Guidelines For Paper Writing

The guidelines below are for the written assignments (midterm and final paper) in RLST 235, "Christian Hagiography," in Fall 2006.

Format

All written assignments should be printed from a computer onto clean, white paper. Pages should be numbered (not including any title page you choose to affix or any additional matter, such as bibliography).

Use a reasonably sized, proportional font, such as Times New Roman, 12 pt. Do not use "font tricks" to expand or shrink your paper size. Margins should be no more than 1.25" all around the page. Do not justify the right margin.

All text should be double-spaced, except for quotations of more than three lines, which should be indented, without quotation marks, and single-spaced.

Citations and Bibliography

An author cites sources for two reasons: to demonstrate the source of her information (ask yourself: "Would I know this if I hadn't read it in 'X'?" If not, cite "X") and to point to further resources for her reader (ask yourself: "Who else talks about subject Y that my reader might find useful?"). But a citation is useless if it does not provide sufficient information for a reader to follow up and find the same resource as you.

You may use any of the following formats to cite works in the body of your paper, but please be consistent and please do not use endnotes (if you choose to use footnotes, please format them to appear at the bottom of the page).

1. Footnote style. One of the most common styles of citation in the Humanities is called "Turabian" (based on the work of Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]). In this style of citation, the first time you cite a secondary source your provide all necessary bibliographic information and on all subsequent citations of that source you provide an abbreviated citation (Jacobs, My First Book, 37).

For a complete list of how to cite sources in footnotes according to Turabian, go here. This worksheet also provides a guide to citing your sources in the bibliography as well if you use Turabian footnote style.

2. Parenthetical notation. More common in the social sciences, and in some religious studies publications, is to cite works parenthetically, giving just author, year, and page number. The reader then checks the bibliography to see what the complete cited work is. This kind of notation is particularly useful when the bulk of an essay treats only one or two works.

Turabian also provides a citation style, and accompanying bibliography, should you choose to cite parenthetically: see here (warning, PDF file, you'll need Adobe Acrobat to open it).

You will not be graded on the accuracy of your citation style, but a clean, well-structured paper is a happy paper. The more your reader has to work to figure out what you're talking about, the less successful your paper will be.