|
WRITING PSYCHOLOGY TERM PAPERS
The faculty of the Psychology Department
believe that developing strong writing skills is one of the most important goals of undergraduate education. The ability to organize and to present one's ideas lucidly is indispensable to every profession. For this reason, many courses offered by the department require students to prepare formal papers as one aspect of their course work. It is important for students to recognize that it is often impossible to evaluate ideas apart from the manner in which they are expressed. In other words, the form and content of a paper are largely inseparable. Therefore, in preparing written work, students should attend closely to organization, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and clarity of exposition. These factors, as well as the content of the work, will play a role in the instructor's evaluation.
Department Policy on Written Work Physical Aspects of Your Paper
Your paper must be printed double-spaced with a 12-point Times font on opaque paper. The first page of your paper should be a title page. It should contain only the title of your paper, your name, the course number and name, and the semester and year. Text should begin on the next page. Leave a margin of one inch all around your text to allow space for the instructor to write comments. Do not put your paper in any kind of binder, cover, or folder; simply staple it in the upper left corner.
Your paper should be carefully proofread and neat. It is acceptable to add an occasional correction in ink or pencil, but if you find yourself making many such corrections, you should reprint the page(s) in question. Always retain a copy of your paper to guard against loss. Writing Style
It is beyond the scope of this handout to deal comprehensively with the art of writing correctly and effectively, but we can offer a few suggestions. For further help, we heartily recommend that you purchase and use a writer's manual of some sort. Many such references are available, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations being two of the better-known works. A good selection of rhetoric manuals is available at the Co-op Bookstore.
Suggestions on Style
While many examples of sexist language can be found, the most frequent and troublesome is the use of the masculine pronoun when referring to nouns of indefinite gender. Some authorities (e.g., Strunk & White) argue that this convention, although unquestionably biased in origin, has lost any sexist connotation over the years and can be used without hesitation. Many others, including the American Psychological Association, disagree, and it has become a common editorial policy for publishers of both trade and technical works to prohibit use of the masculine pronoun to designate either gender. We think students should use nonsexist language in their writing. Unfortunately, most of the common solutions to the masculine pronoun problem (e.g., using "he/she," "his or her" or randomly alternating masculine and feminine pronouns where pronouns of indefinite gender are required) are awkward and become tedious when overused. The most acceptable solutions are to word sentences so that pronouns are eliminated (e.g., "The client is the best judge of the value of his therapy," can be improved by deleting his or rewording the sentence, "The best judge of the value of therapy is the client"); or to use plural pronouns (they, their, them). Remember, however, that plural pronouns must have plural noun referents: e.g., not "The client is the best judge of the value of their therapy," but "Clients are the best judges of the value of their therapy." APA Editorial Style
The American Psychological Association has developed a set of rules governing the preparation of papers submitted to APA journals for publication. Although these rules may seem picayune and arbitrary, they are aimed at increasing the readability of papers prepared for professional audiences. That they accomplish this goal quite well is suggested by the fact that many non-APA journals, including a number in neuroscience, have chosen to adopt the APA standards. The basic APA guidelines--the ones you must follow in preparing your papers--are easily mastered. The remainder of this handout is a tutorial on these basics. If you encounter any situations not covered in this tutorial, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (5th ed.). Several copies are kept in the main office of the Psychology Department.
Headings The use of headings is mandatory in all but the briefest of professional papers. Remember that your goal in such a paper is to communicate information efficiently. Headings alert the reader to shifts of topic and are an aid to general organization. In the average term paper, one to three heading levels will be appropriate: This is a Main Heading
Main headings are centered on the page, and each word is capitalized. Text under a main heading begins a new paragraph.
This is a Secondary Heading Secondary headings are flush left on the page. Each word is capitalized, and the heading is underlined. Text under a secondary heading begins a new paragraph. This is a tertiary heading. Tertiary headings are indented and end with a period. Text follows after the period. Only the first word of the heading is capitalized. Use headings judiciously, where they will improve the readability or organization of your paper. Too many headings disrupts the flow of your paper, while too few headings robs the paper of crispness. As a general rule, you should not employ a particular level of heading in a section of text unless you will need at least two headings of that type. For example, if you have used a secondary heading, and you are wondering whether you should use tertiary headings beneath it, use tertiary headings only if you will need two or more of them under the secondary heading. If you can only think of one tertiary heading, do not use any in that section of the paper. Citing Literature in Text In general, any assertion you make that did not originate with you, or that is not common knowledge or obvious, should be attributed to its source. As you read for your paper, attend to the way authors go about citing literature; you will rapidly develop a sense of the unwritten rules that govern when and how one cites sources. APA citation style is straightforward, although the basic format can be varied in many ways to avoid monotony. For primary sources (i.e., those that you have actually consulted) you must give the last name of the author or authors of the source and the year in which it was published. This may be done in any of the following ways:
Many articles are written by three or more people, and spelling out their full names each time the paper is cited is tedious. In such cases, the names should be spelled out in full when the paper is first cited. In subsequent references to that paper, however, the Latin phrase "et al." ("and others") can be used to replace all but the first author's name, as in the following examples:
It is always preferable to use primary sources. You can be confident that what you have attributed to the source is accurate because you have read it. Sometimes, however, an important source may be unavailable to you, forcing you to rely on someone else's comments about the content of the primary source. In this situation, you should cite both the primary and secondary sources in one of the following ways:
Quotations Quote that which is quoteworthy. Do not quote what is mundane just for the sake of quoting. Use the author's exact words when they convey an idea with exceptional clarity, economy, or style; otherwise you are better off paraphrasing. Whenever you quote from a source, you must give the author and date (as in other citations), plus the page number of the book or journal from which the quotation was taken. Various ways the quotation may be written are:
Note that in all of these examples the quotations are set in quotation marks. Sometimes it is necessary to quote a lengthy passage. In such cases, quotation marks are not used. Instead, the quotation is indented and single-spaced: a "block quotation." Although there are no firm rules, a reasonable guideline is that a quotation should be blocked when it will occupy five or more lines of text. The author(s), date, and page number(s) must still be given, usually at the end of the block, as illustrated on this line. (Porterfield et al., 1992, p. 4) Reference Section The last section of your paper is devoted to listing the sources you have cited. Every source cited in the text must appear in the reference list, and no sources should be listed that have not been cited in the text. The reference list is introduced with the primary heading "References" followed by the sources, arranged in alphabetical order by the author's last name. Single-space and indent each reference; double-spacing between references, like this:
Lint, B. B. (1997). Post-orbital reafferentation induces ballistic micturition in dyspraxic arthropods. Archives of Jargon, 25, 16-23. Joumal articles. The format here is: Author(s) and initials. (date). Title of article (only first word capitalized). Journal Name (capitalized), volume number, page(s).
Clamp, W., Weegie, S. R., & Legume, T. L. (1988). Perceived rotation during social comparison: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Social Ergonomics, 40, 2-31.
Books. The format here is: Author(s) and initials. (date). Title of book (only the first word is capitalized) (Volume or edition number, if any). Where Published: Publishing Company. No page numbers are given.
Kibbles, S.M. & Bitts, B. 0. (1996). Moist mind: The new cognitive neuroscience. New York: Fulcourt Press.
|