Style Guide

Professor Williams' Style Guide and Writing Expectations for Papers

Writing Expectations:

Quality of written expression is considered in grading assignments.
All writing in this course must conform to standard written English, reflect appropriate citations, and follow in a logical fashion.
For minimum guidelines about logical development see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/01 / .
I expect a critical examination of the material you have read, not just a report of the material.
- Critical examination requires that you go beyond description and the source's assertions. You should analyze these to determine their reasonableness, adequacy and factual basis. Analysis is not compatible with cherry picking facts that support your preferred views.
- Critical examination explores relevant theories.
You probably do not want to write about an overly broad topic; I am looking for depth, more than breadth.
I prefer succinct papers, don’t be repetitive and don’t add irrelevant material just to show that you read something. Discussion of material you have read must be relevant to the paper.
- Find the least verbose way to express yourself, this probably requires writing more than one draft.
Address the assignment thoroughly, but remain focused on the assignment.
Where relevant, written material must be persuasive.

Scholarly Sources

I expect to find sources in every extended written assignment.
It is appropriate to support your assertions with citation of scholarly sources.
In general, scholarly sources are academic (peer reviewed) journal articles. You may not have adequate resources to discern which books are appropriate, so I do not recommend use of academic books.
For any paper, you should be cautious of addressing a topic for which you cannot find scholarly academic sources.
If it is permissible to rely, or partly rely, on non-scholarly sources, you will be advised of this permission at the time the assignment is made in course.

Where can you find Scholarly Sources?

I recommend that you use the JSTOR database at the library.
To use resources from home without extra cost, log-in through the proxy.
See this page.

Unless specified otherwise for particular assignments, you are expected to properly cite your sources in all written work:

All written work should comply with the citation guidelines in the APA style manual or with the equivalent in Chicago B (in-line citation using Author, Date format and matching bibliographical entries).
For guidelines regarding citation of original sources, see any version of the APA style guide.
APA style guides can be found at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/, and are available in the library and at most bookstores.

Graphs, Tables, Images

All graphic material must be discussed in text. The discussion should mention the item by its label or number. Point out the relevant information that is to be found in the table. The reader should not have to guess why the graphic is presented.

Rubric

I use a rubric in grading papers. Details are available on the class website. The main elements are addressed here.

Style Guide:
When writing papers for Professor Williams, your citations and bibliography should follow APA. For the citation, use APA in line style. You should consult with Professor Williams’ Citation Guidelines to discover what must be cited. It is not advisable to think you know APA citation guidance unless you have in fact used APA consistently for several years. Here are a handful of websites where you can find these guidelines:

In addition, my Citation Guideline has many examples that are correctly formatted. Wherever these websites differ among themselves, I recommend that you treat APA’s website as definitive. Also, including URLs in text (as with the above list) is not an adequate citation form except with web posts. APA can tell you how to site websites correctly. The URLs in this list are not citations, they are content for your specific use.

Style includes more than citation, it includes other topics such as the way a professor may want to see a paper presented. Frequently, professors will provide you a handout (or the web equivalent) that spells out their specific writing guidelines. Follow any such guidelines as well as possible. If none is provided or the guide is silent on a subject, use APA. Where APA is silent or ambiguous - or if you are in Professor Williams' course - follow the guidelines below.

After reviewing the types of style to avoid (in some of the points below) students have asked me what the right writing style is. The best answer is to review several peer reviewed empirical articles from good journals and follow a similar style. If you are unsure what I think is a good article, consider reading some that I have written; they may not be perfect, but they reflect what the style I recommend.

Following are modifications, clarifications, additions, and reiterations of APA style guidelines. Where these are silent, use APA. Some of these guides exist specifically to reduce the chance that Turnitin.com or an alternate plagiarism checking website will mistakenly treat what you have written as plagiarized.

Always remember the audience. The professor is in the role of the uninformed but intelligent public. Don’t assume the professor knows your subject.
Write a paper that challenges the professor to think, not one that repeats what the professor already knows. Avoid excessively descriptive material repeating back the material the professor has provided to you (both text and film). While providing challenging material, nevertheless, avoid unsupported assertions. To support an assertion, provide an appropriate citation.
Make your paper readable:
1. Prefer short words rather than long words.
2. Use sentences of mixed length, seldom exceeding 15-20 words, and then only for very good reasons.
3. Keep paragraphs to no more than 7 mixed-length sentences, which should seldom exceed 8 lines.
4. Double space except where specifically instructed to single space.
  1. Bibliographies and quotes longer than 5 lines (see APA on this) should always be inset (indented as a block) single spaced.
  2. Double space is not 1.5 spaces and it is not triple space.
  3. Text within graphics (including tables) are always single spaced.
5. Font should be similar in size and readability to Calibri 11 or Times New Roman 12. Avoid fonts that are:
  1. Comic.
  2. Sans Serif.
  3. Gothic.
  4. Script.
  5. Otherwise unusual.
6. Italic, underlining, and bold should be used sparingly and only where appropriate.
  1. Book and film (and other media) titles are always italic. There is little reason why any titles (except media titles) should ever appear in a paper, they belong in the bibliography (or, rarely, in the parenthetical citation when the author's name is unavailable).
Paper elements to avoid:
1. Running headings (THIS EXPECTATION IS DIFFERENT FROM APA).
2. Cover pages.
3. Irrelevant images or graphics.
4. Markup or any other paper draft format or anything that reflects an incomplete paper.
5. Adjusted page margins. The default margins are probably 1 inch all around unless you are using old or non-standard software. Squeezing excess words on a page, or narrowing margins to make it appear that you have written more pages is impermissible.
6. We blinks; do not include URLs for JOURNAL ARTICLES in your bibliography when you access your article through an online database.
7. Verbose citations; avoid all unnecessary words in your citation. Unnecessary words include any of the following in the body of the paper (some do belong in the bibliography):
  1. Journal names.
  2. Article titles (unless there is no identified author).
  3. Institutions, universities, or other places where research has been conducted.
  4. Anything else that belongs in the bibliography.
8. Abstracts
Paper elements/features to include:
1. Typed (all papers should be typed).
2. Page numbers in the bottom right margin.
3. A paper tile, which should be:
  1. Informative concerning the paper topic.
  2. Centered.
  3. Bold.
4. Headings for sections and subsections, which should be:
  1. Informative concerning the distinctive nature of the section.
  2. At the left margin.
  3. Bold.
5. When a template is provided, use it. Do not modify the template’s format.
  1. Don't change fonts, margins or spacing to change the amount of information allowed on a page.
  2. Don't undo preset landscape page format when it is provided in a template.
6. Except as otherwise instructed, all pages of a paper should be portrait layout (the text should be horizontal to the short side of the paper).
7. For those limited occasions where landscape layout is explicitly required, the text software should be correctly used so that the landscape page is horizontal on a computer screen without end user manipulation.
  1. This may mean that you will need to learn how to use your software.
  2. Landscape should be used specifically to provide for wide tables or wide graphics. Don't make unreadably small font to squeeze a landscape table onto a portrait page.
All bibliographies should have the heading: “Bibliography”. (Omit the quotation marks.)
1. Place the header on the left margin by itself and omit any punctuation.
2. Do not modify or innovate.
3. Using an alternative header may result in counting the entries in the bibliography against the maximum allowed quoted material. Professor Williams marks down papers with excessive quotation.
4. For some courses, you may be asked to organize your bibliography into subsections, follow these guidelines exactly. Headers for subsections should not replace the “Bibliography” header.
Papers begin with an introduction and end with a conclusion:
1. These are in separate subsections labeled “Introduction” and “Conclusion”. (Omit the quotation marks.)
  1. The main body of the paper should be separated from the introduction and have its own heading.
  2. Longer papers should have multiple sub-sections within the main body of the paper.
2. For papers of only one page:
  1. The introduction can be one sentence.
  2. The conclusion can be a brief.
  3. Headings are not required.
3. The introduction is typically written after writing the paper and provides the reader insight as to what to expect in the paper.
4. The conclusion does not introduce new information. It summarizes important points and, if relevant, makes recommendations.
Papers exceeding 2 pages are divided into additional sections as needed, but will only infrequently have no additional sections.
Language practices to avoid:
1. Argumentative language.
2. Superlatives.
3. Polemics.
4. Effusiveness.
5. Anything else I might view as extreme or overly emotive.
6. Chattiness.
7. Overly familiar language.
Types of paper styles to avoid:
1. Polemics (one sided arguments).
2. Testimonials (how you have experienced something).
3. Journalistic style.
4. Editorial style.
5. Fiction, historical fiction, fictionalization, personalization.
6. Plot reviews, book reviews, or article reviews that proceed as a case-by-case account of the contents of anything. Where any review is required, it should focus on the analytic content referencing sources when appropriate to support assertions. See this page.
Special guidance about citations with respect to primary and secondary sources:
1. If you quote or otherwise use material from a secondary source (not the original source), the secondary source must be cited and included in the bibliography.
2. If you have accessed and used the primary source, it should be cited and included in the bibliography. If you did not access it, it must not be cited or included in the bibliography. Borrowing the bibliography citation from the secondary source when you have not used the primary source is plagiarism.
3. When quoting material that includes, within the quote, a citation you should do the following:
  1. If the citation is not APA in line style, it should be omitted. If it is at the end of the quote, just omit it, if it is elsewhere in the quote, omit it using ellipsis (three dots in the middle of a sentence or 4 dots at the end of a sentence).
  2. If the citation is APA in line style, it should be included as part of the quote.
  3. Sources cited within quotes are not included in the bibliography unless they are independently used.
All included tables or graphics should be appropriately placed on a single page and, if not produced by you for the first time for this paper using data you have collected, properly cited (see this page of the citation guide for how to cite).
1. Where a table or graphic is wide, the page should be set to landscape. You may have to consult your software's instructions to do this correctly.
2. Where a table exceeds one page in length, all column headers should appear on each page.
3. Place the table or graphic above or below the first paragraph in which it is mentioned.
4. All tables and graphics require text that explains what the reader should find interesting about them. If there is nothing interesting, it does not belong in the paper.
5. All graphic elements including tables should be single spaced and formatted for optimal readability.
6. Where the graphic (or its data) was originally produced or published elsewhere, there should be a correctly cited course (see citation guidelines) at the foot of the graphic. This includes when you originally produced the data or graphic for work or for a different course.
7. For graphics you produce in a spreadsheet see this page.
Rarely, it is appropriate to included extended material from an original source. Such extended quoted material:
1. Must be pertinent as a whole.
2. Must be attributed to a source.
3. Must be placed in an appendix that is labeled "Appendix". To avoid difficulty with Turnitin.com, place the appendix before the bibliography.
4. Will be excluded from the quotation limit only if it meets these conditions.
When including an explanatory note in your paper, please include it as a footnote on the same page as the mark, not as an end note at the end of the paper.
Although APA suggests putting some source material in the text of the paper (for example, source rather than cite personal communication), I prefer that ALL source material except reports of your own systematic research be found in the bibliography.
Review these citation guidelines for what to cite and cite everything that is mentioned. APA may not be as explicit as I am in saying what to cite, cite everything identified in these citation guidelines. If APA does not tell you how to cite, then use the examples.
Sometimes you may want to include an explanatory note in your paper.
1. An explanatory note differs from a citation note, because it contains information other than a source of material.
2. Explanatory notes provide information that you might otherwise be tempted to include in parentheses or brackets. Or, it may be material that seems discursive (is distracting to the theme of your paper).
3. Please put your explanatory notes in footnotes (on the same page as the mark) not end notes (at the end of the paper).
4. Please number your footnotes with Arabic numbers (1,2,3,4,5,....). This may require that you learn how to have your software do this.
5. Please do not use bibliographical footnotes.

Particulars about APA
As with many professors, when I say to follow APA bibliography and citation, I may not be requiring everything that is found in the APA style guide. What I will notice:

The presence of citations.
That they are (or are not) correctly formatted as in line citations.
That there is a page number with every quote.
That all quotes are correctly enclosed in the correct from of quote mark. Failure to correctly enclose quotes in quote marks is plagiarism.
That every citation has a matching bibliography entry.
That every bibliography entry has at least one matching citation.
That the bibliography is labeled correctly (please use the word Bibliography without quote marks, underlining, or any other special formatting, this may differ from APA style guides, but it is essential for effective use of Turnitin.com).
That the bibliography entries are correctly formatted (including, but not limited to, (a) hanging indent and (b) single spaced and not spaced between items)
That you do not add extra elements to the bibliography (such as numbering each entry).
That you do not put bibliography material within the text instead of the bibliography.
Note that I prefer all source material be found in the bibliography, this may include material that APA says to mention in text (such as personal communications). The only sort of source material to mention in text is material for interviews conducted as part of a survey research or ethnographic design.
That, if you ignore the APA style requirement and instead use footnotes, that you correctly follow another style, in particular, no bibliographical footnote should occur repeatedly throughout the paper. (This is not a recommendation to ignore APA style.)
That you have (or do not have) page numbers.

About enclosing quotes in quote marks.

For quotes of less than 6 lines, use "this form of quote mark."
1. Do not use <<quoted text>>, <quoted text>, 'quoted text', or anything else.
For quotes of 6 or more lines, put the entire quote (and its citation) in a single spaced indented block. Quotation marks are omitted.
When the quote you are providing already has a quote within it, convert the existing "double quote marks" to 'singe inverted comma quote marks' for the quote within a quote, ONLY.
Mark omitted words with ... or at the end of the sentence ....
Mark added or changed words with [brackets]. I recommend bracketing entire words so that your spellchecker will not object, but most style guides recommend only bracketing the changed part (such as bracketing a capitalized letter in the first word when quoting from the middle of a sentence as found in the source).
Don't innovate your marks.

More Guidance on Quotation

When including quoted material in your paper, mark the quote at the time you include the material.
Always immediately record the citation for the quote.
Immediately add the source of the citation to your bibliography.
These two steps are made easier with citation software, but how you do it is up to you.
If using copy and paste from an electronic source, NEVER copy anything that is not part of the quote you are going to IMMEDIATELY mark as a quote.
Treat all substantial paraphrase exactly like a quote.
I count quotation up to 10% of your paper as appropriate (when properly marked and cited with correct bibliographical entries).
For quotation between 10% and 20%, I examine the exact context (for example, arising because of an included appendix, table, single long quote, etc.). Grading may be affected.
I consider quotation (or substantial paraphrasing) in excess of 20% of the paper to be excessive and will substantially mark down the paper. This may also be applied for papers with more than 10% quotation depending on context. On a double spaced page, two lines of quotation is approximately 10% of that page.
Papers containing 50% or more quotation will normally be graded Zero.

For your information:
I have settings at Turnitin.com that allow me to see everything that matches anything published on the internet. I am able to use these filters to exclude your bibliography (after looking at it) and exclude your properly quoted material (after determining how much of your paper is quoted). If you follow the guidelines above, this will work. If you do not, I will likely count more quoted material than you actually have, this may negatively affect your grade. Turnitin.com is a plagiarism checker. Plagiarism is the opposite of correct attribution. To correctly attribute material, you must quote correctly, cite correctly, and have a correct bibliography.

Additional guidance for the film courses:

Papers should have a section about films and a separate section about what is found in the actual (non-film) world.
Papers should provide evidence as to whether the portrayals in the films are representational or nonrepresentational of the actual world.
1. All papers have at least one example or source.
2. Papers exceeding 1 page include at least one peer reviewed source for evidence.
3. Papers exceeding 3 pages have multiple peer reviewed sources.
Films and other art forms are sources and are (1) cited and (2) included in the bibliography.
1. The citation to the film should be used only with the first mention of the film.
2. The citation includes one to four listed directors, producers, or others; and the date the film is released (this may be a simplified version of APA citation). Citation of any other art form similarly provides producers and a date of origin.
Separate the bibliography:
1. The textual (readings) bibliography in alphabetical order by author. Include a subsection heading “Readings”. (Omit the quotation marks.)
2. The film bibliography in alphabetical order by director. Include a subsection heading “Films” or, if appropriate "Films and Other Media". (Omit the quotation marks.)
3. For papers in other courses where films or art forms are incidentally mentioned, the bibliography is not separated into two parts. However, the citations to art forms are required.

Professors can be picky, so consider this page.

Dan Williams

Professor Williams' Style Guide and Writing Expectations for Papers