Ebook McGraw-Hill's Concise Guide to Writing Research Papers: Part 2

Ebook McGraw-Hill’s Concise Guide to Writing Research Papers: Part 2 presents the following content: revising your work; polishing your writing; preparing your submission; getting ready for the next time. Please refer to the documentation for more details.
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Ebook McGraw-Hill’s Concise Guide to Writing Research Papers: Part 2 Chapter 5 Revising Your Work o paraphrase Yogi Berra, legendary manager of the NewT York Yankees, writing a research paper “isn’t over until it’s over.” Allow plenty of time for the revision process. Revi-sion allows you to perfect your prose, sharpen the vocabulary,and ensure that others’ ideas are properly represented. As yourevise, you will want to make sure that: ■ Your introduction engages the reader and clearly presents a thesis that responds to your assignment. ■ The body of your paper supports the thesis with laserlike focus. ■ Your conclusion convinces your readers of the importance of what you wrote. Revision often requires changing the structure of your workto achieve a more logical presentation, one that is moredescriptive, or one that ensures you have met the parameters ofyour assignment. More than anything else, it requires that youcheck all the facts and quotations you used and ensure that youhave cited them properly and have not plagiarized a writer. 121 McGraw-Hill’s Concise Guide to Writing Research PapersAvoiding PlagiarismPlagiarism, in its most basic definition, means representingother people’s work and ideas as your own. Turning in a paperthat you bought, borrowed, or stole from another student ordownloaded from the Internet constitutes plagiarism. So doescopying portions of text directly from your sources or fromother texts you encountered in your research. It is a seriousoffense that, in school, can result in a range of penalties—fromfailing an assignment, earning a black mark on your academicrecord, to even being expelled. In the workplace, it can result inthe loss of your professional reputation and the respect of yourcolleagues. It can affect your ability to earn promotions or findanother job. Plagiarism is not always deliberate. It can happen inadver-tently when students do not understand how to properlypresent others’ work within their own papers. Even when yougo to great lengths to write a paper, plagiarism can occur ifyou fail to properly cite the words and ideas of others. Plagia-rism can happen if: ■ You borrow short phrases from your research sources but fail to cite the source. ■ You paraphrase an idea from your research using your own words but you fail to cite the original author. ■ You represent another students’ work, even a short passage from it, as your own. ■ You turn in a paper that you previously submitted as an assignment for another class. (Yes! It is possible to plagiarize yourself.)122 Revising Your Work More often than not, plagiarism results from a writer’s fail-ure to properly paraphrase or summarize another’s work or tocorrectly cite quoted material. Therefore, it is important tounderstand how to avoid plagiarism and to incorporate strate-gies for avoiding it in your writing routine. Plagiarism is easy toavoid if you have properly documented your research (see thesection in Chapter 2,“Documenting Your Research”) and if youfollow the guidelines of an editorial stylebook, such as thosepublished by the Modern Language Association (MLA) or theAmerican Psychological Association (APA), to properly cite theresearch sources you documented.Protecting Yourself against PlagiarismPlagiarism is not just something that a writer can do; it is alsosomething that can happen to a writer. In addition to taking carenot to plagiarize others, you will want to protect your own workagainst plagiarism by others. And, if your instructor should callupon you to prove that your work is your own, you want to be ina position to do so.Things you can do to protect yourself include: ■ Print and keep drafts of your work so that you can produce them if you are called upon to show the steps you took along the way. ■ Store your files on memory sticks or flash drives when using public computers. ■ When you have finished working on a public computer, close all your files and reboot the computer. Be sure to collect all devices and notes you brought with you. Leave nothing behind. 123 McGraw-Hill’s Concise Guide to Writing Research Papers ■ If a public computer reboots while you are working at it, be sure to reopen any files that were automatically saved and delete them properly. This ensures that anyone who uses the computer after you cannot retrieve those files.Choosing a Documentation Style“Style” refers to the way you present information and writewhat you have to say. Style guides prescribe conventions forwriting and documenting your sources. Numerous s ...