This is a standard form of paper that most people will be assigned in college, and to some extent, high school.  The difference is mainly one of standards, length, and complexity.  For a course at the college level, more is expected from you.  If you find that you are unprepared to take on this task, most schools have writing consultants who can help you.

STEP 1: Choose a topic.  Your topic should be appropriately specific for the length of the paper.  For example, if you choose the topic, “Egyptian Art,” then I hope you will be turning in a 300-page volume!  Most topics in college papers will be more focused in nature, such as “Portraits of Mycerinus,”  “The Tomb of the Augurs in Tarquinia,” “The Augustus of Prima Porta,” or, “The Colosseum.”

STEP 2: Internet.  You may look at a few websites to help you determine basic bibliography and search terms, but writing a paper mainly from the web is a recipe for disaster.  As a rule, I tend to prefer papers that have no more than 2/5 of their bibliography coming from the internet, and that is a maximum.  (This applies somewhat less to online articles from journals of some repute.)  There is a great deal of misinformation and pseudoscience on the web.  There are no standards for authorship on the internet.  The page you are reading is as likely to have been written by a third-grader as a specialist on the subject.  Still, some websites can give useful information, mainly in terms of helping you locate print sources on the subject. Generally, look for the domain names ending in .edu or ac.uk in order to be sure that the material you are looking for is on a university server.  Even then, treat internet sources with great caution.  Here you will find some recommended websites to visit for information about ancient art and civilizations.

STEP 3: Go to the library.  Yes, physically go to the library.  Search the catalogue.  Look first for specific sources.  If you are writing a paper about the Parthenon, for example,  you should look for “Parthenon,” then “Athens, acropolis” before searching for “Greek.”  This is because specific sources are better than general.  Textbooks and other general books do not make good sources for a paper.  For example, in the case of the Parthenon, you should find books and articles about the Parthenon.  A bibliography containing titles like Greek Art and Archaeology, Art Through the Ages, Art History, A Short History of Architecture, etc. is a recipe for a poorly written paper.  Instead, you should see titles like The Architects of the Parthenon,  The Athenian Acropolis, Architecture and Meaning on the Athenian Acropolis, and the deceptively useful for such a general name, Architect and Sculptor in Classical Greece.

One of the best ways to construct a large and useful bibliography is to look at other bibliographies on the subject, for example, look at the bibliography for the books you find on the subject as a way of locating other books.  If your topic receives only a brief mention in that book, look through the footnotes or end-notes to see where the author found the information.

If you have tried all of the above to no avail, or if everything that would help you write your paper has been checked out by a student who was more proactive in getting to Step 3 quickly, you have two options.

The first is exploring other libraries.  Public libraries sometimes have reasonably good collections, depending on their location and funding.  You may be able to get a letter of introduction to visit libraries at another college or university, or even, perhaps, a museum!  Such trips can sometimes make writing the paper more of an adventure, and get you off-campus for a change of scenery, if only for a matter of hours.  Don’t forget interlibrary loan (ILL).  ILL is the best reason not to procrastinate on a paper.  You want to have time to order and receive great sources!

The second option is to revisit Step 1.  Choose another topic.  Perhaps the topic you were working on was too specific.  Maybe the sources are out there, but not in a language you can read.  Perhaps someone else checked all the books out.  The best thing to do may be choose another topic.  Sometimes, this is easy.  For example, in some cases you can broaden a topic.  Take, for example “The Tomb of the Augurs at Tarquinia.”  You might change the topic to “Etruscan Tomb Paintings at Tarquinia.”  You probably should not, however, change the topic to “The Etruscans,” or “Painting.”

STEP 4: So you have your sources.  Time to begin writing!

There are as many ways to start writing as there are literate people.  My favorite cure for writers block has always been Cool Ranch Doritos and Mt. Dew.  No, Pepsi and Frito Lay did not pay me for that plug.

Thesis: First, you should consider the scale of the project.  You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew within the assignment limits.  If you can successfully defend a revolutionary thesis in a short paper, kudos to you!  But most small undergraduate research papers will not shake the foundations of a field with their paradigm-shifting insight.  That is OK.  By all means, use your creativity.  But make sure you can support the claims you make using the evidence available to you.  If you are certain you can defend your claims, at least within the realm of what you learned through your research, go ahead!  Contrary to popular belief, boat-rocking is a favorite pastime of many academics, myself included.  Isaac Newton once opined, “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.”  It was later pointed out that standing on the shoulders of these giants gives you a better vantage point for kicking them in the teeth.

Read critically!  Did the author of one book or article disagree on some point with the author of another book or article?  How did the author support his/her arguments?  Are photos, maps, or drawings included?  Do they make things clearer?  Do they help he arguments?  Look for unsupported assumptions and question them.  Be careful when questioning “common knowledge” (as described below), however.  While sometimes the “common knowledge” is incorrect,  in some cases, questioning it will make you look like a doofus.

The best way to begin writing involves organizing your ideas (some people use index cards, but if you are using a word processor, you can move paragraphs and phrases around just as easily), collecting the quotes and paraphrases you will use (best to keep the citation information with them, e.g., write the footnote when you type it in the first time, or put the information on the bottom of the index card.

Once you have your ideas in order, it is just a matter of streamlining the writing, smoothing it out.  Add transitions, sentences that help guide you from one paragraph to another.

Research papers ought to be written in a somewhat formal academic style.  You can leave out complaints about how much dirty laundry you have to wash tonight, or how great that kegger was last night.  Adding quotes like these may be funny, but it gives the impression that you are not taking the assignment seriously.  No, I am not being hypocritical.  I added the funny little bits here and there because this is not my assignment, and because I want to keep you interested.  You can usually assume that your audience for a research paper (usually the professor) has enough reasons to keep reading.  Leave out the shenanigans.

While we are on the topic, keeping the audience in mind is a good idea.  For example, when reading a paper about the Parthenon (yes, that example again), it is unlikely that your professor needs to read a whole page about the history of Ancient Greece.  Including one makes it seem as if you haven’t done enough research to write the paper, and are taking up space with things you know from class or elsewhere.

STEP 5:  Citations.  This is really a part of step 4, but a very important one!  Citations are a way of showing that you  are not taking credit for other people’s work.  To do so is called plagiarism, and it is the academic equivalent of multiple homicide.

If you must write prose & poems
The words you use should be your own
Don’t plagiarise or take “on loan”
‘Cause there’s always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows”
–“Cemetry Gates (sic),” The Smiths, Morrissey/Marr 1986

As a general rule, when you make a statement that is not common knowledge (the kind of information all your sources seem to agree on: the sky is blue, the Parthenon is in Athens, etc.) you should cite your source.  It matters not only for quotes, but ideas that you have read and put into “your own words,” as well.  This is one of the most important pieces of advice I will give you as far as the rest of your college/academic career is concerned: cite your sources!

You may ask, “Where do I cite, what do I cite, and how do I cite it?”  You are in good company.  For this reason, many books exist to help in writing papers, and they are most commonly consulted for information about citations.

The two most important of these are:
The Chicago Manual of Style
and
The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

MLA here stands for Modern Language Association.  In these two volumes you will find a plethora of citation formats, from footnotes to endnotes, to parenthetical (in-text) citation.  Some professors prefer you use a specific style.  Luckily for this class, my field has no single style.  In fact, each journal has its own citation format.  The result is that I don’t care which citation format you use, as long as it contains the necessary information.  In order to be sure that it lives up to the criteria, it is best if you pick a citation from one of those two manuals, or from one of the other books in the recommended books section of this site.

One can cite books, articles, websites, even interviews and personal conversations!  What is important is that you do cite when necessary.  A simple oversight could put you in the realm of academic dishonesty.  Most schools have disciplinary committees to deal with dishonesty cases, either flagrant (such as downloading a paper off the internet, copying from a book, or submitting a paper written by someone else as your own) or accidental (forgetting to cite your sources!)  Penalties can range from an F for the paper or course, to suspension, and even expulsion in some cases.  I am not telling you this to frighten you, I have sat on committees where I witnessed students suspended for plagiarism.  It happens.

Needless to say, flagrant academic dishonesty is to be avoided as well.  Look at it this way: the easiest part of your professor’s job is to remember everything she/he reads.  Things copied from, or even paraphrased from books without citation stand out from a student’s performance both in style and in content.  The likelihood that it will be noticed is not worth it.  It is easiest just to cite your sources.

STEP 6: Final checklist.

1) Title page or heading: Personally, I don’t care about its format, as long as it has the necessary information:
a) your name
b) course name or number
c) semester and year

2) You probably want to give the paper a title that is descriptive of your topic.

3) The paper itself.  Is it the right length?  Did I think I was clever by using 2-inch left and right margins, or 2.4 line-spacing?  Is it the right length if I rethink and correct those little discrepancies because I know they will be noticed?

4) Citation, citations, citations.  Most commonly footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical documentation.

5) Bibliography.  Yes, even with the citations, you should include your bibliography.  Faculty will often have a good look at your bibliography before reading the paper, to see what kind of sources you used and how much research you did.

6) Staples make it much less likely that the pages of your paper will end up separated from one another or lost.  Barring this, get a paperclip.  If you don’t have that (and why not?!) bend the edge together.

STEP 7: Deadline.  Turning your paper in on time is important.  You could lose letter grades for it being late.  If you are a perfectionist, it may just be time to give it up and hand it in.  Chances are the minor improvements you will make during the extra time you keep it won’t be worth the “late paper” drop in grade.