Lab Work: Outlines, Paper Format, and Bibliography

We are in the computer lab to work on formatting your paper properly.

If you haven't already written an outline (handwritten, on the sheet I gave you, with MAIN IDEAS IN COMPLETE SENTENCES), you should do that first.

If you already have an outline, you are ready to start typing. The first thing to ask yourself is,

• "how will I save this and continue to work on it at home?" and
  
• "will the program/file types be compatible with my home computer?"

The second thing to be aware of is that your paper should follow standard Turabian format, meaning:

• 1'' margins,
  
• double-spaced
• footnote citations
  
• you DON'T need a title page- to save paper, just use the normal assignment heading and then center your research question on the 1st page.
  
• page numbers in the upper right hand corner
• a bibliography on a separate page
• also: you DON'T need a table of contents

There is a good (but long!) sample Turabian research paper in the link at the right.

Finally, for the bibliography, there are many free citation generators out there, but my favorite is through Calvin College, called Knight Cite. Give it a try, or MS Word 2007 has a nice built-in citation generator.