Title
Page—Always
make sure your title is specific to the purpose. Use keywords that will
help other researchers find your paper. There should be no doubt what
the paper's content is according to yoru title. Here's where you put
your name, names of other group members, name of your affiliation (English
305w).
Abstract—An
abstract is most common with scientific and technical papers, but in
this class, all papers will have an abstract. The purpose of an abstract
is much like a summary, except you purposefully keep it condensed. Abstracts
are generally 100 to 200 words. Readers should have a good idea what
your paper is about.
Use headings, outline heads, and table of contents as a guide when you
write your abstract. Write an introduction (purpose), middle (results
and conclusions), and conclusion (recommendations). Notice how this
pattern keeps coming up. You know how to do this.
Executive
Summary —An
executive summary is very similar to an abstract except it's purpose
is to provide essential points of the paper. The audience is usually
the hurried reader (an executive) who either doesn't have time, or doesn't
need to read the entire report. BUT, they need to know the details of
your primary points. Executive summaries are often 10 percent of the
entire report. So the page number varies.
Summarize the entire
report—subject, purpose, scope, methods, conclusions, and recommendations.
Always use the lowest common technical language possible because you
won't have time for any discussion.
Table
of Contents—List your subheadings
from your paper along with their page numbers. List the Abstract first,
the executive summary, any illustrations (images), then the body of
the paper, appendices, then any bibliographic citations.
Introduction—I
know you know what goes here. The subject, purpose, talk through the
organization of your paper (forecast), and tell your reader the scope
and limitations of your report. "While the need for X requires
Y, this report focuses only on W because of funding and deadlines."
If you need to provide background on your topic, here's where you do
it. Introductions take about a page, BUT if you're providing background,
then about 2 to 3 pages.
Methods—Methods
are often used for scientific and technical papers. You do NOT need
to provide methods unless you're writing a scientific or technical paper.
If your report is on a lab experiment, then YES provide methods. The
purpose here is to show your readers how you went about and did what
you did. What test procedures, what sorts of calculations, how did you
do it? That let's the senior chemist know right away what sort of techniques
were used.
Results
or Discussion or the Body
—Seems familiar? It should. This part is basically your main points
you want to discuss. Start thinking of the terms "results"
or "discussion" rather than "body of the paper"
although there all pretty much serving the same purpose.
Conclusion
—Never
put new data, a new discussion in the conclusion. The conclusion is
based on the discussion provided. Remember that many people jump right
to the conclusion FIRST. So, the conclusion needs to stand on its own.
It's okay to repeat, in general, what you already said for this class.
You will need to work on conclusions in your given area. I suggest you
start noticing report-conclusions. They often differ, but their purpose
is recap the entire the report's purpose, findings, discussions.
Recommendations—Recommendations
are only in reports that request or require some action. Most informational
or analytical reports don't need recommendations. Use appropriately
for this course paper.
Additional
Sections—If
you're providing an appendices (handouts,
samples of data, larger images, stuff that doesn't really fit in the
discussion because it's too distracting, then make sure you have a single
page entitled "Appendix" followed by the items you want to
include. Also make sure to put "Appendix" with the page number
on the Table of Contents.
Work Cited is the
last item you should have in your paper. Everyone ought to use APA style,
or use the appropriate one for your area. See for the Cline
library page for citation references.
This
should give you an idea of a general "standard" research paper
expected from your upper division courses.
