Ideas must be developed in structured paragraphs. One sentence is not a paragraph. A topic sentence should provide a transition between the rest of the paper and the particular paragraph, as well as introduce the subject to be discussed next. One or more sentences should provide the evidence and argument necessary to establish the concluding point of the paragraph, which should be stated in the last sentence. Students must avoid plagiarism, which is the use of primary or secondary materials without citation in the notes.
Plagiarism is theft and results in the immediate failure of the paper or worse.
Students must write their papers in third person . Since the student's name is on the paper, all statements in it are assumed to be hers or his unless those statements are explicitly attributed to another source. Avoid the passive voice. Each pronoun must refer to a specific noun with which it agrees in person and gender. Students should also learn to footnote or endnote more than just direct quotes.