Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Create a plan that meets your readers' needs
Planning a first draft
Writing your paper

Some fields require a preset plan for a report. Readers in the experimental sciences, for example, expect reports to follow some version of this:

Introduction—Methods and Materials—Results—Discussion—Conclusion

If you must follow a preset plan, ask your instructor for a model. But if you are left to create one on your own, it must not only make sense to readers; it must be visible to them. To create a visible form, go back to your storyboard or outline.

7.2.1 Converting a Storyboard into an Outline

Your best tool for planning a draft is your storyboard. But if you prefer to work from an outline, you can turn your storyboard into one:

✵ Start with a sentence numbered I that states your claim.

✵ Add full sentences under it numbered II, III . . ., each of which states a reason from the top of a reason page in your storyboard.

✵ Under each reason, use capital letters to list sentences summarizing your evidence; then list by numbers the evidence itself. For example (the data are invented for the illustration):

I. Introduction: Value of classroom computers for writing is uncertain.

II. Different uses have different effects.

A. All uses increase number of words produced.

1. Study 1: 950 vs. 780

2. Study 2: 1,103 vs. 922

B. Labs allow students to interact.

III. Studies show limited benefit on revision.

A. Study A: writers on computers are more wordy.

1. Average of 2.3 more words per sentence

2. Average of 20% more words per essay

B. Study B: writers need hard copy to revise effectively.

1. 22% fewer typos when done on hard copy vs. computer screen

2. 2.26% fewer spelling errors

IV. Conclusion: Too soon to tell how much computers improve learning.

A. Few reliable empirical studies

B. Little history because many programs are in transition

7.2.2 Sketch a Working Introduction

Write your introduction twice: write a sketchy one now for yourself and a final one for your readers after you've revised your draft and know what you have written. That final introduction usually has four parts, so you might as well build your working introduction to anticipate them.

Create a Four-Part Scheme for Your Introduction

For now, think of your introduction as having these parts:

1. Current Situation (what your readers now think or do)

2. Research Question (what your readers need to know but don't)

3. Significance of the Question (your answer to So what?)

4. Answer (what your readers should know)

(We explain these parts more fully in 13.1.) In this section we explain how to sketch them in your storyboard.

If you followed our earlier suggestion, you have written your main claim at the bottom of the first page of your storyboard. Now fill in the page above it with what leads up to that claim.

1. At the top of the page state the Current Situation that your question will disrupt.

Since the centerpiece of your introduction is your disruptive research question, you first have to offer readers something for your question to disrupt. Briefly state what your readers (or others) believe that you will challenge with your question (you might review the examples in 2.4). Think of this as the first half of a contradiction:

I used to think . . ., but . . .

Most people think . . ., but . . .

What events seem to show is . . ., but . . .

Researchers have shown . . ., but . . .

For example, you might set up a question about the Alamo by asking readers to think about its status as a national legend. You can state that in terms of

✵ what you believed before you began your research ( I used to think . . .)

I always thought of the Battle of the Alamo as a major event in our nation's history.

✵ what others believe ( Most people think . . .)

The Battle of the Alamo has always been treated as a major historical event, not only in history textbooks but in popular culture as well.

✵ an event or situation ( What events seem to show is . . .)

In 2004 the blockbuster film The Alamo was nominated for the Harry Award for promoting the public understanding of a historical event. That film was a remake of a 1960 film by the same name, which was nominated for seven Oscars and won one.

✵ what other researchers have found ( Researchers have shown . . .)

What really happened at the Alamo is well known. Historians have uncovered almost every detail relevant to understanding the true Alamo story.

If you are ambitious, you can make this part of your introduction a literature review in which you summarize the major research leading up to your paper. If so, do not cover all the sources you find. Instead, summarize only those whose findings you intend to extend, modify, or correct.

2. Under that, rephrase your Research Question as a statement about what we don't know or understand in light of the Current Situation. Since this is the second half of the contradiction, it should start with but or however.

Research Question:

Why has the story of the minor regional battle at the Alamo become a national legend?

Problem Statements:

I always thought of the Battle of the Alamo as a major event in our nation's history. But the Alamo was a minor regional battle that somehow became a national legend.

What really happened at the Alamo is well known. Historians have uncovered almost every detail relevant to understanding the true Alamo story. But few historians have tried to explain why this minor regional battle has become so important in our national mythology.

Writers do this in many ways, so as you read, note how your sources do it, then use them as models.

3. Next, if you can, explain the Significance of your question by answering So what if we don't find out?

If we can explain how the Alamo became a national legend, we can better understand how American culture has fostered a feeling of national unity in a diverse population that shares relatively little history.

At this point in your career, you may find any larger significance to your answer hard to imagine. If so, you can state the significance in terms of the themes of your class:

If we can explain how the Alamo became a national legend, we can better understand the issues of American identity and diversity.

If that doesn't work for you yet, don't dwell on it. We'll return to it in 13.1.3.

4. Revise your claim as the Answer to the question, in terms that match those of the first three parts:

The Alamo became a national legend not because it was important to the history of the United States or even to the history of Texas, but because it reflected both the traditional virtue of heroic self-sacrifice and the frontier virtue of self-reliance.

For now, you should leave that answer at the bottom of the introduction page of your storyboard. Later you might decide to move it from the end of the introduction to the conclusion so that your paper can build up to it as a climax. That's generally a bad idea, but you can confront that issue later.

CAUTION

Don't Fear Giving Away Your Answer

Some new researchers fear that if they reveal their claim early, in their introduction, readers will be bored and stop reading. Others worry about repeating themselves. Both fears are baseless. If you ask an interesting question, readers will want to see how well you can support its answer.

7.2.3 Identify Key Terms That Unite Your Paper

Readers will feel that your paper is coherent only if you repeat a few key concepts that run through all of its parts. But readers may not recognize that you have repeated those concepts if you use lots of different words to name them.

Suppose, for example, you were writing a paper about white artists “covering” African American music in the '50s and '60s. Your paper would have as one organizing theme the concept of fairness. But readers might miss the connection if you use too many different words and phrases to name it: fair use, reasonable economic benefits of their work, social equity, similar access to radio play, exclusive concert venues, recording contracts that are unfavorable to artists, unequal economic power. Although these all relate to your theme of fairness, readers might not make that connection in each case. You would help them if more of those references included your key term fair: not economic benefits of theirwork, but fair economic return for their work; not similar access to radio play, but fair and equal access to radio play.

Your readers need to see one specific term that repeatedly refers to each concept that serves as an organizing theme for your paper, not every time you mention the concept, but often enough that readers can't miss the connection.

Before you start drafting, identify the key concepts that you intend to run through your whole report. For each concept, select one term that you will use most often. As you draft, you may find new themes and drop some old ones, but you'll write more coherently if you keep your most important terms and concepts in the front of your mind.

How to Identify Global Concepts to Unite the Whole Paper

1. On the introduction and conclusion pages of your storyboard, circle four or five words that name your key concepts. You should find those words in your claim.

✵ Ignore words obviously connected to your topic: Alamo, battle, defeat.

✵ Focus on concepts that you bring to the argument and intend to develop: frontier self-reliance, triumph in loss, heroic sacrifice, national spirit, and so on.

2. For each concept, select one key term that you can run through the body of your paper. It can be one of your circled words or a new one. If you find few words that can serve as key terms, your claim may be too general (review 6.3.2).

As you draft, keep a list of those terms in front of you. They will help you keep yourself—and therefore your readers—on track. If you find yourself drafting two or more pages without those terms, don't just wrench yourself back to using them. You might be discovering a new trail that's worth following.

7.2.4 Find the Key Terms Distinctive to Each Section

Now do the same thing for each section: Find the key terms that unify the section and distinguish it from the others. Circle the important words in the reason at the top of each reason page. Some of them should be related to the words circled in the introduction and conclusion. The rest should identify concepts that distinguish that section from all the others. If you cannot find key terms to distinguish a section, think hard about what that section contributes to the whole. Readers may think it repetitive or irrelevant.

Even if papers in your field don't use subheads, we recommend that you use them in your drafts. Create a subhead for each section out of the key terms you identified in that section. If your field dislikes subheads, use them to keep yourself on track, then delete them from your last draft.

7.2.5 Order Your Sections by Ordering Your Reasons

When you first assemble your argument, you don't have to put your reasons in any special order (one benefit of a storyboard). But when you plan a draft, you must choose an order that meets your readers' needs.

Some Standard Principles of Order

When you're not sure how best to order your reasons, consider these options. You can choose orders that reflect what's “out there”:

✵ Chronological. This is the easiest, from earlier to later, or vice versa.

✵ Part by part. If you analyze your topic by its parts, order them by their relationship to one another.

Other orders reflect the needs of your readers:

✵ Short to long, simple to complex. Most readers prefer to deal with simpler issues before they work through more complex ones.

✵ More familiar to less familiar. Most readers prefer to read what they know about before they read what's new.

✵ Most acceptable to most contestable. Most readers move more easily from what they agree with to what they don't.

✵ Less important to more important (or vice versa). Most readers prefer to cover more important reasons first (but those reasons may have more impact when they come last).

✵ Step-by-step understanding. Readers may need you to explain some events, principles, definitions, and so on before they are ready to understand what's most important.

To test an order, create one paragraph that includes just your reasons in the order you want to test. If that paragraph reads like a convincing elevator story (test it on your writing group or a friend), then you have found a usable order.

Often the principles cooperate: what readers agree with and most easily understand might also be shortest and most familiar. But they may also conflict: reasons that readers understand most easily might be the ones they reject most quickly; what you think is your most decisive reason might to readers seem least familiar. No rules here, only principles of choice. Whatever order you choose, it should be one that meets your readers' needs, not the order in which ideas occurred to you.

7.2.6 Sketch a Brief Introduction to Each Section and Subsection

Just as your paper needs an introduction that frames what follows, so does each section. This introductory segment should end with a sentence expressing the point of that section (usually a reason). That sentence should also mention the key concepts for that section.

7.2.7 Sketch in Evidence and Acknowledgments

Flesh out the parts of each section by filling in the storybook page for each major reason. Remember that a section may include sub-points that must be supported by mini sub-arguments.

EVIDENCE. Most sections consist primarily of evidence supporting reasons, so sketch the supporting evidence at the bottom of each reason page. If you have different kinds of evidence supporting the same reason, group and order them in a way that makes sense to your readers.

EXPLANATIONS OF EVIDENCE. You may have to explain your evidence—where it came from, why it's reliable, how it supports a reason. Usually, these explanations follow the evidence, but you can sketch them before, if that seems more logical.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND RESPONSES. Imagine what readers might object to and where, then sketch a response. Responses are typically sub-arguments with at least a claim and reasons (Some researchers have said . . ., but I believe ______________ because . . .); they often include evidence and maybe even a second response to an imagined objection to your first response.

Writers in different fields arrange these elements in slightly different ways, but the elements themselves and their principles of organization are the same in just about every field or profession. And in every research report, regardless of field, you must order the parts of your argument not just to reflect your own thinking, but to help your readers understand it.

QUICK TIP

Save the Leftovers

Once you have a plan, you should discover that you have material that doesn't fit into it. That's a good thing: research is like diamond mining—you have to dig up a lot of dirt to find a few gems. So be glad about your leftovers. If you don't have any, you haven't done enough research.

Resist the temptation to shoehorn the leftovers into your report, thinking that if you found it, your readers should read it. File them away for future use. They may contain the seeds of another project.