Guide For Writing Research Papers.pdfVIP

Guide For Writing Research Papers Department of History University of South Dakota Grammar and Style 1. Do not use contractions in formal writing. 2. Indent all quotations of fifty words or more (four lines or more) one-half inch on the left, 3. Use the European form for dates: 24 September 1945. Do not write June 23rd or 17th August, 1961. 4. Capitalize when referring to a specific: Congress, but not congressmen; Senator, but not senators; Constitution, but not constitutional; Queen Elizabeth, but not the queens of England; President Johnson, but not the presidents of the United States. 5. Use two hyphens (--) to represent a dash with no spaces between the words and the hyphens; use square brackets ([ ]) to enclose parentheses within parentheses. 6. Place commas and periods within quotation marks; colons and semi-colons are always placed outside the quotation marks. 7. A preposition is not a good word to end a sentence with. 8. And do not begin or end a sentence with a conjunction. 9. Avoid abbreviations in your text except for titles, such as Dr., Mr., or Jr. 10. Ellipses in a quotation should be indicated by three periods with a space between each ( . . . ); ellipses at the end of a sentence require a fourth period with the first in the immediate space following the last letter of the last word quoted. Never use an ellipsis mark at the beginning of a quotation to indicate omission. 11. If you interpolate any words of your own in a quotation, indicate them in square brackets. The same applies to the use of sic (always italicized) following an error of logic, fact or spelling in a quotation to indicate the error is not yours in transcribing the original text of the writer. 12. When you quote from a primary source reproduced in a secondary source, always indicate in your footnote that it is Quoted in that secondary source. 13. In verse quotations, indicate the divisions between lines with slashes. 14. The first time you menti