upper righthand corner, but it's not especially important) but not on the first page.

The main body of the paper should be double-‐spaced. Notes and bibliographic

citations are single-‐spaced within each citation but double-‐spaced between

bibliographic citations. Include a title (though a title page is optional) and your

name. The bibliography is at the end of your paper. These papers are too short to

warrant sections and section headings. In the body of the paper and in the citations,

you should underline or italicize the names of books and journal titles (not journal

article titles); underlining and italics mean the same thing-‐-‐use one or the other

consistently.

Unlike everyone else in the world, historians use the Chicago Manual of Style

for citations.3 Proper citation includes both notes and bibliography. A bibliography

is a list of all of the sources you used in your paper; the sources are organized

alphabetically-‐-‐by the author's last name (or title if there is no author). If you use an

article, the page numbers in the bibliographic citation should include the whole

range (say, 323-‐354). If you happen to use several New York Times articles as

primary sources, your bibliography need only list the New York Times once,

followed by the year of the earliest article and the year of the latest article. Please

note that bibliographic citations are not numbered.

The notes are also citations; you may use either footnotes (which appear at

the bottom of each page) or endnotes (which appear at the end of your paper before

the bibliography). The notes have information very similar to the bibliographic

citations, but the author's name is <first name last name> rather than <last name,

first name> as in the bibliography, and notes tend to use more commas and

bibliography more periods. You include page numbers in notes, but only the page(s)

on which the relevant material appears. You must provide complete citation

material for each newspaper article (unlike in the bibliography). Notes are

numbered sequentially; you never repeat a number, even if you use the same source

3 You can access The Chicago Manual of Style Online through the library

databases. Please use the superscript numbers as shown here and as automatically inserted by MS Word when you use the Insert: Footnote command.

again. If you do use a source more than once, you may (and should) use a shortened

form of the citation. For example, if it's the second mention for a book, your short

form citation would be 56 Smith, Book Title without Subtitle, 23. Your secondary

scholarly historical source might look like this (book)4 or this (journal article).5

Common primary source citations might look like this6 or this.7 It is acceptable to

have more than one source in a single note.8 A good rule of thumb is at least one

note per paragraph-‐-‐make sure your reader always knows where your information

comes from.

Besides solid organization, good writing also includes good grammar and

good style. If you are rusty on your punctuation-‐-‐when to use a comma or not, how

to use a semi-‐colon, whether to put periods inside or outside quotation marks-‐-‐you

will find many resources on the web simply by googling "grammar" and whatever

bit needs review (other options might include "run-‐on sentences" or "proper

capitalization"). Good style will raise the quality of your writing, though it takes

longer to develop. An excellent classic writing style guide, which also happens to be

inexpensive and short, is The Elements of Style.9 Try to use the "active voice" form

4 Jane Doe, The Importance of Anonymity (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1995), 63-‐65. 5 John Doe, "On Creating an Identity," Journal of Psychological History v. 52,

no. 4 (October 2002): 534. 6 "Bribery in Pennsylvania," New York Times, March 12, 1880, p. 1. (Page

numbers on newspapers articles are not always included in citations.) 7 U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Hearing on

HR 1492, A Bill to Raise Revenue by Selling Pennsylvania, 73nd Cong, 1st sess., April 24, 1933 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1933), 34-‐36.

8 Doe, "On Creating an Identity," 536; "Bribery in Pennsylvania," p. 1; "New Station Ready at Philadelphia," New York Times, March 12, 1933, p. N1.

9 William Strunk and Edward White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed (New York: Longman, 1999).

of verb construction, rather than "passive voice." That is, say "the dog ate the bone"

(identifying the guilty party), rather than "the bone was eaten" or "the bone was

eaten by the dog." You can google many other examples. Passive voice

constructions include things like "was invented," "was developed," and "was built."

Active voice says "Joe invented," "Jane developed," and "the company built." Besides

using the active voice, also aim to avoid the use of "there is," "there was," "it is," "it

was" and minimize the use of forms of "to be" (is, was, has been, and the like).

Instead, use "real" nouns and verbs that have more substance and action.

Your conclusion should re-‐state your argument or thesis. After the

conclusion, you should insert a "page break" or a "section break" and then get to

your bibliography. For you own sake, learn how to format the indents in the notes

and bibliography without using the tab button. (For formatting tips, see "MS Word

for History" on BbLearn.)

Bibliography Doe, Jane. The Importance of Anonymity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1995. Doe, John. "On Creating an Identity," Journal of Psychological History v. 52, no. 4

(October 2002): 530-‐52. Harley-‐Davidson Museum (on-‐line): http://www.harley-‐

davidson.com/en_US/Content/Pages/HD_Museum/explore/hd-‐ timeline.html

New York Times, 1880-‐1933. Strunk, William, and Edward White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. New York:

Longman, 1999. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Hearing on HR 1492,

A Bill to Raise Revenue by Selling Pennsylvania, 73nd Cong, 1st sess., April 24, 1933 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1933).