Write a 1500 words research essay

History

Europe, 1870-Present

For this assignment you are required to write a 1500 word research essay on a topic of your choice using a minimum of four scholarly sources (books and articles) available through the University of Manitoba Library catalogue. This is the minimum. It is always a good idea to consult more.

You will be graded upon your ability to come up with a thesis statement that answers your research question and to defend that thesis with a clear, logical and well organized argument that is supported by historical evidence from a range of sources. Style, spelling and grammar are part of your grade so it essential that you proof-read your paper and hand in a polished essay.

Format of the Bibliography for your email:

For single author books, the proper bibliography form is as follows:

Author Last Name, Author First Name. Full Title of the Book. Place of Publication:

Name of Publisher, Year of Publication.

For bibliography entries please note that the second and all subsequent lines of the entry are indented.

For single author journal articles, the proper bibliography form is as follows:

Author Last Name, Author First Name. “Title of the Article.” Title of Journal. Volume:

Number (Date of Issue): Page Numbers.

For articles in an edited collection, the proper bibliography form is as follows:

Author of Article Last Name, Author of Article First Name. “Title of Article,” in Editor

First Name Editor Last Name, ed. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Name of

Publisher, Year of Publication.

Academic Honesty and Footnoting Secondary Sources:

Copying the writing of others, in whole or in part, from a book, encyclopedia, article, web-site, etc., and passing it off as your own is plagiarism. Handing in essays from cheat sites on the web, in whole or in part, is plagiarism. Handing in the same essay for credit in two different courses is academic dishonesty. Failing to cite the sources you used properly is plagiarism. Plagiarism is not giving credit to the other authors who have informed you about the topic you are writing about.

You must footnote all quotations, all paraphrases, all factual information that is not generally known, and any ideas and interpretations that are not your own. Footnoting sources is essential.

Different Professors, and different disciplines, use different styles for footnoting. Some use MLA, APA, CBE, or other systems. None are necessarily more correct than the others. The one that students use in a given class is always at the discretion of the professor. Most historians, and the most prominent historical journals, use Chicago Style. This is the style that you will use for this course. Below are some examples of how to use this style correctly.

Footnoting format is slightly different from the bibliography format. In footnoting format you do not indent the second and subsequent lines. In footnotes you lead with the author first name then last name rather than the other way around as in bibliographies.

In the text if you had a quote that you wanted to footnote, you would insert a number at the end of the quote.

Example:

At the battle of Agincourt the French lost over 5,000 men, 90 Barons, 5 counts, and 3 Dukes.1

At the bottom of the page (if you are using footnotes) or at the end of the paper (if you are using endnotes) your citation would look like this:

If this were the first time in your paper that you cite the book:

1. Damian Lillard, The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 (Portland: Church of Elvis Press, 2001), 77.

Note: Either underlining the title or italicizing the title are acceptable, but not both.

The second time that you cite a book, it would look like this:

4. Lillard, 73.

If you used two books by the same author, then for subsequent citations you would need to include an abbreviated title of the book, so that readers could distinguish between the two:

5. Lillard, Agincourt, 88.

6. Lillard, Henry V, 62.

To cite a journal article for the first time the format would be:

7. Brandon Roy, “The French Military Strategy at the Battle of Agincourt,” Journal of Military History 42 (1998): 77.

Note the 42 after the journal title is the volume number of the journal, in the parentheses is the date of publication, and after the colon is the page number that I used.

A second citation would look like this:

8. Roy, 81.

If you come across sources that are difficult to cite (edited collections, collections of primary sources, etc.) please consult Lester, Lester and Mochnaz. The Essential Guide to Writing Research Papers. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2002. Chapter 12. There are also many online guides for using Chicago Style.

Writing Advice:

Format

---Your paper should have a title page that includes the title of your paper, the course title

and course number, the date, the professor’s name, and your name and student

number.

---Academic papers should always be double spaced.

---The first line of every paragraph should be indented 5 spaces.

---There is no need for additional spaces between paragraphs

---Avoid large and/or distracting fonts or excessive margins.

---Your paper should have page numbers, but not on the first page.

---If your paper uses direct quotes from another source that are longer than 4 lines in your

text, they should be indented five spaces from each margin on each side and

single spaced. These block quotations do not need to be enclosed in quotation

marks, but must be footnoted. Such long quotations should be used sparingly in your writing.

---All rules relating to academic honesty and footnoting should be scrupulously followed.

Spelling and Grammar

---Be sure to look for spelling errors that your spell-checker will not catch, particularly

words that sound the same in spoken English, but have different spellings in

written English (examples: lead/led, there/their, etc.).

---Look for words that are misused.

---Make sure possessive nouns are handled properly (belonging to one worker= worker’s;

belonging to many workers= workers’).

---In your sentences, make sure that verbs agree with their subjects, especially in longer,

more complex sentence structures. Plural verbs need to have plural subjects, and

singular subjects need singular verbs (pay particular attention to the use of

was/were in long sentences—students often lose track of subjects and verbs in complex sentence structures).

---Make sure that all sentences are immediately clear and unambiguous in their meaning.

---Avoid run-on sentences.

---If you use parallel sentence structure, make sure you use it correctly. Example:

Which of the following two sentences is grammatically correct?

“Richelieu wanted three things for France: authority for the king, an end to

religious strife, and he also wanted secure “natural” frontiers.”

“Richelieu wanted three things for France: authority for the king, an end to

religious strife, and secure natural frontiers.”

Style

---You should use quotations from the text to prove your argument, but you should also

try and keep them short and integrate them with your own prose.

---As much as possible, formal academic writing should be done in the third person

(with the possible exception is in the essay map statement or the thesis

statement).

---You should avoid phrases like “I think,” “I believe” or “I find.” They are redundant

and tentative. It is your paper, so of course it is what you think.

---When speaking about the past, be sure to use the past tense.

---Keep your tenses consistent.

---Avoid the passive voice unless there is a clear reason for using it (active voice: Sparta

defeated Athens; Passive voice: Athens was defeated by Sparta.). Historians

dislike the passive voice because it often obscures responsibility for actions, and

at times can be cumbersome to read.

---Avoid contractions in formal academic writing (“do not” rather than “don’t”).

---Avoid colloquial phrases or slang (“Shifting gears….”).

---Avoid clichés (“avoid…like the plague”).

---When first introducing an essay, book or author to the reader, use the full title or

full name. In subsequent usages you can use an abbreviated title or the last name of the author.

---Try to keep pronouns gender neutral unless referring to someone specific (not all

workers are “he”).

---Pronouns should have clear antecedents so as not to confuse the reader.

---The tone of your paper should be formal, consistent, and even-handed.

Organization

The Introduction

---Your introductory paragraph should tell the reader the topic of your paper, and give

some suggestion as to why that topic is important enough for the reader to spend

time with your paper.

---Your introductory paragraph should contain a thesis statement that clearly and

precisely announces to the reader what you intend to argue in the paper. This

thesis statement should be clear and focused--at most one or two sentences long.

A vague or unclear thesis statement will mean a weak or unclear paper. “This

paper will look at the popular beliefs of English women after 1500” is not a thesis

statement.

---Your introductory paragraph should contain an “essay map sentence” that tells the

reader what the main divisions in your paper will be. It will show the reader the

order in which you will present your evidence. Your arguments and evidence

should appear in the same order in the paper as they do in the introductory

paragraph.

---Your essay should stick to the topic and thesis statement presented in your

introduction.

Paragraphs and the Body of the Paper

---Every paragraph in your paper should be a group of sentences that are tightly bound

together by a controlling idea. This controlling idea should be in the topic

sentence of the paragraph. It is important for the organization and clarity of your

paper to have strong topic sentences.

---Every sentence in each of your paragraphs should be connected together to guide the

reader through the topic contained in the paragraph in a clear and logical way. Stray sentences addressing ideas not related to the topic of the paragraph should

not appear in the paragraph---your paragraphs should operate as a coherent whole

---Because every paragraph should focus on the controlling idea in the topic sentence of

the paragraph, you should not have paragraphs that go on for several pages, nor

should you have paragraphs that are only one or two sentences long.

---The last sentence of every paragraph should be a transition sentence that provides the

reader a bridge between the topic of the first paragraph to the topic of the second

paragraph.

---Every paragraph should have a clear connection to your thesis statement and essay

map. Every paragraph should either support your thesis or address a counter-

argument to your thesis. If it does not do one of these things, you need to ask yourself whether it belongs in your paper.

Concluding Paragraph

---Your paper should have a concluding paragraph that directly connects to your

introductory paragraph. You should use your concluding paragraph to show the

reader that you have fulfilled all of the promises contained in your introductory

paragraph. The reader should be able to have a pretty good sense of the paper and

what you are arguing simply by reading the introductory and concluding

paragraphs. The reader should definitely understand your point of view from

reading the first and last paragraph.

---Oftentimes concluding paragraphs will also contain a broader statement pointing out

the larger implications of the argument that you have made.