Example 6     SOME GUIDELINES ON WRITING YOUR PHILOSOPHY TERM PAPER (AND ACADEMIC ESSAYS IN GENERAL)

1.  Read Carefully.  Any text that will be used in writing your paper, be it a primary or secondary source, merits a close, deliberate reading.  Be sure you understand fully all the ideas as presented and their relationship to one another.  Don't be satisfied with a cursory reading; go back and read each text again a second time or even a third time if necessary, making a special effort to untangle those passages that are puzzling or problematic.  If you still don't understand, seek help from your teacher, TA, classmate or a reference book.  Careful, patient reading, making sure you adequately comprehend everything, will prevent your essay from running aground due to misstatements or misinterpretations.

2.  Read Up.  While some assignments may be made with reference to a specific text, many term papers in particular are not, in which case it behooves you to do some research on your subject.  This can be useful even when you work focuses on one specific text in terms of providing you different perspectives and making you aware of different possible interpretations.  However, the worst thing you can do is to do too much research, which has a way of giving you writer's block rather than writing inspiration.  Go about your research in a focussed, purposeful way.  Decide  at least roughly what your general thesis will be and look for articles, books, etc. that relate directly, in whole or in part, to the tack you are taking.  While effective research can open up unexpected issues that ultimately redirect your thesis, try not to get too far sidetracked by tangents (as interesting as they may be), lest your paper tend to wander into concerns that are not immediately relevant to your central focus.  A helpful hint:  rather than use a shotgun approach to research, follow the lines that have already proven fruitful.  Once you have found a particularly useful article or chapter in a book, note the relevant citations made in the text, footnotes and bibliography and explore those leads.

3.  Get Organized.  Once you've done your research, identify the specific issues you will deal with an determine which important secondary issues are relevant to or constituent of each of the primary ones.  Then make an outline, setting them all out in a logical order, grouping related or connected ideas together, and putting the various issues in appropriate sequence so as to build your argument successfully.

4.  Write Purposefully.  Craft a clear and sufficiently detailed thesis statement.  Whether or not you state it explicitly in the paper itself, you should always have it in mind.  Every essay, and every part of every essay, needs a chosen direction.  In crafting and placing each sentence within the essay always have a clear idea of what your purpose is in doing so; make sure that every sentence is well placed in relation both to its immediate context and the overall thesis of the paper and that there are no gaps between your stated ideas.

5.  Be Clear and Precise.  Take care to make sure that each sentence is precisely worded, sufficiently detailed and adequately clear.  Don't just assume that what you have written is clear because it makes sense to you--remember that you already know what you have in mind, whereas the reader will not unless you communicate it effectively.  It's a good idea generally to try to put some distance between you and what you've written in testing for clarity.  Set it aside for a day or two and then go back to it as if you are reading it for the first time.  Make sure that it really says what you intended it to say and will be understood even by a reader coming to the subject for the first time.  In reading over your essay put yourself in the position of the uninformed reader.  Ask yourself, would what you say make sense to someone who hadn't done the reading you have?  Also, take special care in wording your sentences both in terms of the specific words you choose and how you place them in relation to each other in the sentence.  Be sure that you are being true to the subtle nuances, distinctions and interrelations relevant to the position you are interpreting or yourself laying out.

6.  Write for a Reader.  Remember that you are responsible for someone's reading experience.  Consider the consequences of your choices in terms not only of how they represent your thinking but also what reactions they may elicit from someone else.  In other words, don't take anything for granted.  Never assume you have an informed reader or leave the reader to read between the lines of your argument or evaluation.  Make all your observations, claims and the implications of your objections explicit.  Along the same lines, don't expect quotes to speak for themselves--you should always interpret them and explain how they are relevant to the context in which they are being cited.  Always make it clear how what you are saying in any particular instance is relevant to your current as well as overall discussion.

7.  Make Strong Transitions.  This is an essential element of good writing for any discipline.  Think of yourself as leading the reader on a journey, as a tour guide of sorts.  As such, along the way you need to show clearly and explicitly what the connections between various issues and ideas are so that the reader doesn't get lost or have to guess at what the relevance of a particular point is.  Expressly indicate the relationship between different parts of your essay with transitional signals (e.g., "but," "then," "however," "nonetheless").  As a matter of style, you should try to guard against transitions that amount to nothing more than additions ("and," "also," "in addition,"); these indicate that a paper is merely a list--a series of points rather than an essay or exposition.

8.  Use Citations and Footnotes as Appropriate.  Whenever you quote, paraphrase or refer to particular ideas expressed within a text you need to properly cite that work.  Generally, in-text citations of the author's last name and the corresponding page number(s) of the text, e.g., (Kant, 23) are preferable to footnotes.  If you are using more than one work by the same author, then rather than the author's name use an abbreviated form of the title of the work being cited.  Footnotes should be used sparingly, if at all, for important acknowledgments or qualifications too tangential to be incorporated gracefully into the main body of the paper.

9.  Revise Deliberately and Fully.  It is up to you to select structure, diction, and methods appropriate to what you are trying to accomplish; but, these are unlikely to come together in a first draft.  Be prepared to undertake genuine re-vision, a re-seeing of the paper once you've drafted it.  When you are revising, make sure your essay structure is not, on the one hand, leading you to repeat points unnecessarily, or, on the other hand, leaving your reader uncertain of your purpose and direction.  Make sure your word choices neither unhelpfully obscure your meaning nor undermine its intelligence; make clear when you are presenting your own or others' impressions and decisions and when you are reporting things you consider demonstrably true.

10.  Proofread Carefully.  Once your paper is "finished", read it over once more for typographical and other minor errors.  Reading your prose aloud will help you catch both errors and unidiomatic or awkward expressions.  If you have difficulty proofreading your own work, ask someone else to proofread it for you.  Somehow it is always easier to find other people's mistakes than your own.  Lastly, always check your final hard (printed) copy before you turn it in.