Research Paper Hints

Helpful hints for Writing a Research Paper:

Again, remember that this is a critical response paper, not a personal response paper.
It is also an argument paper, not a report paper.

Do not provide a history of the French Revolution or a biography of Mary Shelley.
You may, however, analyze Shelley's Frankenstein by explaining the ways in which it may demonstrate ideas associated with the French Revolution or literature of the Romantic period (including the Gothic tradition).

Please avoid making comparisons to present day society. Such comparisons almost never have a basis in actual textual analysis.
Avoid plot summary. Use quotes from only those sections of the text immediately relevant to your discussion.

Use past tense to discuss historical or biographical events, but present tense when discussing literature.
Be very careful when making references to the Broadview edition of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley is the author of the novel. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf are the editors of this version of the novel. They are the authors of the introduction to this edition (pp. 11-42 of the text), but not to the 1831 introduction written by Shelley in 1831 (pp. 353-59).

Macdonald, D. L., and Kathleen Scherf. Introduction. Frankenstein: the original 1818 text, 2nd ed., edited by Macdonald and Scherf, Broadview, 1999, pp. 11-42.

When citing verse, use slashes to show line breaks and cite by line (or act.scene.line for plays).
Avoid plagiarism!
On a related note, please be very selective about the sources you utilize from the internet. The ideal sources are those found on jstor.org or the MLA Bibliography--essays that have been previously published in journals or books and are now available online.

In any case, certainly avoid the following sites. These are not acceptable sources (and this is not a complete list, but you should get the idea).

Other Mechanical Issues:

Use present tense to discuss literature.
Introduce the work(s) to be discussed by author and title as early as possible.
Use punctuation to show possession: "Shelley's book" not "Shelley book"
Use only one edition of your primary source. If you wish to refer to an editor's introduction to another edition, cite by the editor's name.

Be sure to use quotation marks for titles of shorter works, such as poems and short stories, and italics for titles of longer works, such as plays, epic poems and novels.

Do not rely too heavily on secondary sources. The number of citations to your primary source should be roughly equivalent to the total number of references to all your secondary sources combined.
Do not use secondary source material to summarize plot or quote from the primary source.
Make sure it is clear whose ideas you are presenting. If Critic A is quoting Critic B, and you use the quote, your citation should say (Qtd. in Critic A #). The #, of course, refers to the page number in Critic A's text.
Avoid unnecessary changes to quotes. Instead of saying, "Elizabeth describes, '[She] felt hopeless' (24)'," say, "Elizabeth describes that she 'felt hopeless' (24)."
Avoid using direct quotes in either your introduction or conclusion. Discussion in these two paragraphs should be more general.
Avoid long paragraphs. A long paragraph is maybe 2/3 of a page. If you find yourself with paragraphs that are over a page long, figure out how to break them up.
Do not use quotes as the subjects of sentences: The quote "---------" (29) shows that ... or "-----------" (87) means that ...
Don't use "in which" when you mean "that."
Don't use "that" when you mean "who" (i.e. when referring to people)
Try to use specific nouns with "this": Avoid "This causes things to happen . . ."