By: Sabrina Klindworth Introduction So you’ve written a research paper before but now your professor wants you to add something called an abstract and headers? This blog post is here to help with lots of information on how to write an abstract and some tips on how to organize your paper with section headers. Headers Some research papers will have an APA style title page, which has an entire page for the header. The title page header contains the title of your paper, the authors (you), the class the paper is for, the professor that teaches that class, and the name of the college you attend (Seattle University), in that order. An outline of a title page header is provided below. The header is centered on the first page and your essay begins on the second page. Hi This is The Title Author UCOR Class Name Dr. Professor Name College Within University Seattle University For longer research papers, paragraph headers are used as signposts throughout the essay to let readers know what the following paragraph or section is about. Professors will typically state whether they want paragraph headers or not in your paper; if not the page requirement is another indicator. A paper below five pages in length doesn’t need paragraph headers, but in a paper with more than five pages, they’re helpful to add. Examples of paragraph headers are used throughout this blog post. Abstract Some research papers have an abstract before the introduction. The abstract is a summary of your paper about 150-250 words long. The purpose of your abstract is to allow your reader to “pre-read” your main points and key findings. Another purpose of an abstract is to help researchers decide if the paper has the information they need or not, as an abstract contains keywords used in cross-referencing so your paper can be compared to other papers on the same subject. One thing to note is that the information in your introduction should be different from the information in your abstract. Your introduction will lay background on your topic and lead into your thesis statement while the abstract functions as an overview of your paper. There are two types of abstracts: informative and descriptive. An informative abstract is the most common and condenses the main point of the paper, including the initial problem and background, into a sentence or two. Any methodology or key findings will also be mentioned as well as the major conclusions reached in your paper. In comparison, a descriptive abstract takes a different approach to summarizing the paper by acting as a table of contents. A descriptive abstract is more broad when describing what your paper is about and doesn’t capture the content of your essay but rather the outline of how your paper goes. However, descriptive abstracts are uncommon and not generally used as informative abstracts are preferred. Conducting Research If you conducted your own research, congratulations! This paragraph lays out how to fit in your own research in your paper as the outline is different. In the introduction, you would write about the research questions that guided your research and your hypothesis. After your introduction, there should be a materials and methods section stating how you conducted your research, followed by a section about the results of your research. Any tables or graphs you used would be inserted after your results to show your data before the discussion section, which puts your research into conversation with previous research, showing why your data or results matter in the context of your field. A conclusion recapping the main point from each section can be added but isn’t necessary. Once your paper is done, add your references and you are ready to get published! Conclusion Not sure which citations to use? Ask your professor. Different professors and disciplines prefer different citation methods such as MLA, APA, or Chicago citations. Information about the different citation styles can be found at the following links: MLA Citations (Link), APA Citations (Link), Chicago Citations (Link). Finally, whether conducting your own research or researching a topic, putting information into a new perspective is key to writing a research paper. But with all your research, your paper is bound to be interesting, so go write it! Happy writing! References http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/ug/research/paper.html
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
SUWC Blog AuthorsAny posts on the SUWC Blog are authored by current consultants working to improve, refine and perfect our practice as peer tutors. Find a Post!
January 2024
Categories |