A Few Pointers on Writing A Paper On A Literary Topic

Always read and follow directions and handouts given to you!

Do not try to write a paper the night before it is due!

1. Never write on a work you do not understand on a literal level.

2. Always be sure you have a critical thesis, not an announcement, not a topic, not a summary statement.

3. Further, do not simply “point out” things you have found in a work; a critical paper is not

a scavenger hunt. As a writer, it is up to you to explain the significance of these things and how their use helps us, as readers, understand and interpret the work in question.

4. Write about literary works in the present tense, since we are reading them today, not in the past tense: Say “Coleridge writes . . . , not Coleridge wrote. . . .

5. Do not try advertising techniques on your title page; do not put your title in quotation marks, do not put it in italics, do not put it in bold, and do not put it in anything other than 12 point type.

6. When you include a title page with you essay, do not put your name, the date, and so on again on the first page.

7. Always put a page number on the Works Cited page.

8. Words used as words, that is words you are defining, are put in italics; for example, the word romantic is defined by Johnson as. . . .

9. The word this is an adjective; it must be followed by a noun to prevent ambiguity.

10. A dash is different from a hyphen; a hyphen is one mark, like this “-“; a dash is two marks, like this “__.”

11. Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks, like this “. . . ,” and this “ . . .” If a parenthesis follows the quotation, the period moves to the end, like this (33).

Sources

You must follow MLA guidelines for quotation and citation. If you do not know them, look them up.

1. When you use a secondary source, ALWAYS introduce it. Never, ever, simply insert a parenthesis with a name and number following a long block of prose.

2. Make sure you know the difference between quotation and paraphrase; if you do not put quotation marks around material that is in the words of the original source (even if you have changed or added a few words), you have plagiarized and your grade will suffer.

3. When you cite a source for the first time, give the full name of the author (According to John Livingston Lowes, “ . . .”). After the initial use, refer to the author by the last name (Lowes further says “ . . .”).

4. When quoting from sources, primary or secondary, be sure your quotations make internal grammatical sense; do not quote FRAGMENTS! If you want to quote a fragment, you must integrated it with words of your own so that the whole is grammatically correct.

5. You must supply the CONTEXT for quotations from primary sources. Do not expect the reader to supply the missing context.

6. When you quote lines from a primary source, you must then go on to explain and interpret those lines, showing how they support the thesis you have stated at the beginning of your paper. Don’t expect your reader to do this for you.

7. Avoid lengthy quotations from primary sources; the more you quote, the more you are expected to explain.