NOTES   REGARDING  PAPERS
(or, the Ten Commandments, revised)
last update 14 January 2006

  1. Thou shalt honor thyself by doing the assignment as thou hast received it, and with all the talent and intelligence thou hast been given, without complaint or self-derogation.
  2. Thou shalt have no colloquialisms nor exclusive language before me.
  3. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ideas; instead, thou shalt cite them, cite them, cite them.
  4. Honor thy spell checker and grammar checker, and thou shalt live long at the University and prosper.
  5. Thou shalt use proper punctuation (including the use of the apostrophe) and grammar (including subject-predicate agreement and avoidance of dangling prepositions or sentence fragments).
  6. Thou shalt not run off at the mouth as do the BS'ers, for they are the fools of the world.  Say not in four words what can be said in one. Say not in four pages what ought to be said in one.
  7. Thou shalt set fences around thy paper, and thou shalt call them "Introduction" and "Conclusion."
  8. Thou shalt demonstrate a clear, logical progression in thy discussion, including only what is essential to thine argument.
  9. Thou shalt give evidence for every claim—whether that "claim" is thine opinion, for which thou shalt give proof of validity, or thine interpretation of someone else's opinion, in which case thou shalt cite thy source. In a synopsis or review, thou shalt give a citation for each remark summarizing the author's view.
  10. Honor thine opponent; critique ideas, not persons.