Writing a Major Paper: Product & Process Considerations

Writing a Major Paper

Documentation Links:

Some university writing centers recommend Chicago Manual of Style format for papers in Information Services and Computer Science. CMS employs footnotes and Latin abbreviations. A useful overview of Chicago Manual of Style format is available on Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab) site.

The Writing Center often refers students to the Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students written and maintained by several universities: Penn State, Georgia Tech, University of Illinois, University of Texas, and Virginia Tech.

If you prefer to use MLA format because it is familiar, it is acceptable. Just be sure to be consistent in applying whatever format you use. Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Laboratory) has a good guide to MLA format.

You will want to be aware of Bridgewater College's plagiarism policy, Ethics in Academic Work. You may find it interesting to look at the ACM Plagiarism Policy as well.

What to Pay Attention to:

The Central Focus of your paper, often expressed as a Thesis
Most college professors are concerned about seeing a thesis, or strong focal point, in student papers. A thesis sentence can be important to a paper that explains information, but many informative papers follow a problem-and-solution format, raising questions in the first part of the paper and arriving at a thesis, or solution, at the end of the paper.
Outlining Your Paper/Organization
See the Purdue OWL handout on outlining. You can establish an outline from an early point in your writing process, perhaps starting with a list of questions you know you will need to answer in your paper. Or you can start with a list of important topics to cover. To develop this list into an outline, you will want to follow the principles of dividing your information, subordinating more specific information to more general headings, and using parallelism in the wording of your outline, as explained in Purdue's handout.
Alternatively, you may want to think about the nature of the information that you are presenting and select an organizational pattern that fits your topic. The University of Washington provides a good overview of organizational patterns.
Whatever approach you take, it may be useful to think in terms of a hierarchy of parts of your paper when you create your outline, rather than in terms of a linear path through information. For example, if you think about what you need to say as comprised in four major sections of your paper, you have four major points in your outline. Then break down each of those sections, or points, into two or more subtopics for the next level in your outline. You can break each subtopic further into two or more sub-subtopics. In this way, you preserve the preferred pattern of outline organization.

Information from Sources
In research-based writing, make sure to make your point in your own words. Use research to support your point, but do not let another's words carry your argument. You will not want to use very many quotations in technical writing. Instead, do as much paraphrasing and summarizing as possible--but it is essential, when you put others' information into your own words, that you carefully avoid plagiarizing. This means using your own sentence structure as well as your own words. For more information on paraphrasing, see Ethics in Academic Work. You may also find it useful to look at guidelines about what to cite in Appendix B: Documenting Sources of Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students.

Style
You should adopt a fairly formal style in this paper. You won't want to use "I" or "you" in your paper. Use appropriate technical terminology. Avoid using slang and clichéd language. Be as direct as possible: this may mean using some long sentences and some short sentences, but above all, be clear. Be sure that you are giving reasons for the points that you make. When you use material from sources, be sure to discuss your point as well as using the source material. (Don't let a quotation make your point for you.) See these Hints on Writing Style. A reference work that is often endorsed by technical writers and those who read technical writing is the 90-year-old handbook The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.

Approaches to Writing:

Getting Started
Give yourself plenty of time to write your paper. Try to write early, even if there are holes in your writing. It's a good idea to have a clear thesis when you start writing, but it isn't absolutely necessary: some of us are writers who discover what we have to say through the process of writing things down, while others of us need a precise plan before we can get the first sentence down.

As you think about your paper, make lists of info or lists of questions a reader might need answers to or flow charts showing the chunks of writing that your paper will need to completely present what you have to say. This is important writing activity, even if you don't see finished paragraphs coming out of it. Jotting down the information you see as necessary to your reader can lead into outlining. You may also use subtitling as a route into writing an outline.

Drafting
Start writing well before your deadline. If you don't know everything you need to include, skip parts. Try not to be a harsh critic of your writing at this stage. Get as much down as you can, because it's easier to revise to produce a good final product if you have plenty of material to work with. Schedule times for writing and make good use of them, actually producing instead of staring at the screen, waiting for the perfect way to phrase your sentence.

If you get really, really stuck, allow yourself a 10-minute break-or a 30-minute one, if you have time-and go do something else, but tell yourself that you'll write your way out of your dilemma when you sit down again and consider that time for returning to your writing as serious an appointment as a doctor's appointment. Or talk to someone about your topic; if no one's around who understands what you're talking about, so much the better-you'll be forced to explain it clearly, and that can help you get back into the writing again. (Writing Center tutors are willing to help you with this kind of brainstorming.)

Revising
When you revise, use your thesis sentence or statement of the problem to determine whether everything in your paper revolves around the same focus. Ask yourself whether, and how, each paragraph relates to your thesis sentence. That will help you revise for transitional wording as well. Ask yourself how each idea relates to the idea that preceded it.

Eliminate redundancy, or unnecessary repetition of the same wording, as you revise, but don't eliminate all repetition. Repetition may be a way of emphasizing an idea or providing connection between parts of a paragraph or a paper.

Read your paper aloud and listen to the tone, or style, of the paper. Does it have the same level of formality throughout? Have you used slang or other informal wording? Have you used technical terms that you haven't defined?

Have you effectively incorporated research into your paper? Did you make your own point, rather than let the source you quoted make the point for you? Have you cited sources scrupulously?

Proofreading/Editing

Watch for:

verb tense shifts: When you are writing in present tense, stay in present tense (usually in describing a repeatable process or information that is always true about a situation or program). When you write in past tense (usually in describing any action that occurred in the past), make sure all your verbs have past tense endings.
point-of-view shifts: Formal writing does not make use of the first person (I) or second person (you). One can generalize by using the pronouns "one" or "everyone" or "anyone" or nouns and noun phrases like "researchers" or "people who do such and such," etc. If you catch yourself using first or second person, use the "Find" command to track down all instances of the pronoun(s) and make the needed wording changes.
run-on sentences: If you've had problems with this in the past, I strongly advise you to have a Writing Center tutor look over your sentence structure. Punctuation of sentences is fairly logical, but many writers are sometimes confused about what is acceptable.

Double-check quoted material, numbers, and dates for accuracy.

Double-check the spelling of proper names or specialized terminology, and add the correct spellings to your Spelling checker.

Double-check paraphrased material to make sure you have not plagiarized.

Double-check information and format in your bibliography.

Double-check formatting guidelines.

Updated by A. L. Trupe Feb. 7, 2011