how to write a paper for college class

Introduction
Why a Study Plan?
Create a Study Schedule
Create a Task List
How Long Will It Take?
Can You Get It Done?
Your Study Routine
When To Study
Where To Study
Study Methods
How to Take Notes
How to Study a Textbook
How to Study For Exams
How To Write a Paper

How to Write a College Paper

It’s been a long time since I wrote an essay so I’ve delegated the discussion of this topic to Dr. Genevieve Carlton. She’s had a lot of experience writing and grading papers. We appreciate her advice and you should too.

How to Write a Great Paper, by Genevieve Carlton Ph.D

A college paper is the standard assignment in humanities and social sciences. You need to master writing essays if you want to earn the best grades. But writing papers isn’t just about the grade. It’s about honing your language and persuasion skills – the most powerful tools you always have at your disposal.

If you’re intimidated by the basic five-page paper, you aren’t alone. But college essays are not rocket science. Regardless of whether you’re writing a paper for history, English, sociology, psychology, or any other class, these simple methods will raise your grade on any college paper.

Let’s jump in.

Start Writing Your College Essay at Least Two Weeks Before The Due Date

There are a lot of different approaches to writing an essay, but they all share one thing: start early! Never put off writing an essay until the last minute, you’ll make sloppy mistakes or risk late penalties that will destroy your grade. Instead, start at least two weeks before the due date. Btw, Shovel makes this easy. Just set that you want to get started 14 days before the essay is due. Shovel will let you know if it’s enough time and will remind you when to get started.

Why is it so important to start early? If you pull an all-nighter right before the due date, it will show. You’ll end up with mediocre argument, poor evidence, and a lack of polish… trust me, professors can tell. And you’ll miss out on the opportunities to gain feedback from your professor during your writing process.

There’s no secret formula to writing a perfect paper right before the deadline. Writing a great paper takes time, so you need to start early.

Read, Read, and Re-Read the Essay Assignment

Some professors might not admit it, but here’s the truth: every professor wants something slightly different from your paper.

Your English professor wants you to emphasize narrative styles, while your art history professor cares about technique. Your history professor wants quotes from the reading, while your psychology professor expects you to summarize (and cite!) the sources. One professor might knock off points for using in-line citation, while another hates footnotes. Even professors in the same department might want completely different essays.

So how are you supposed to figure out what your professor wants? It’s easy: study the assignment and ask questions. Even better, ask if your professor uses a grading rubric for essays. Then you’ll know exactly what your professor wants to see.

Studying the assignment is your key to getting an A on every paper. Your professor tells you exactly what he or she is looking for: will you be graded largely on your argument, your evidence, or your grammar? Does the professor want a persuasive argument or a descriptive argument? If the assignment doesn’t say, ask! You can easily raise your grade from the middle of the bell curve to top of the class just by making sure you’re writing the paper your professor wants to see.

You’ve Already Done Half the Work

Here’s the good news: if you’re on top of your course reading, you’ve already done half the work the day your professor hands out the paper topics.

Most essay assignments come directly from the reading: Create an analysis of race in Huck Finn. Explain Machiavelli’s attitude on power in The Prince. Compare and contrast two perspectives on World War II.

You have a major advantage if you read the material closely. And don’t just read: highlight the most important passages, write down the key arguments, and take notes on the major points. If you do that, you’ve literally done half the work for your paper.

So don’t cut corners when it comes to the assigned reading. In fact, read with an essay question in mind––look for the quotes that you’ll use to build your argument now, and it will be much easier to build your evidence list later.

Know Your Five-Paragraph Essay

College essays come in many shapes and sizes, from persuasive to argumentative, and from narrative to analytical. But they often follow a similar format: the standard five-paragraph essay, drilled into every high school student’s mind. And unless the assignment requests something different, use the five-paragraph essay as your template for most college essays.

As a reminder, the five-paragraph essay opens with your introduction paragraph, which ends with your thesis statement, or argument. The next three body paragraphs lay out your evidence. The essay wraps up with a conclusion, where you reiterate your point.

That same format works for everything from a three-page analytical essay to a fifteen-page research paper. You’ll obviously need more body paragraphs in a longer paper, and in any argumentative paper you’ll want to address counter-arguments or problems in your argument. But use the five-paragraph template to create an outline for your paper.

Always Create an Outline for Structure

Professors can nearly always spot an essay written at the last minute. And here’s why: they ramble; they don’t have a clear structure; they wander from point to point without building to anything. Needless to say, those papers don’t earn high grades.

You can avoid that pitfall by writing a strong outline before drafting the essay.

An outline helps you arrange your ideas before you begin drafting the paper. Start by re-reading the assignment and jotting down the main topics your paper must address. And then think about how to order them: which of the two readings should you discuss first? Where should you address counter-arguments? Should your descriptive paragraph come right after your introduction, or can it wait until page two?

Essentially, writing an outline forces you to think about how to make your argument. It doesn’t need to be a polished document, because it will evolve as you work on the paper. At this stage, your outline might look more like a list of paragraph topics, with not much else filled in. But having that framework helps ensure that your essay stays focused on the topic.

Start with your Evidence

Don’t start by writing your introduction. The introduction is the absolutely most important part of any paper. Within that first paragraph, your professor is already deciding whether you’ve submitted an A paper or not.

So leave the introduction until you’re able to write the most focused, best paragraph that you’ve ever created.

Instead, start with your evidence. Read the essay prompt and make a list of the crucial evidence. Use your notes on the reading to pull out the strongest building blocks for your case. Write down examples you want to pull from lectures. Collect a list of the best quotes from the readings.

And look at your outline. Start filling in the examples you’ll use in each paragraph.

Once you have an evidence list, it will be much easier to craft your body paragraphs, the meat of your paper where you lay out your argument. Now that you know your evidence, it’s time to hone your argument.

It’s All About The Argument

The argument, or thesis statement, is the most important sentence in your paper. That one sentence lays out your answer to the essay prompt and sets up your body paragraphs. So it has to be great.

While you’re creating your evidence list, jot down a few potential arguments. Don’t pick one just yet, though. Instead, try on a few different arguments and see if you have the evidence to support them. Stay open to changing your argument.

Your thesis statement will look different in an expository essay versus an argumentative essay. But the general idea is the same: your argument sums up your paper’s point of view. So make sure it’s strong.

And here’s one important rule for all types of papers: never, ever have a thesis statement that just says “Yes” or “No.” Your argument should always explain why. If the essay prompt gives you a statement and asks you to agree or disagree, explain why. If the prompt tells you to pick one side of a debate, explain why. Just make sure you have the evidence to back it up.

It’s Finally Time To Write

That’s right, there are seven steps before you get to actually write the essay. That’s one reason you need to start early.

Before you start writing your paper, you should have a clear roadmap for your argument and evidence. You should know what the professor wants, and you should have an outline to answer the essay prompt. You should feel confident that you understand the reading and that you’ve pulled out the major points.

Then––and only then––it’s time to start writing.

Start with your body paragraphs, incorporating the examples from your outline and evidence list. Open each paragraph with a topic sentence, which tells your reader what to expect from the following paragraph. Add your citations as you go, whether as footnotes or inline citations––it will save time to include them now instead of going back to add them later. After writing a paragraph, re-read it. Edit as you go to polish your ideas and make sure you aren’t leaving out any evidence.

Once you have a draft of your body paragraphs, create the conclusion. And then go back to write the introduction. Save your professor grief by avoiding opening sentences like “Since the dawn of time . . .” or “The Oxford English Dictionary defines . . .” The last thing you write should be your thesis statement.

You’ve finished a complete draft of your paper––congratulations! But you’re not done yet.

Talk to Your Professor or TA

No one makes a better editor than the person grading your essay. So you should always check whether your professor or TA will review a draft of your paper before the due date. Ask if they have a policy about reading drafts––or at least ask if they’ll read your first paragraph, which will make or break your grade.

Be prepared to send your professor or TA a full or partial draft at least three or four days before the deadline. Even though some professors have a policy against reading drafts, it never hurts to ask. And it’s a guaranteed way to improve your paper, since you’ll get feedback from the person assigning your grade.

Revise, Revise, Revise Your Essay

The biggest mistake students make in papers is never revising––in fact, most students don’t even proofread. Professors notice sloppy mistakes like grammatical errors and typos, and it automatically weakens your grade. It tells the professor you didn’t take the assignment seriously enough to leave time for revisions.

Aim to have a full draft at least three days before the due date, so you’ll have time to perfect your paper. What should you look for when revising? Eliminate any typos, correct your grammar, and delete any dumb mistakes, like sentences that simply end in the middle of a thought (yes, I’ve seen that in multiple papers). That’s the easy step.

Now re-read your introduction. Go back to your outline and evidence list. Can you strengthen your argument, now that you’ve compiled your evidence? Can you do a better job connecting the evidence back to your argument? Look for weaknesses in your paper. Are there holes in your argument? Are there obvious counter-examples you need to address?

Imagine you’re the professor, red pen poised over the paper, and ask yourself how to make your paper stronger.

Once you complete the revisions, submit the essay and take a break. You’ve earned it.

Study Your Paper

You didn’t think you were done just because you turned in the paper, right?

When it comes to college, analyzing your results is almost as important as writing the paper in the first place. Your graded essay tells you everything you need to know to ace the next paper for that professor. So study the comments––the line edits, the marginal suggestions, and the scrawl on the final page, right above your grade.

Did you lose points because you didn’t follow the proper citation style? Correct it next time. Was your argument unclear? Put an extra hour into honing your argument on the second paper. Whatever you missed this time, learn from it, so you don’t lose more points on the next assignment.

Ask About Rewrites

The last thing most college students want to do after submitting an essay is to rewrite it. But you’d be surprised how many students lose the opportunity to improve their grades, simply because they don’t ask about rewrites.

So if you earned less than an A on your paper, it really can’t hurt to ask the professor if you can rewrite using their feedback. Some professors will automatically say no, but others will let you submit a revised version for a higher grade.

When you’re rewriting the paper, don’t simply correct the typos and submit again––professors might feel like you’re wasting their time if you don’t listen to their comments. You might need to add more sources or strengthen your argument. It might require several hours of work. But if that means raising your grade on a significant assignment, it’s time well spent.

Plagiarism Is Never The Easiest Option

Yes, writing an essay the right way is a time-intensive process. And cutting corners is easier than ever, thanks to the internet. But plagiarism––representing any work as your own when it’s not––is never the right choice.

It might seem easier than writing your own paper, but it’s not. I guarantee it. Here’s why: it’s easy to plagiarize. Google any topic and you’ll find a dozen or more essays. But the cost is too high.

Take it from a professor––plagiarism is shockingly easy to notice. Essays that don’t answer the assignment, or that only cite books not assigned in class. Papers with five-syllable words in one paragraph and typos in the next, or that switch voices halfway through. Papers that include complicated ideas not mentioned in class––or that leave out core concepts from lecture. These all set off a professor’s plagiarism detector. And then there’s actual plagiarism detection software. In short, there’s a good chance you’ll get caught.

Most colleges have a no plagiarism policy. That means if your professor finds out you plagiarized, you could get an automatic zero on the assignment, or even in the class. You could get suspended from school or even expelled.

It’s not worth it to game the system.

Time Management

Essays make up a big part of your grade in some classes––in most of mine, for example, papers accounted for 30% or more of the final grade. That means you should spend a significant amount of time on those papers.

What does that mean? You need to master time management for college papers.

It’s not always easy to figure out how much time you need to write a paper. It’s different for every student, and sometimes different for every paper. Some students can craft a perfect essay in just a few hours, while others require double that time or more. Starting early is one of the best ways to manage your time. That way the deadline won’t sneak up on you.

Consider using a tool like the Shovel app to manage your time. Shovel lets you schedule blocks of time in advance, so you’ll never run out. You can budget time for research and outlining, writing drafts, and revising the paper. And Shovel can also track your time, so you’ll know how long it takes to write a paper. The next time you tackle an essay, you’ll have an even better idea how much time you need. And if you start tracking now, you’ll benefit for your next four years of writing papers––because you’re going to write a lot in college.

Depending on your major, you might find yourself working on multiple papers every week, especially near the end of the semester. And as long as you schedule out the time in advance, you’ll never get stuck rushing to finish an essay at the last minute.

If you study the assignment, plan out your essay before you start writing, and always leave time for revisions, you can easily raise your grade on any college paper.

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How to Write Your College Essay: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

Getting ready to start your college essay? Your essay is very important to your application — especially if you’re applying to selective colleges.

Become a stronger writer by reviewing your peers’ essays and get your essay reviewed as well for free.

We have regular livestreams during which we walk you through how to write your college essay and review essays live.

College Essay Basics

Just getting started on college essays? This section will guide you through how you should think about your college essays before you start.

Why do essays matter in the college application process?
What is a college application theme and how do you come up with one?
How to format and structure your college essay

Before you move to the next section, make sure you understand:

How a college essay fits into your application

What a strong essay does for your chances

How to create an application theme

Learn the Types of College Essays

Next, let’s make sure you understand the different types of college essays. You’ll most likely be writing a Common App or Coalition App essay, and you can also be asked to write supplemental essays for each school. Each essay has a prompt asking a specific question. Each of these prompts falls into one of a few different types. Understanding the types will help you better answer the prompt and structure your essay.

How to Write a Personal Statement That Wows Colleges
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Diversity Essay Examples
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How to Write a “Why This Major” Essay if You’re Undecided
How to write the “Why This College” Essay
How to Research a College to Write the “Why This College” Essay
Why This College Essay Examples
How to Write The Overcoming Challenges Essay
Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

Identify how each prompt fits into an essay type

What each type of essay is really asking of you

How to write each essay effectively

The Common App essay

Almost every student will write a Common App essay, which is why it’s important you get this right.

How to Write the Common App Essay
Successful Common App Essay Examples
5 Awesome College Essay Topics + Sample Essays
11 Cliché College Essay Topics + How to Fix Them

How to choose which Common App prompts to answer

How to write a successful Common App essay

What to avoid to stand out to admissions officers

Supplemental Essay Guides

Many schools, especially competitive ones, will ask you to write one or more supplemental essays. This allows a school to learn more about you and how you might fit into their culture.

These essays are extremely important in standing out. We’ve written guides for all the top schools. Follow the link below to find your school and read last year’s essay guides to give you a sense of the essay prompts. We’ll update these in August when schools release their prompts.

See last year’s supplemental essay guides to get a sense of the prompts for your schools.

Essay brainstorming and composition

Now that you’re starting to write your essay, let’s dive into the writing process. Below you’ll find our top articles on the craft of writing an amazing college essay.

Where to Begin? 3 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises
Creating the First Draft of Your College Application Essay
How to Get the Perfect Hook for Your College Essay
What If I Don’t Have Anything Interesting To Write About In My College Essay?
8 Do’s and Don’t for Crafting Your College Essay
Stuck on Your College Essay? 8 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block

Understand how to write a great hook for your essay

Complete the first drafts of your essay

Editing and polishing your essay

Have a first draft ready? See our top editing tips below. Also, you may want to submit your essay to our free Essay Peer Review to get quick feedback and join a community of other students working on their essays.

11 Tips for Proofreading and Editing Your College Essay
Getting Help with Your College Essay
5 DIY Tips for Editing Your College Essay
How Long Should Your College Essay Be?
Essential Grammar Rules for Your College Apps
College Essay Checklist: Are You Ready to Submit?

Proofread and edited your essay.

Had someone else look through your essay — we recommend submitting it for a peer review.

Make sure your essay meets all requirements — consider signing up for a free account to view our per-prompt checklists to help you understand when you’re really ready to submit.

Advanced College Essay Techniques

Let’s take it one step further and see how we can make your college essay really stand out! We recommend reading through these posts when you have a draft to work with.

10 Guidelines for Highly Readable College Essays
How to Use Literary Devices to Enhance Your Essay
How to Develop a Personalized Metaphor for Your College Applications

EXPLORE Random Article

How to Write a Paper for College Literature Classes

Last Updated: October 11, 2022 References

This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD . Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 30,680 times.

The dreaded course paper. The prospect of writing one can fill even the most confident student with dread. How do you get started? What do you write about? Will you finish in time? Never fear. By understanding the structure of a literature paper, doing careful prewriting, using multiple drafts, and learning strategies to overcome writer's block, you can make writing a paper for a college literature class a breeze.

Analyzing the Text and Developing a Thesis

Think about what most interests you: imagery, characters, plot, pacing, tone, etc. Note examples.
Consider the context. Is this text influenced by other texts, such as the Bible or Shakespeare or even contemporary pop music? Does it use a style or form popular in a particular era, like the epistolary novel of the 18th century?
Reflect on what you know about the author. How might his or her biography influence the text?
Focus on why certain elements are in the story and how they work. How do characters contribute to the story or theme? Why does the author choose particular a particular setting, image, or tone? [2] X Research source
Decide what argument you think the text is making or what theme it is exploring. What do you think the main idea is that the author wanted you to understand once you finished reading?

Your topic may be a single literary element of the work, such as character, plot, structure, theme, symbols, style, imagery, tone, etc.
Another common topic is how a work illustrates or breaks the forms of a particular genre or school of thought.
You may also draw parallels between the work and real-life subject matter such as historical events or the author's life.
Your topic can't be factual: i.e. The nobles in Shakespeare's Hamlet talk in iambic pentameter.
And the argument can't be too easy to win: i.e. Nobles speak in formal iambic pentameter in Hamlet to emphasize their class.
It needs to be something people might reasonably disagree about: i.e. In Hamlet , Shakespeare writes noble speech in iambic pentameter not to emphasize their elite status, but rather to underscore how constrained noble characters actually are vis-à-vis the freer commoners.

Broad topic – The use of humor in Hamlet .
Add words that make it more specific – Hamlet's use of humor in Hamlet .
Turn it into an even more specific sentence – Hamlet's use of humor belies his madness.

Be specific. For example: "The technique of allowing the reader the freedom to flesh out sparsely described images reinforces the theme of freedom versus destiny explored in the The Night Circus ." This works better than something vague like: "The author uses rich visual imagery to great effect in The Night Circus ."

Step 5 Gather more evidence to support your thesis.

Outlining Your Essay

Step 1 Organize your ideas in an outline.

Thesis: The technique of allowing the reader the freedom to flesh out sparsely described images reinforces the theme of freedom versus destiny explored in the The Night Circus .
Paragraph 1: Summary – The Night Circus is a novel about a young man and woman competing in a magical contest they do not fully understand, with a fantastical circus as the setting for their wonders.
Paragraph 2: While the novel is visually compelling, the descriptions are in fact surprisingly sparse, as in this description of the fantastic clock that sits at the entrance to the circus.
Paragraph 3: Her description of the magical snow garden is also surprisingly simple.
Paragraph 4: The simplicity gives the reader the freedom to fill out the descriptions using the guidelines offered by the text, just as the main characters flesh out the circus within the boundaries of the game's rules.
Paragraph 5: The simple yet beautiful descriptions thus reinforce the underlying theme of freedom versus destiny in the book.

Step 2 Use your outline to help organize and guide your research.

Drafting Your Paper

Step 1 Start with an introductory paragraph.

Don't write something vague like "This story deals with the problems of human civilization."
Be specific: "By the end of the story, Rainsford becomes another Zargoff, another civilized murderer. He has adopted his adversary's brutal attitudes so easily that we are led to question civilization's claim to control human aggression." [5] X Research source

Be careful that you do not spend too much time on summary, however. If you have more summary than analysis, your paper won't show your ideas about the text.

Step 3 Give an example of the topic you will be analyzing.

Evidence – Examples from the text under discussion that support your thesis.
Warrant – An explanation of how the evidence supports your thesis.
Backing – Additional reasoning that may be necessary to support the warrant.
Counterclaims – Anticipate arguments that disagree with your thesis.
Rebuttal – Evidence and argumentation put forward by you that negates the counterclaim you introduced.

Step 5 Conclude by moving beyond your thesis.

Making Use of Multiple Drafts

Step 1 Focus on the argument during your first draft.

Try using a reverse outline to understand the structure of your essay. In the left hand margin, write out the topic of each paragraph in as few words as possible. In the right margin, write how each paragraph advances the overall argument. This will help you see how each paragraph fits into your paper, and which ones might be shifted for better effect. [11] X Research source
Once your paragraph is in the right order, focus on smoothing out transitions between paragraphs. If your paragraph flows well, you shouldn't need transition words (see https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Transitions.html for a list of such words). The end of one paragraph should logically lead to the start of the next.

Step 3 Let someone else read your paper.

Editing Your Paper

You can find a list of common errors at https://wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/proofreading-grammar.html .

Original text: "Rachel Watson, the protagonist of Paula Hawkin's Girl on a Train, is a classic unreliable narrator. In particular, her inability to remember events in her own life due to alcohol-induced blackouts leaves the reader unable to rely on her version of events."
Rewrite as: "Rachel Watson, the protagonist of Paula Hawkin's Girl on a Train, suffers from alcohol-induced blackouts that leave her unsure what has happened in her own life, making her a classic unreliable narrator."

Step 4 Remove all references to yourself.

Don't write: "I initially thought Hamlet was only feigning madness, but then after a second reading, came to believe that he actually is mad."
Instead, you might write: "Many critics take for granted that Hamlet is only feigning madness, but their analysis relies on a more modern understanding of insanity. If we take the worldview of Shakespeare's audience into account, it seems more likely that Hamlet was in fact mad."
Or, more simply: "A close reading that takes into account the worldview of the time reveals that Hamlet is indeed mad."

Overcoming Writer's Block

Work in 2 to 6 hour sessions spread over multiple days. It is hard to stay productive past 6 hours.
Start at least a week before your paper is due.

Sample Outline and Essays

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

College Writing

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you figure out what your college instructors expect when they give you a writing assignment. It will tell you how and why to move beyond the five-paragraph essays you learned to write in high school and start writing essays that are more analytical and more flexible.

What is a five-paragraph essay?

High school students are often taught to write essays using some variation of the five-paragraph model. A five-paragraph essay is hourglass-shaped: it begins with something general, narrows down in the middle to discuss specifics, and then branches out to more general comments at the end. In a classic five-paragraph essay, the first paragraph starts with a general statement and ends with a thesis statement containing three “points”; each body paragraph discusses one of those “points” in turn; and the final paragraph sums up what the student has written.

Why do high schools teach the five-paragraph model?

The five-paragraph model is a good way to learn how to write an academic essay. It’s a simplified version of academic writing that requires you to state an idea and support it with evidence. Setting a limit of five paragraphs narrows your options and forces you to master the basics of organization. Furthermore—and for many high school teachers, this is the crucial issue—many mandatory end-of-grade writing tests and college admissions exams like the SAT II writing test reward writers who follow the five-paragraph essay format.

Writing a five-paragraph essay is like riding a bicycle with training wheels; it’s a device that helps you learn. That doesn’t mean you should use it forever. Once you can write well without it, you can cast it off and never look back.

Why don’t five-paragraph essays work well for college writing?

The way college instructors teach is probably different from what you experienced in high school, and so is what they expect from you.

While high school courses tend to focus on the who, what, when, and where of the things you study—”just the facts”—college courses ask you to think about the how and the why. You can do very well in high school by studying hard and memorizing a lot of facts. Although college instructors still expect you to know the facts, they really care about how you analyze and interpret those facts and why you think those facts matter. Once you know what college instructors are looking for, you can see some of the reasons why five-paragraph essays don’t work so well for college writing:

Five-paragraph essays often do a poor job of setting up a framework, or context, that helps the reader understand what the author is trying to say. Students learn in high school that their introduction should begin with something general. College instructors call these “dawn of time” introductions. For example, a student asked to discuss the causes of the Hundred Years War might begin, “Since the dawn of time, humankind has been plagued by war.” In a college course, the student would fare better with a more concrete sentence directly related to what he or she is going to say in the rest of the paper—for example, a sentence such as “In the early 14th century, a civil war broke out in Flanders that would soon threaten Western Europe’s balance of power.” If you are accustomed to writing vague opening lines and need them to get started, go ahead and write them, but delete them before you turn in the final draft. For more on this subject, see our handout on introductions .
Five-paragraph essays often lack an argument. Because college courses focus on analyzing and interpreting rather than on memorizing, college instructors expect writers not only to know the facts but also to make an argument about the facts. The best five-paragraph essays may do this. However, the typical five-paragraph essay has a “listing” thesis, for example, “I will show how the Romans lost their empire in Britain and Gaul by examining military technology, religion, and politics,” rather than an argumentative one, for example, “The Romans lost their empire in Britain and Gaul because their opponents’ military technology caught up with their own at the same time as religious upheaval and political conflict were weakening the sense of common purpose on the home front.” For more on this subject, see our handout on argument .
Five-paragraph essays are often repetitive. Writers who follow the five-paragraph model tend to repeat sentences or phrases from the introduction in topic sentences for paragraphs, rather than writing topic sentences that tie their three “points” together into a coherent argument. Repetitive writing doesn’t help to move an argument along, and it’s no fun to read.
Five-paragraph essays often lack “flow.” Five-paragraph essays often don’t make smooth transitions from one thought to the next. The “listing” thesis statement encourages writers to treat each paragraph and its main idea as a separate entity, rather than to draw connections between paragraphs and ideas in order to develop an argument.
Five-paragraph essays often have weak conclusions that merely summarize what’s gone before and don’t say anything new or interesting. In our handout on conclusions , we call these “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” conclusions: they do nothing to engage readers and make them glad they read the essay. Most of us can remember an introduction and three body paragraphs without a repetitive summary at the end to help us out.
Five-paragraph essays don’t have any counterpart in the real world. Read your favorite newspaper or magazine; look through the readings your professors assign you; listen to political speeches or sermons. Can you find anything that looks or sounds like a five-paragraph essay? One of the important skills that college can teach you, above and beyond the subject matter of any particular course, is how to communicate persuasively in any situation that comes your way. The five-paragraph essay is too rigid and simplified to fit most real-world situations.
Perhaps most important of all: in a five-paragraph essay, form controls content, when it should be the other way around. Students begin with a plan for organization, and they force their ideas to fit it. Along the way, their perfectly good ideas get mangled or lost.

How do I break out of writing five-paragraph essays?

Let’s take an example based on our handout on thesis statements . Suppose you’re taking a course on contemporary communication, and the professor asks you to write a paper on this topic:

Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.

Thanks to your familiarity with the five paragraph essay structure and with the themes of your course, you are able to quickly write an introductory paragraph:

Social media allows the sharing of information through online networks among social connections. Everyone uses social media in our modern world for a variety of purposes: to learn about the news, keep up with friends, and even network for jobs. Social media cannot help but affect public awareness. In this essay, I will discuss the impact of social media on public awareness of political campaigns, public health initiatives, and current events.

Now you have something on paper. But you realize that this introduction sticks too close to the five-paragraph essay structure. The introduction starts too broadly by taking a step back and defining social media in general terms. Then it moves on to restate the prompt without quite addressing it: while it’s reasserted that there is an impact, the impact is not actually discussed. And the final sentence, instead of presenting an argument, only lists topics in sequence. You are prepared to write a paragraph on political campaigns, a paragraph on public health initiatives, and a paragraph on current events, but you aren’t sure what your point will be.

So you start again. Instead of trying to come up with something to say about each of three points, you brainstorm until you come up with a main argument, or thesis, about the impact of social media on public awareness. You think about how easy it is to share information on social media, as well as about how difficult it can be to discern more from less reliable information. As you brainstorm the effects of social media on public awareness in connection to political campaigns specifically, you realize you have enough to say about this topic without discussing two additional topics. You draft your thesis statement:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

Next you think about your argument’s parts and how they fit together. You read the Writing Center’s handout on organization . You decide that you’ll begin by addressing the counterargument that misinformation on social media has led to a less informed public. Addressing the counterargument point-by-point helps you articulate your evidence. You find it ends up taking more than one paragraph to discuss the strategies people use to compare and evaluate information as well as the evidence that people end up more informed as a result.

You notice that you now have four body paragraphs. You might have had three or two or seven; what’s important is that you allowed your argument to determine how many paragraphs would be needed and how they should fit together. Furthermore, your body paragraphs don’t each discuss separate topics, like “political campaigns” and “public health.” Instead they support different points in your argument. This is also a good moment to return to your introduction and revise it to focus more narrowly on introducing the argument presented in the body paragraphs in your paper.

Finally, after sketching your outline and writing your paper, you turn to writing a conclusion. From the Writing Center handout on conclusions , you learn that a “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” conclusion doesn’t move your ideas forward. Applying the strategies you find in the handout, you may decide that you can use your conclusion to explain why the paper you’ve just written really matters.

Is it ever OK to write a five-paragraph essay?

Yes. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where somebody expects you to make sense of a large body of information on the spot and write a well-organized, persuasive essay—in fifty minutes or less? Sounds like an essay exam situation, right? When time is short and the pressure is on, falling back on the good old five-paragraph essay can save you time and give you confidence. A five-paragraph essay might also work as the framework for a short speech. Try not to fall into the trap, however, of creating a “listing” thesis statement when your instructor expects an argument; when planning your body paragraphs, think about three components of an argument, rather than three “points” to discuss. On the other hand, most professors recognize the constraints of writing blue-book essays, and a “listing” thesis is probably better than no thesis at all.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Blue, Tina. 2001. “AP English Blather.” Essay, I Say (blog), January 26, 2001. http://essayisay.homestead.com/blather.html .

Blue, Tina. 2001. “A Partial Defense of the Five-Paragraph Theme as a Model for Student Writing.” Essay, I Say (blog), January 13, 2001. http://essayisay.homestead.com/fiveparagraphs.html .

Denecker, Christine. 2013. “Transitioning Writers across the Composition Threshold: What We Can Learn from Dual Enrollment Partnerships.” Composition Studies 41 (1): 27-50.

Fanetti, Susan et al. 2010. “Closing the Gap between High School Writing Instruction and College Writing Expectations.” The English Journal 99 (4): 77-83.

Hillocks, George. 2002. The Testing Trap: How State Assessments Control Learning . New York and London: Teachers College Press.

Hjortshoj, Keith. 2009. The Transition to College Writing , 2nd ed. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Shen, Andrea. 2000. “Study Looks at Role of Writing in Learning.” Harvard Gazette (blog). October 26, 2000. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2000/10/study-looks-at-role-of-writing-in-learning/ .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Knowledge Base
Research paper

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

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Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

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There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
Are there any heated debates you can address?
Do you have a unique take on your topic?
Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

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A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

topic sentences against the thesis statement;
topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

Offer new arguments or essential information
Take up any more space than necessary
Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading or create an APA title page .

Scribbr’s professional editors can help with the revision process with our award-winning proofreading services.

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Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

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Academic Writing
Research Papers

How to Write a Paper

Last Updated: April 8, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Matthew Snipp, PhD . C. Matthew Snipp is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He is also the Director for the Institute for Research in the Social Science’s Secure Data Center. He has been a Research Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has published 3 books and over 70 articles and book chapters on demography, economic development, poverty and unemployment. He is also currently serving on the National Institute of Child Health and Development’s Population Science Subcommittee. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 100% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 321,002 times.

Whether you’re in high school or university, writing papers is probably a big part of your grade for at least some of your classes. Writing an essay on any topic can be challenging and time consuming. But, when you know how to break it down into parts and write each of those parts, it’s much easier! Follow the steps in this article for help writing your next paper from start to finish.

Pre-Writing

If you have an idea for a topic that isn’t listed, feel free to ask your instructor if it would be okay to write about something that isn’t on the list they provided.
In some cases, the teacher or professor might just provide an assignment sheet covering the logistics of the paper, but leave the topic choice up to you. If this happens, it can be helpful to come up with a short list of ideas on your own, then choose the best one.
Don’t hesitate to ask your instructor for guidance on choosing a topic if you’re having trouble deciding.

Step 2 Start by analyzing primary sources and looking for points to argue.

Note that there are different types of papers including research papers, opinion papers, and analytical essays. All of them need a thesis statement and all of them require you to do research and review various sources in order to write them.

Keep in mind that a thesis is not a topic, a fact, or an opinion. It is an argument based on observations and findings that you are trying to prove in your paper, like a hypothesis statement in a science experiment.

Step 3 Write a brief thesis statement that tells readers what you’re arguing.

An example of a thesis statement for a research paper is: “The Soviet Union collapsed because of the ruling class’s inability to tackle the economic problems of the common people.” This tells the reader what point you are going to back up with evidence in the rest of your paper.
A thesis statement for an opinion paper might read something like: “Libraries are an essential community resource and as such should receive more funding from local municipal governments.”
An analytical essay’s thesis statement could be: “JD Salinger makes heavy use of symbolism in The Catcher in the Rye in order to create feelings of melancholy and uncertainty in the novel.”

Step 4 Make a list of major points to support your thesis as an outline.

For example, if your thesis is about why the government needs to do more to protect wetland ecosystems, main supporting points could be: “effects of wetland loss in the US,” “current lack of laws protecting wetlands,” and “benefits of saving wetlands.”
These major points form the body of your paper, in between your introduction and your conclusion.

Step 5 Write supporting ideas and arguments under each major point.

For example, under a main point that says “employment conditions affect the mental health of workers,” your sub-points might be: “high levels of stress are directly related to mental health” and “workers in low-skill positions tend to have higher levels of stress.”

For example, you could write something like: “Did you know that cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest?”

Step 2 State the specific topic of your paper.

For example, you might write something like: “It’s common for apps and social media to be demonized as a waste of time and brain space, but not all such technology should be considered mindless entertainment. In fact, many apps and social media networks can be used for educational and academic purposes.”

Step 3 End the intro with your thesis statement.

Make sure the background information about your topic that you include in your intro flows nicely into your thesis.

Step 4 Discuss your major points in detail in the body of your paper.

Think of each paragraph as kind of a mini essay in and of itself. Each paragraph should be a self-contained chunk of information that relates to the overall topic and thesis of your paper.
Supporting evidence can be things like statistics, data, facts, and quotes from your sources

Step 5 Connect your body paragraphs in a logical way.

For example, put a paragraph about the reasons behind the collapse of the Soviet Union before a paragraph about the changes to Eastern European societies in the 90s, because the collapse of the Soviet Union directly led to many of those changes.
If your first body paragraph discusses the extent of deforestation in the Amazon over the past decade, and your second paragraph is going to explain how that affects animal extinction, state the shift in focus by writing something like: “The deforestation of the Amazon over the last decade has resulted in a drastic reduction of natural habitats for many species.”

For example, if your thesis in your intro was “The use of technology can benefit children because it improves developmental skills,” restate it something like this: “The use of technology contributes to children’s well-rounded development from a young age.”

Step 7 Sum up your main supporting points and how they support your argument.

For example, you might write something like: “Deforestation is directly linked to climate change and increasingly extreme weather across the world, which is why global governments must take more action to stop illegal logging.”

Step 8 End by stating what the significance of your argument is.

For example, say something like: “Ignoring the realities of deforestation and climate change has grave implications for all of us. If we don’t start putting more pressure on governments to act, your children or grandchildren will be living in a very different world from that which we inhabit today.”

Citing Sources

Humanities subjects include language arts and cultural studies.
Note that these are just the basic rules for writing an MLA-style works cited page. For a full list of rules regarding all things MLA and citations, refer to an MLA handbook.
Note that there is some crossover between certain subjects, in which case more than 1 style of works cited or reference page may be acceptable.
Always review your assignment rubric or ask your professor which style of citations they prefer before writing your reference or works cited page.

Social sciences include psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
Refer to an APA style guide for complete rules about how to list different types of sources.

Check a Chicago Manual of Style for more specific instructions about citations.
Note that Chicago style is more commonly used for published works. If you’re a student, your professor might instruct you to use MLA format for your papers.

Revising, Editing, and Proofreading

Step 1 Analyze your paper and eliminate unnecessary information.

Anywhere from a few hours to a day is a good amount of time to wait before you start revising your paper. The point is to come back to it with a fresh set of eyes.
If you can, get a roommate, a family member, a friend, or a classmate to read your paper too. Ask them for advice on ways you could make your argument and your evidence more clear or relevant.
Here are 3 questions to ask yourself as you read each sentence and piece of information in your paper: Is this really worth saying? Does this say what I want it to say? Will readers understand what I’m saying?

Step 2 Tighten and clean up the language.

It helps to read your paper out loud as you do this. Listen for awkward pauses, phrases, and sentence structure, and revise them so the writing flows better.
Try copying and pasting your essay into the free online tool called “Hemingway.” The app suggests many different ways to make your writing clearer, more direct, and more readable.

Step 3 Edit for repetition and look for better words to use.

Take this sentence as an example: “The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the collapse of local governments and economies across Eastern Europe.” Instead of using “collapse” twice, replace the second instance with “crumbling.”

Step 4 Proofread for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.

It’s also a good idea to paste your paper into a third-party tool, like Grammarly, for a final spelling and grammar check. Not every program catches everything, so it’s better to be on the safe side!

Sample Research Papers

Sample Essays

Expert Q&A

↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/research_papers/choosing_a_topic.html
↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/developing-thesis
↑ Matthew Snipp, PhD. Research Fellow, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Expert Interview. 26 March 2020.
↑ https://library.piedmont.edu/c.php?g=521348&p=3564584
↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/outlining
↑ https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/introductions-conclusions
↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_basic_format.html
↑ https://aut.ac.nz.libguides.com/APA6th/referencelist
↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html
↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/steps_for_revising.html
↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

About This Article

To write a paper, review the assignment sheet and rubric, and begin your research. Decide what you want to argue in your paper, and form it into your thesis statement, which is a sentence that sums up your argument and main points. Make an outline of the argument, and then start writing the introduction to the paper, which grabs your reader's attention and states the thesis. Then, include at least 3 paragraphs of supporting evidence for your argument, which makes up the body of the paper. Finally, end the paper with a conclusion that wraps up your points and restate your thesis. For tips from our academic reviewer on refining your paper and making a strong argument, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a College Research Paper (With Examples)

by Daniel Friedman
9 minute read

Want to know how to write A+ essays from an A+ student? This guide will show you how to write a college research paper perfectly!

Some of the most common assignments you will receive in college are essays. They can be intimidating and time consuming, but they don’t have to be.

I’m going to share with you how I approach essays, from the initial preparation, to how I create an outline which basically writes the essay for me.

Let’s get started!

Before you write your college research paper, it’s essential that you review the guidelines of your essay.

Create a document with the following basic guidelines of the paper:

The number of sources needed
Where your sources have to come from

This gives you an easy place to refer back to without reading the whole page of guidelines everytime.

I recommend using the same document to write your outline so you have everything in one place at all times.

How to Research for a College Paper

To write a college research paper, it boils to down to one main thing… the research.

Often professors will give you guidelines as to where your research must come from. Remember to pay attention to these guidelines and use the databases your professor suggests.

Use databases provided by your university library’s website that match the genre you’re writing about. If it’s a history paper, be sure to use a historical database. Same for political science, english, or any other subject.

Research Example

With the example we’ve been working with, let’s say we chose the Cuban Missile Crisis as our event. I would then type the Cuban Missile Crisis into my database and see what academic papers come up.

There will be LOTS of options with a topic like the Cuban missile crisis which is good.

It can also be a bit daunting, so it may help to add something a little more specific to your search.

For example, searching “Cuban Missile Crisis long term effects on the United States” may give you a better pool of options for the “effects” portion of your essay. Doing the same for each section will help you find the right research papers for your essay.

You will need to read through several research papers. I say need because this is what will help you write MUCH better papers. By reading through a good few papers, you not only gain a much better understanding of what your topic is about, but it helps you figure out which papers are the best for your topic.

How to Create an Effective Outline

Once you know the instructions, the topic, and which research you’ll be pulling from, the next step is an outline. Each outline differs based on what your professor asks of you, but I will give you several examples of different outlines.

Always begin an outline by writing out the basic structure of your paper. Most papers will start with an introduction, followed by several sections/paragraphs depending on the length of your paper, and ending with a conclusion.

For longer essays, the best approach is to create sections. Sections will be titled based on the content, and split up into paragraphs within the section.

Sample College Research Paper Outline

If we continue with the aforementioned example prompt, this is how the sections would be split up:

Introduction
Background/history
The Cuban Missile Crisis (a description of the event and how it impacted the United States)
Effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Your introduction and conclusion should be short. Most professors don’t want a lot of information in those two sections, and prefer instead that you put the bulk of your essay into the main sections.

Your introduction should include the following:

Your research question/topic
The context of the event (what’s going on in the United States around the time of the event)
A brief overview of what your paper talks about.

This includes your thesis!

Your conclusion is merely a summary of what you spoke about in your paper. Do not include new information in your conclusion! Doing so takes away from what the paper was really about and confuses the reader.

In your outline, bullet point these things so you know exactly what to write out in your essay.

Theories and Hypotheses

Some research papers require you to come up with a theory made up of hypotheses. Your hypothesis will be based on your research question if this is the case.

Here’s an example of a research question, and a practical theory created from it:

Research Question – What are the causes of the use of terrorism by the Palestinians and how has its use affected Arab-Israeli relations?

Hypothesis of causes are: a sense of abandonment from the Arab world, humiliation at the hands of Israelis, and demands falling on deaf ears, all of this caused Palestininans to utilize more drastic measures in order to get their needs heard and acted on.

Hypothesis of how its use affected Arab-Israeli relations: Terrorism created more distrust and fearfulness between Israel and Palestine wherein Israelis didn’t and don’t feel comfortable trusting any group of Palestinians due to the extreme actions of several groups, and utilize harsher retaliation or countermeasures as a result of the Palestinian terrorism, pushing both sides farther from cooperation.

A hypothesis is essentially coming up with what you believe the research will prove, and then supporting or contrasting that hypothesis based on what the research proves.

How to Write a Thesis for a College Research Paper

Getting a clear idea of your sections and what they’re about is how to write a college research paper with an effective thesis.

By doing so, your thesis will include the main points of your sections rather than just the names of your sections, which gives a better overview of what your paper is actually about.

You don’t have to create it at the end though. You might find often that you’ll write a thesis at the start and just correct it as your essay points change while writing.

Here’s an example of an A+ thesis in an introduction of an essay:

In the example above, I’ve highlighted the main issue of the poem in blue and the main argument of the poem in red.

Keep in mind, the whole point of a thesis is to explain what your entire paper is going to be discussing/arguing for within 1 or 2 sentences.

As long as you get the issue across along with (more importantly) the main argument of discussion, then your thesis will be formatted perfectly.

How to Cite Properly to Avoid Plagiarism

In my experience most professors won’t ask for a specific format in their essay guidelines. This means you’ll want to use whatever you’re most comfortable with.

MLA format is very common amongst most classes. If you didn’t have a clear format you learned in class, or don’t feel particularly comfortable with any one format, I suggest you use MLA.

A quick google search will give you the basic guidelines of MLA. Use this MLA format tool if you’re confused about how to cite sources properly.

Parenthetical Citations

An important part of citing is including parenthetical citations, AKA citing after a quote or paraphrased section.

It’s crucial that you cite ANY quote you use. This also goes for any section where you paraphrase from a source.

Both of these need parenthetical citations right after the direct quote or paraphrase.

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Jill Lepore

David woods kemper '41 professor of american history, harvard college professor, and affiliate professor of law.

Harvard University | History Department | Cambridge, MA 02138 | On sabbatical 2023-2024

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Featured posts.

Jill Lepore, David Blight, Drew Gilpin Faust John Fabian Witt . 2024. Brief of American Historians as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents (Jan. 29, 2024) (No. 23-719) . Amicus Brief

Few, if any, historians have brought such insight, wisdom, and empathy to public discourse as Jill Lepore. Arriving at The New Yorker in 2005, Lepore, with her panoptical range and razor-sharp style, brought a transporting freshness and a literary vivacity to everything from profiles of long-dead writers to urgent constitutional analysis to an unsparing scrutiny of the woeful affairs of the nation itself. The astonishing essays collected in The Deadline offer a prismatic portrait of Americans’ techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented—but armed—aimlessness. From lockdowns and race commissions to Bratz dolls and bicycles, to the losses that haunt Lepore’s life, these essays again and again cross what she calls the deadline , the “river of time that divides the quick from the dead.” Echoing Gore Vidal’s United States in its massive intellectual erudition, The Deadline , with its remarkable juxtaposition of the political and the personal, challenges the very nature of the essay—and of history—itself.

In the most ambitious, one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation.

The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, writes Jill Lepore in a groundbreaking investigation into the American past that places truth itself at the center of the nation’s history. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation’s founding truths, or belied them. “A nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, will fight forever over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, finding meaning in those very contradictions as she weaves American history into a majestic tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological progress and moral anguish. Part spellbinding chronicle, part old-fashioned civics book, These Truths, filled with arresting sketches of Americans from John Winthrop and Frederick Douglass to Pauli Murray and Phyllis Schlafly, offers an authoritative new history of a great, and greatly troubled, nation.

Praise for These Truths

“[B]rilliant…insightful…It isn’t until you start reading it that you realize how much we need a book like this one at this particular moment.”

—Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times Book Review

“This sweeping, sobering account of the American past is a story not of relentless progress but of conflict and contradiction, with crosscurrents of reason and faith, black and white, immigrant and native, industry and agriculture rippling through a narrative that is far from completion.”

— The New York Times Book Review , Editors’ Choice

“[Lepore’s] one-volume history is elegant, readable, sobering; it extends a steadying hand when a breakneck news cycle lurches from one event to another, confounding minds and churning stomachs.”

—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“Jill Lepore is an extraordinarily gifted writer, and These Truths is nothing short of a masterpiece of American history. By engaging with our country's painful past (and present) in an intellectually honest way, she has created a book that truly does encapsulate the American story in all its pain and all its triumph.”

–Michael Schaub, NPR

“A splendid rendering—filled with triumph, tragedy, and hope—that will please Lepore’s readers immensely and win her many new ones.”

— Kirkus Reviews , starred review

“This thought-provoking and fascinating book stands to become the definitive one-volume U.S. history for a new generation.”

— Library Journal , starred review

“An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfill and maintain certain fundamental principles. . . . Lepore is a historian with wide popular appeal, and this comprehensive work will answer readers’ questions about who we are as a nation.”

— Booklist , starred review

“Astounding… [Lepore] has assembled evidence of an America that was better than some thought, worse than almost anyone imagined, and weirder than most serious history books ever convey. Armed with the facts of what happened before, we are better able to approach our collective task of figuring out what should happen now . . . Perhaps instead of the next U2 album, Apple could make a copy of These Truths appear on every iPhone—not only because it offers the basic civics education that every American needs, but because it is a welcome corrective to the corrosive histories peddled by partisans.”

—Casey N. Cep, Harvard Magazine

“In her epic new work, Jill Lepore helps us learn from whence we came.”

— Oprah Magazine

“Sweeping and propulsive.”

“ ‘An old-fashioned civics book,’ Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore calls it, a glint in her eye. This fat, ludicrously ambitious one-volume history is a lot more than that. In its spirit of inquiry, in its eager iconoclasms, These Truths enacts the founding ideals of the country it describes.

― Huffington Post

“It's an audacious undertaking to write a readable history of America, and Jill Lepore is more than up to the task. But These Truths is also an astute exploration of the ways in which the country is living up to its potential, and where it is not.”

— Business Insider

“Gutsy, lyrical, and expressive… [ These Truths ] is a perceptive and necessary contribution to understanding the American condition of late.… It captures the fullness of the past, where hope rises out of despair, renewal out of destruction, and forward momentum out of setbacks.”

—Jack E. Davis, Chicago Tribune

“Lepore’s brilliant book, These Truths , rings as clear as a church bell, the lucid, welcome yield of clear thinking and a capable, curious mind.”

—Karen R. Long, Newsday

“ A splendid rendering —filled with triumph, tragedy, and hope—that will please Lepore’s readers immensely and win her many new ones.”

“An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfull and maintain certain fundamental principles . . . Lepore is a historian with wide popular appeal, and this comprehensive work will answer readers’ questions about who we are as a nation.”

“In this time of disillusionment with American politics, Jill Lepore’s beautifully written book should be essential reading for everyone who cares about the country’s future. Her history of the United States reminds us of the dilemmas that have plagued the country and the institutional strengths that have allowed us to survive as a republic for over two centuries. At a minimum, her book should be required reading for every federal officeholder.”

—Robert Dallek, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt

"No one has written with more passion and brilliance about how a flawed and combustible America kept itself tethered to the transcendent ideals on which it was founded. If the country is to recover from its current crisis, These Truths will illuminate the way."

—Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion

“Who can write a comprehensive yet lucid history of the sprawling United States in a single volume? Only Jill Lepore has the verve, wit, range, and insights to pull off this daring and provocative book. Interweaving many lively biographies, These Truths illuminates the origins of the passions and causes, which still inspire and divide Americans in an age that needs all the truth we can find.”

—Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions

“Lepore brings a scholar's comprehensive rigor and a poet's lyrical precision to this singular single-volume history of the United States. Understanding America's past, as she demonstrates, has always been a central American project. She knows that the "story of America" is as plural and mutable as the nation itself, and the result is a work of prismatic richness, one that rewards not just reading but rereading. This will be an instant classic.”

—Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Lies that Bind

“Anyone interested in the future of the Republic must read this book. One of our greatest historians succeeds, where so many have failed, to make sense of the whole canvas of our history. Without ignoring the horrors of conquest, slavery or recurring prejudices, she manages nonetheless to capture the epic quality of the American past. With passion, compassion, wit, and remarkable insight, Lepore brings it all to life, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. This is a manifesto for our necessarily shared future.”

—Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why it Matters

“In this inspiring and enlightening book, Jill Lepore accomplishes the grand task of telling us what we need to know about our past in order to be good citizens today. Avoiding political and ideological agendas, she confronts the contradictions that come from being born a land of both liberty and slavery, but she uses such conflicts to find meaning—and hope—in the tale of America’s progress.”

—Walter Isaacson, University Professor of History, Tulane, author of The Innovators

"Lepore is a truly gifted writer with profound insight."

"This vivid history brings alive the contradictions and hypocrisies of the land of the free"

- David Aaronovitch, The Times

"A history for the 21st century, far more inclusive than the standard histories of the past"

"Monumental ... a crucial work for presenting a fresh and clear-sighted narrative of the entire story ... exciting and page-turningly fascinating, in one of those rare history books that can be read with pleasure for its sheer narrative energy"

- Simon Winchester, New Statesman

"Jill Lepore is that rare combination in modern life of intellect, originality and style"

- Amanda Foreman, TLS

A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller, These Truths .

The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and direct human behavior, deploying their “People Machine” from New York, Cambridge, and Saigon for clients that included John Kennedy’s presidential campaign, the New York Times , Young & Rubicam, and, during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense. Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, unearthed from the archives the almost unbelievable story of this long-vanished corporation, and of the women hidden behind it. In the 1950s and 1960s, Lepore argues, Simulmatics invented the future by building the machine in which the world now finds itself trapped and tormented, algorithm by algorithm.

“A person can't help but feel inspired by the riveting intelligence and joyful curiosity of Jill Lepore. Knowing that there is a mind like hers in the world is a hope-inducing thing.”

--George Saunders

“Everything Lepore writes is distinguished by intelligence, eloquence, and fresh insight. If Then is that, and even more: It’s absolutely fascinating, excavating a piece of little-known American corporate history that reveals a huge amount about the way we live today and the companies that define the modern era.”

--Susan Orlean

“Data science, Jill Lepore reminds us in this brilliant book, has a past, and she tells it through the engrossing story of Simulmatics, the tiny, long-forgotten company that helped invent our data-obsessed world, in which prediction is seemingly the only knowledge that matters. A captivating, deeply incisive work.”

—Frederik Logevall , Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

“Think today’s tech giants invented data mining and market manipulation? Think again. In this page-turning, eye-opening history, Jill Lepore reveals the Cold War roots of the tech-saturated present, in a thrilling tale that moves from the campaigns of Eisenhower and Kennedy to ivied think tanks, Madison Avenue ad firms, and the hamlets of Vietnam. Told with verve, grace, and humanity, If Then is an essential, sobering story for understanding our times.”

—Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

“It didn’t all start with Facebook. We have long been fascinated with the potential of using computing technology to predict human behavior. In another fast-paced narrative, Jill Lepore brilliantly uncovers the history of the Simulmatics Corp, which launched the volatile mix of computing, politics and personal behavior that now divides our nation, feeds on private information, and weakens the strength our democratic institutions. If you want to know where this all started, you need not look any further--read this book!”

— Julian Zelizer, author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker and the Rise of the New Republican Party

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and is also a staff writer at The New Yorker . A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, her many books include the international bestseller, These Truths .

A New York Times and National Bestseller and Winner of the 2015 American History Book Prize

"Ms. Lepore’s lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip. The author, a professor of history at Harvard, places Wonder Woman squarely in the story of women’s rights in America—a cycle of rights won, lost and endlessly fought for again. Like many illuminating histories, this one shows how issues we debate today were under contention just as vigorously decades ago, including birth control, sex education, the ways in which women can combine work and family, and the effects of 'violent entertainment' on children. 'The tragedy of feminism in the twentieth century is the way its history seemed to be forever disappearing,' Ms. Lepore writes. Her superb narrative brings that history vividly into the present, weaving individual lives into the sweeping changes of the century.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Lepore’s brilliance lies in knowing what to do with the material she has. In her hands, the Wonder Woman story unpacks not only a new cultural history of feminism, but a theory of history as well.” — New York Times Book Review “Lepore specializes in excavating old flashpoints—forgotten or badly misremembered collisions between politics and cultural debates in America’s past. She lays out for our modern sensibility how some event or social problem was fought over by interest groups, reformers, opportunists, and “thought leaders” of the day. The result can look both familiar and disturbing, like our era’s arguments flipped in a funhouse mirror….Besides archives and comics Lepore relies on journalism, notebooks, letters, and traces of memoir left by the principals, as well as interviews with surviving colleagues, children, and extended family. Her discipline is worthy of a first-class detective….Lepore convinces us that we should know more about early feminists whose work Wonder Woman drew on and carried forward….A key spotter of connections, Lepore retrieves a remarkably recognizable feminist through-line, showing us 1920s debates about work-life balance, for example, that sound like something from The Atlantic in the past decade.” —New York Review of Books “Even non-comix nerds (or those too young to remember Lynda Carter) will marvel at Jill Lepore’s deep dive into the real-world origins of the Amazonian superhero with the golden lasso. The fact that a polyamory enthusiast created her partly as a tribute to the reproductive-rights pioneer Margaret Sanger is, somehow, only the fourth or fifth most interesting thing in Ms. Woman’s bizarre background.” —New York Magazine “With a defiantly unhurried ease, Lepore reconstructs the prevailing cultural mood that birthed the idea of Wonder Woman, carefully delineating the conceptual debt the character owes to early-20th-century feminism in general and the birth control movement in particular….Again and again, she distills the figures she writes about into clean, simple, muscular prose, making unequivocal assertions that carry a faint electric charge…[and] attain a transgressive, downright badass swagger.” —Slate “Deftly combines biography and cultural history to trace the entwined stories of Marston, Wonder Woman, and 20th-century feminism….Lepore – a professor of American history at Harvard, a New Yorker writer, and the author of “Book of Ages” – is an endlessly energetic and knowledgeable guide to the fascinating backstory of Wonder Woman. She’s particularly skillful at showing the subtle process by which personal details migrate from life into art.” —Christian Science Monitor “Wonder Woman, everyone's favorite female superhero (bulletproof bracelets, hello!), gets the Lasso of Truth treatment in this illuminating biography. Lepore, a Harvard prof and New Yorker writer, delves into the complicated family life of Wonder Woman's creator (who invented the lie detector, BTW), examines the use of bondage in his comics, and highlights the many ways in which the beloved Amazonian princess has come to embody feminism.” —Cosmopolitan “The Secret History of Wonder Woman relates a tale so improbable, so juicy, it’ll have you saying, “Merciful Minerva!”… an astonishingly thorough investigation of the man behind the world’s most popular female superhero…. Lepore has assembled a vast trove of images and deploys them cunningly. Besides a hefty full-color section of Wonder Woman art in the middle, there are dozens of black-and-white pictures scattered throughout the text. Many of these are panels from Marston’s comics that mirror events in his own life. Combined with Lepore’s zippy prose, it all makes for a supremely engaging reading experience.” —Etelka Lehoczky, NPR “If it makes your head spin to imagine a skimpily clad pop culture icon as (spoiler alert!) a close relation of feminist birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, then prepare to be dazzled by the truths revealed in historian Jill Lepore’s “The Secret History of Wonder Woman.” The story behind Wonder Woman is sensational, spellbinding and utterly improbable. Her origins lie in the feminism of the early 1900s, and the intertwined dramas that surrounded her creation are the stuff of pulp fiction and tabloid scandal….It took a super-sleuth to uncover the mysteries of this intricate history, hidden from view for more than half a century. With acrobatic research prowess, muscular narrative chops and disarming flashes of humor, Lepore rises to the challenge, bringing to light previously unknown details and deliberately obfuscated connections.” —San Francisco Chronicle “This captivating, sometimes racy, charming illustrated history is one part biography of the character and one part biography of her fascinating creator, psychologist and inventor William Moulton Marston—an early feminist who believed, way before his time, that the world would be a better place if only women were running it….In the process of bringing her ‘superhero’ to life in this very carefully researched, witty secret ‘herstory,’ Lepore herself emerges as a kind of superheroine: a woman on a mission—as energetic, powerful, brilliant and provocative as her subject.” —Good Housekeeping “This book is important, readable scholarship, making the connection between popular culture and the deeper history of the American woman’s fight for equality….Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful and righteous place.” —The Kansas City Star “Fascinating…often brilliant….Through assiduous research (the endnotes comprise almost a third of the book and are often very interesting reading), Lepore unravels a hidden history, and in so doing links her subjects’ lives to some of the most important social movements of the era. It’s a remarkable, thought-provoking achievement.” —Bookpage “The Marston family’s story is ripe for psychoanalysis. And so is The Secret History , since it raises interesting questions about what motivates writers to choose the subjects of their books. Having devoted her last work to Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Lepore clearly has a passion for intelligent, opinionated women whose legacies have been overshadowed by the men they love. In her own small way, she’s helping women get the justice they deserve, not unlike her tiara’d counterpart….It has nearly everything you might want in a page-turner: tales of S&M, skeletons in the closet, a believe-it-or-not weirdness in its biographical details, and something else that secretly powers even the most “serious” feminist history—fun.” —Entertainment Weekly “An origin story far deeper, weirder, and kinkier than anything a cartoonist ever invented.” —Vulture “Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful place as an essential women’s rights icon in this dynamically researched and interpreted, spectacularly illustrated, downright astounding work of discovery that injects new zest into the history of feminism.” —Booklist (*starred review*)

“The fullest and most fascinating portrait ever created about the complicated, unconventional family that inspired one of the most enduring feminist icons in pop culture…. The Secret History of Wonder Woman is its own magic lasso, one that compels history to finally tell the truth about Wonder Woman—and compels the rest of us to behold it.” — Los Angeles Times

“ The Secret History of Wonder Woman is as racy, as improbable, as awesomely righteous, and as filled with curious devices as an episode of the comic book itself. In the nexus of feminism and popular culture, Jill Lepore has found a revelatory chapter of American history. I will never look at Wonder Woman’s bracelets the same way again.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

"Hugely entertaining." -- The Atlantic

“ Lepore has an astonishing story and tells it extremely well. She acts as a sort of lie detector, but proceeds through elegant narrative rather than binary test. Sentences are poised, adverbs rare. Each chapter is carefully shaped. At a time when few are disposed to see history as a branch of literature, Lepore occupies a prominent place in American letters. Her microhistories weave compelling lives into larger stories.” —The Daily Beast “In the spirited, thoroughly reported "The Secret History of Wonder Woman," Jill Lepore recounts the fascinating details behind the Amazonian princess' origin story….[Lepore]seamlessly shifts from the micro to the macro….A panel depicting this labor unrest is just one of scores that appear throughout Lepore's book, further amplifying the author's vivid prose.” —Newsday “A Harvard professor with impeccable scholarly credentials, Lepore treats her subject seriously, as if she is writing the biography of a feminist pioneer like Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement — which this book is, to an extent….Through extensive research and a careful reading of the Wonder Woman comic books, she argues convincingly that the story of this character is an indelible chapter in the history of women’s rights.” —Miami Herald

A Finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve. Benjamin Franklin, who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else, was the original American self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. They left very different traces behind. Making use of an amazing cache of little- studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world—a world usually lost to history. Lepore’s life of Jane Franklin, with its strikingly original vantage on her remarkable brother, is at once a wholly different account of the founding of the United States and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life unknown.

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PDF Strategies for Essay Writing
Harvard College Writing Center 2 Tips for Reading an Assignment Prompt When you receive a paper assignment, your first step should be to read the assignment prompt carefully to make sure you understand what you are being asked to do. Sometimes your assignment will be open-ended ("write a paper about anything in the course that interests you").
A step-by-step guide for creating and formatting APA Style student papers
Double-space the whole title page. Place the paper title three or four lines down from the top of the page. Add an extra double-spaced blank like between the paper title and the byline. Then, list the other title page elements on separate lines, without extra lines in between.
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Indent the first line of every paragraph of text 0.5 in. using the tab key or the paragraph-formatting function of your word-processing program. Page numbers: Put a page number in the top right corner of every page, including the title page or cover page, which is page 1. Student papers do not require a running head on any page.
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Instead, start with your evidence. Read the essay prompt and make a list of the crucial evidence. Use your notes on the reading to pull out the strongest building blocks for your case. Write down examples you want to pull from lectures. Collect a list of the best quotes from the readings. And look at your outline.
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Making an all-state team → outstanding achievement. Making an all-state team → counting the cost of saying "no" to other interests. Making a friend out of an enemy → finding common ground, forgiveness. Making a friend out of an enemy → confront toxic thinking and behavior in yourself.
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Essay writing process. The writing process of preparation, writing, and revisions applies to every essay or paper, but the time and effort spent on each stage depends on the type of essay.. For example, if you've been assigned a five-paragraph expository essay for a high school class, you'll probably spend the most time on the writing stage; for a college-level argumentative essay, on the ...
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Next, let's make sure you understand the different types of college essays. You'll most likely be writing a Common App or Coalition App essay, and you can also be asked to write supplemental essays for each school. Each essay has a prompt asking a specific question. Each of these prompts falls into one of a few different types.
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Self-help books. If you can only think of 3 or 4, that's okay. Step 2: Pick one of the things you wrote down, flip your paper over, and write it at the top of your paper, like this: This is your thread, or a potential thread. Step 3: Underneath what you wrote down, name 5-6 values you could connect to this.
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- The Writing Process: These features show all the steps taken to write a paper, allowing you to follow it from initial idea to published article. - Into the Essay: Excerpts from actual papers show the ideas from the chapters in action because you learn to write best by getting examples rather than instructions. Much of my approach to ...
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What is the best process for writing a scholarly research paper for a college class? In this episode, Dr. Oliver Hedgepeth talks with Susan Hoffman, the University's Quality Assurance Editor, about how to write research papers. Learn some useful tips about how to write a research paper and the resources available to University students.
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A New York Times and National Bestseller and Winner of the 2015 American History Book Prize "Ms. Lepore's lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip. The author, a professor of history at Harvard, places Wonder Woman squarely in the story of women's rights in America—a cycle of rights won, lost and endlessly fought for again.
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Take even more steps to prepare for your future by taking online classes on Coursera. You'll find offerings from top education institutions, like Getting Started with Essay Writing from the University of California, Irvine; Applying to US Universities from the University of Pennsylvania; and How to Write a Resume from The State University of ...
Teachers are using AI to grade essays. Students are using AI to write
When Diane Gayeski, a professor of strategic communications at Ithaca College, receives an essay from one of her students, she runs part of it through ChatGPT, asking the AI tool to critique and ...

How to Write a College Paper

How to Write a Great Paper, by Genevieve Carlton Ph.D

Start Writing Your College Essay at Least Two Weeks Before The Due Date

Read, Read, and Re-Read the Essay Assignment

You’ve Already Done Half the Work

Know Your Five-Paragraph Essay

Always Create an Outline for Structure

Start with your Evidence

It’s All About The Argument

It’s Finally Time To Write

Talk to Your Professor or TA

Revise, Revise, Revise Your Essay

Study Your Paper

Ask About Rewrites

Plagiarism Is Never The Easiest Option

Time Management

Boost your productivity!

Free eBook for stress-free A's

How to Write Your College Essay: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

College Essay Basics

Before you move to the next section, make sure you understand:

Learn the Types of College Essays

The Common App essay

Supplemental Essay Guides

Essay brainstorming and composition

Editing and polishing your essay

Advanced College Essay Techniques

How to Write a Paper for College Literature Classes

Analyzing the Text and Developing a Thesis

Outlining Your Essay

Drafting Your Paper

Making Use of Multiple Drafts

Editing Your Paper

Overcoming Writer's Block

Sample Outline and Essays

Expert Q&A

About this article

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College Writing

What is a five-paragraph essay?

Why do high schools teach the five-paragraph model?

Why don’t five-paragraph essays work well for college writing?

How do I break out of writing five-paragraph essays?

Is it ever OK to write a five-paragraph essay?

Works consulted

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Table of contents

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Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Paragraph structure

Example paragraph

Citing sources

Global concerns

Fine-grained details

Checklist: Research paper

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What is your plagiarism score?

How to Write a Paper

Pre-Writing

Citing Sources

Revising, Editing, and Proofreading

Sample Research Papers

Sample Essays

Expert Q&A

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