to manually adjust the format for footnotes to ensure the font, indentation, and line spacing are correct. Font: Use the same font as the rest of your paper, but in a slightly smaller size; pt Times New Roman is standard. Indenting & line spacing: Indent the first line of each note a half inch from the left margin; do not indent May 18, · Writing a history paper is a process. Successful papers are not completed in a single moment of genius or inspiration, but are developed over a series of steps. When you first read a paper prompt, you might feel overwhelmed or intimidated. If you think of writing as a process and break it down into smaller steps, you will find that paper-writing is manageable, History: Sample Research Paper 2 female protagonist who is struggling in an atmosphere of parental oppression. Manuel Rivas, in his short story La lengua de las mariposas (or Butterfly tongues), gives his readers a similar child-like perspective, but his is that of a little boy who struggles to understand the changes in his life brought about by
How to Write a History Research Paper – History – Carleton College
Drawn from a survey of the History Department You engage in cheap, anachronistic moralizing. You are sloppy with the chronology. You quote excessively or improperly. You are vague or have empty, unsupported generalizations.
You write too much in the passive voice. You use inappropriate sources. You use evidence uncritically. You are wordy. You have no clear thesis and little analysis. Avoid pretentious, vapid beginnings. Get to the point. For example, you might go on to argue that greater British sensitivity to Indian customs was hypocritical. Whether you are writing an exam essay or a senior thesis, you need to have a thesis. A good thesis answers an important research question about how or why something happened.
Develop your thesis logically from paragraph to paragraph. Your reader should always know where your argument format for history research paper come from, where it is now, and where it is going. Students are often puzzled when their professors mark them down for summarizing or merely narrating rather than analyzing. What does it mean to analyze? In the narrow sense, to analyze means to break down into parts and to study the interrelationships of those parts. If you analyze water, you break it down into hydrogen and oxygen.
In a broader sense, historical analysis explains the origins and significance of events. Historical analysis digs beneath the surface to see relationships or distinctions that are not immediately obvious. Historical analysis is critical; it evaluates sources, assigns significance to causes, and weighs competing explanations, format for history research paper.
Many students think that they format for history research paper to give a long summary to show the professor that they know the facts before they get to their analysis. Try instead to begin your analysis as soon as possible, sometimes without any summary at all. You can't do an analysis unless you know the facts, but you can summarize the facts without being able to do an analysis.
Like good detectives, historians are critical of their sources and cross-check them for reliability. Likewise, you wouldn't think much of a historian who relied solely on the French to explain the origins of World War I. Only a professional liar would deny this Neither the people, the government, nor the Kaiser wanted war Format for history research paper always, the best approach is to ask: Who wrote the source?
Under what circumstances? For whom? The first statement comes from a book by the French politician Georges Clemenceau, which he wrote in at the very end of his life. InClemenceau had vowed revenge against Germany for its defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. As premier of France from tohe represented France at the Paris Peace Conference in He was obviously not a disinterested observer.
The second statement comes from a manifesto published by ninety-three prominent German intellectuals in the fall of They were defending Germany against charges of aggression and brutality. They too were obviously not disinterested observers. Now, rarely do you encounter such extreme bias format for history research paper passionate disagreement, but the principle of criticizing and cross-checking sources always applies.
In general, the more sources you can use, and the more varied they are, the more likely you are to make a sound historical judgment, especially when passions and self-interests are engaged.
Competent historians may offer different interpretations of the same evidence or choose to stress different evidence. You can, however, learn to discriminate among conflicting interpretations, not all of which are created equal. See also: Analyzing a Historical Document. Vague statements and empty generalizations suggest that you haven't put in the time to learn the material, format for history research paper.
The Revolution is important because it shows that people need freedom, format for history research paper. Landless peasants? Urban journeymen? Wealthy lawyers? Which government? Who exactly needed freedom, and what did they mean by freedom? Be careful when you use grand abstractions like people, society, freedom, and government, especially when you further distance yourself from the concrete by using these words as the apparent antecedents for the pronouns they and it.
Always pay attention to cause and effect. Abstractions do not cause or need anything; particular people or particular groups of people cause or need things, format for history research paper.
Anchor your thesis in a clear chronological framework and don't jump around confusingly. Take care to avoid both anachronisms and vagueness about dates. The scandal did not become public until after the election. Which revolution? When in the twentieth century?
Remember that chronology is the backbone of history. What would you think of a biographer who wrote that you graduated from Hamilton in the s? Your professor may allow parenthetical citations in a short paper with one or two sources, but you should use footnotes for any research paper in history.
Parenthetical citations are unaesthetic; they scar the text and break the flow of reading. Worse still, they are format for history research paper inadequate to capture the richness of historical sources. Historians take justifiable pride in the immense variety of their sources.
Parenthetical citations such as Jones may be fine for most of the social sciences and humanities, where the source base is usually limited to recent books and articles in English. Historians, however, need the flexibility of the full footnote. Try to imagine format for history research paper typical footnote pulled at random from a classic work of German history squeezed into parentheses in the body of the text: DZA Potsdam, RdI, Frieden 5, Erzgebiet von Longwy-Briey, Bd.
I, Nr. The abbreviations are already in this footnote; its information cannot be further reduced. For footnotes and bibliography, format for history research paper, historians usually use Chicago style. The Chicago Manual of Style. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Use as many primary sources as possible in your paper.
A primary source is one produced by a participant in or witness of the events you are writing about. A primary source allows the historian to see the past through the eyes of direct participants. Some common primary sources are letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, church records, newspaper articles, format for history research paper, and government documents of all kinds.
Not all primary sources are written. Buildings, monuments, clothes, home furnishings, format for history research paper, photographs, religious relics, musical recordings, or oral reminiscences can all be primary sources if you use them as historical clues. The interests of historians are so broad that virtually anything can be a primary source. A secondary source is one written by a later historian who had no part in what he or she is writing about.
In the rare cases when the historian was a participant in the events, then the work—or at least part of it—is a primary source. Historians read secondary sources to learn about how scholars have interpreted the past.
Just as you must be critical of primary sources, so too you must be critical of secondary sources. You must be especially careful to distinguish between scholarly and non-scholarly secondary sources. Unlike, say, nuclear physics, history attracts many amateurs. Books and articles about war, great individuals, and everyday material life dominate popular history. Some professional historians disparage popular history and may even discourage their colleagues from trying their hand at it. You need not share their snobbishness; some popular history is excellent.
But—and this is a big but—as a rule, you should avoid popular works in your research, because they are usually not scholarly. Popular history seeks to inform and entertain a large general audience. In popular history, dramatic storytelling often prevails over analysis, style over substance, simplicity over complexity, and grand generalization over careful qualification. Popular history is usually based largely or exclusively on secondary sources.
Strictly speaking, most popular histories might better be called tertiary, not secondary, sources. Scholarly history, in contrast, seeks to discover new knowledge or to reinterpret existing knowledge. Good scholars wish to write clearly and simply, and they may spin a compelling yarn, but they do not shun depth, analysis, complexity, or qualification.
Scholarly history draws on as many primary sources as practical.
How to write a research paper (in history)
, time: 12:03Writing Resources - Writing a Good History Paper - Hamilton College
Your professor may allow parenthetical citations in a short paper with one or two sources, but you should use footnotes for any research paper in history. Parenthetical citations are unaesthetic; they scar the text and break the flow of reading. Worse still, they are simply inadequate to capture the richness of historical sources Sep 28, · Example of an outline for a first year level history paper. Judge and Langdon Book Review/Research Paper - Example 1 Judge and Langdon Book Review/Research Paper - Author: Virginia Young Mar 25, · As your research paper takes shape you will find that you need background on people, places, events, etc. Do not just rely on some general survey for all of your background. Check the several good dictionaries of biography for background on people, or see if there is a standard book-length biography
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