GA

Lit Review Thoughts

Putting it together

• Look at all your research in your annotated bib. What are the “big ideas” that pop out from this research?

• Can you state each of those ideas in a sentence or so? These could become your headings.

• What parts from what articles contribute to those ideas? Are there particular quotes or paragraphs that reinforce the ideas or give an overview to them? These could become parts of your lit review.

• Did you organize your research, or just kind of paste it all together? • Does each section have distinct paragraphs? They should. Your lit review should NOT BE

one long paragraph, or even two.

General thoughts

1. Avoid sentence fragments

What is a sentence? What makes a sentence? Why is this a fragment?:

Even further in depth, to specifically compare how women’s dependency on men in romance novels have evolved from the throughout the years

2. Avoid weak or ambiguous phrases

Romance novels have been a popular genre of books among women for hundreds of years.

The correlation between romance novels of around the 1950s to the present have some similarities but also many differences.

In modern countries entertainment plays a major role in our day-to-day lives.

3. Use citations

Cite every quote and paraphrase and summary

Put citations at the end of each sentence (Smith 24).

No dates, no article titles (unless there are multiple articles by the same author)

4. Avoid random capitalizations

“The author talks about Her Study”

5. Make titles useful and consistent

“Past Research,” not just “Past”

“Who reads romance novels?” not just “Readers” or “Romance novels”

If you are going to capitalize, capitalize every word more than 4 letters

Don’t capitalize:

conjunctions – and, or, but

articles – the, an, a

short prepositions – of, on, in, to, by

6. Avoid adverbs: really, extremely, very, specifically

7. Avoid slang: a couple, kind of

8. Avoid first person in lit review (you may need to use first person in results section)

9. Don’t narrate or comment personally on studies

“First I found this article, then it led me to that article…” -- unnecessary

Bad: “This study was good, but the author is not credible enough.” – can phrase another way:

Better: “Although this study was very well researched, there are no studies available from academics that specialize in this field.”