It is well-known that writing within a discipline helps you learn within that discipline. There is one major writing assignment in this course to help you master the content of the course, as well as the special characteristics of writing within the discipline of Classics: a major research paper on a topic of your choice.

The research paper should be 10-12 pp. for undergraduate students and 20 pp. for Honors Option and graduate students. All topics must first be approved by me.

I encourage you to do multiple drafts of your paper. Writing is a process and going over drafts of your paper will significantly improve your final product.

Consult the syllabus for the due date.

Special Instructions:

For general tips, see my Writing Tips site. This is where you will find, among other important information, explicit instructions on how to format footnotes / endnotes and bibliography entries. The site also includes a list of "fatal errors" in writing assignments. Do not turn in any writing assignment before you have consulted the Writing Tips site.

Specific Guidelines:

• the paper must be formatted as follows:
  • 12-point font
  • Times New Roman or Courier fonts
  • 1" (no more, no less) margins all around
  • pages must be numbered
• the paper must use properly formatted footnotes or endnotes (use Turabian, some specific examples appear in my Writing Tips website)
• the paper must have properly formatted bibliography (use Turabian, some specific examples appear in my Writing Tips website)
• intext citations are not allowed, except for references to ancient literary sources, as below:
                    "...in the house" (Il. 6.2).         [Note the punctuation.]
  • for abbreviations for ancient texts, consult the fronts of the large Latin and Greek dictionaries in the Alexander room (Park 222)
• you may use abbreviations in your footnotes for scholarly journals; acceptable abbreviations are found at the front of any volume of L'année philologique
• the paper must have a title page with the title of your paper, your name, the date and the course name and number
  • no covers of any kind
• illustrations, if you include them (see below) must be put at the back of the paper

  Failure to follow these specific guidelines will lower your grade.

General Tips:

The purpose of this assignment is to improve both your research skills in Classics and your writing within the discipline. This assignment also allows you to conduct scholarly research, construct a sophisticated argument and develop critical thinking skills.

Start your research early and be persistent. Good research usually results in a good paper but nothing can compensate for poor or incomplete research.

Students often ask how many sources they should have for their paper. There is no magic number. I find it hard to imagine, however, that you can write a good paper without consulting at least 5 to 10 works. In general, the more sources you consult, the better your grasp of the information will be and the greater your chances will be of writing a successful paper.

The www can be a tremendous source for information but let me caution you against relying too heavily on it for sources. This is because there is simply so much garbage posted on the web -- and classical archaeology is a field that attracts more garbage than most. Indeed, my rule is that no more than 15% of your sources may come from the internet.

Three additional bits of advice.

1. Generally, in a paper for a Classics course, it is better to discuss the actual ancient sources and not to depend solely on what modern scholars say that they say. Quote and cite Thucydides' own words, not what Kagan says about Thucydides.
   
2. Introductory material, definitions and descriptions should appear early in the paper, followed by evidence, discussion and analysis.
   
3. Italicize foreign words that are not in common usage in English.

A word about illustrations.

I encourage you to include illustrations with your paper; they will help you present your arguments effectively. But remember, every illustration needs a caption. Every caption should include information indicating the source of the illustration (e.g., book, article, etc.) and a brief description of what the illustration shows. Look at the captions under the photos in the sources you consult for some ideas on what to include in your own captions.

Also, you must include a call out in the text for each illustration included in your paper. For example, "The central scene on the Parthenon frieze seems to show the Panathenaic peplos (see fig. 3)."

Key to My Editing Marks on Your Paper:

• A checkmark in the margins means that I think you’ve made a good point.
• A squiggly line under your word/s means that I think your phrasing is awkward and should be redone, either for clarity or for elegance; often an "awk" also appears in the margin.
• A small circle above and behind a word or sentence means that I think you need a footnote there.
• A circled word with "sp" above meants it is misspelled.
• A circled or underlined word with “wc” above it means that your word choice is poor or confusing.
• A line through a word or phrase means that it should be omitted.
• A ¶ means you should start a new paragraph.
• A / with # means that you need to insert a space between words.
• A dot inside a small circle means you need to insert a period.
  
  Remember, every paper needs a thesis paragraph at the beginning of the paper and every paragraph needs a thesis sentence near the beginning of the paragraph.