1. Writing Your Term Paper
Understanding the “why” and the “how” of writing
The Dalhousie Writing Centre

2. The Why as in Why Bother?
o The University: a knowledge factory built on
the work of other people
o The Student: skill development (critical
thinking, reading, communication, knowledge
acquisition, knowledge synthesis, academic
community)
o The World: transmission of the knowledge

3. Ease of writing reflects your attitude
o How do you feel about writing in general?
o What do you find difficult about expressing
yourself in writing?
o Is English your first language?
o How much writing experience to you have?
o How well do you know the subject area?

4. Writing in the Disciplines
o Each discipline’s writing style reflects that
discipline’s interests, directions, preferences,
history, cultural biases, etc. You will have to
adapt to these disciplines and their
conventions in order to be successful.

5. Why write in the form of a paper?
o Conventions
o Acceptance by academic community
o Ease of storage, retrieving, and reading e.g.
abstract

6. What your paper will look like …
It will
n follow a particular style guide (documentation, page formatting, page
numbering, title page, reference pages, punctuation, etc.)
n be organized in a manner suitable to your discipline (research papers
in economics are somewhat different from those in history)
n have a focus (thesis statement, purpose statement, research question,
etc.)
n use the kind of evidence that your discipline values
n demonstrate that you belong in the community by the word choices,
style, etc. you use.

7. A research paper: Hints for success
1. Understand the assignment directions (ask)
2. Find a strong focus (narrow the topic)
3. Outline your ideas before you research (tells you what you are interested
in and what you need to find out)
4. Research and evaluate sources
5. Outline your ideas – fill in ideas
6. Give yourself time to write and then write
7. Draft sections and finish whole document
8. Revise, edit and proofread
9. Contact me at the Writing Centre (c.bohan@dal.ca)
10. Finalize paper

8. Big hint …
o Find a model
o Hint: see what your prof has written (or what
somebody in her/his field has written)
For example:
n
http://atlanticresearchdatacentre.dal.ca/index.html

9. An example paper
o The pages numbers on the following slides
refer to this article –
O’Higgins, E. R. E. (2006). Corruption,
underdevelopment, and extractive resource
industries: Addressing the vicious cycle. Business
Ethics Quarterly. 16 (2), 235-54.

10. Question/focus from an international business paper
See page 235
This article explores the central and systemic role of corruption and its link to
low human development. First it presents an overview of the nature of
corruption, its interfacing sources on the supply and demand sides, its
economic and human impacts on societies in developing countries, and its
effects on the corporate suppliers of corrupt remittances. Then, the
extractive resource industry is presented as an arena wherein the
conditions for corruption and its link with low human development are
especially intense and pernicious, and subject to a self-reinforcing vicious
cycle.

11. Evidence (in this field)
o Previous scholarly work
n what have scholars said on the topic and sub-
topics
o Data – pages 236-249
n discussion of the history, economic data, social
history, modelling
o Summary
n allows the writer to give his/her take on the data
(recommendations)

12. Let’s look at the International Business example
Outline of the paper:
n Introduction - short paragraph on page 235 (statement of
purpose)
o lays it out for the reader / this is what I am going to do
n Body – pages 236 - 249
o Discussion of the issue of the systemic role of corruption
o Extractive resource industry as an example
o How is corruption maintained
n Recommendations
n Conclusions

13. It’s your paper
What you’ve done so far:
n You’ve thought of an idea
n You’ve researched it
n You’ve decided how best to organize your paper so that readers will
be convinced of your argument
n You’ve found evidence from sources
n Now you must write your ideas out with the sources integrated into
your work so that your ideas shine through
n Make sure that for every quote or idea taken from somebody else, you
comment on it (that might be evaluating it, adding something to the
idea, combining it with another comment, etc.)
n You will synthesize your ideas.

14. Indirect quotes or paraphrases
Use of source material where you take ideas but attribute them to
the original source. Once again, you must comment on the
material.
n See page 236 near the bottom “Corruption often seen in international
setting where the stakes are high. O’Higgins (2006) indicates that
Lockheed, an American manufacturer of civilian and military planes,
was found to have paid kickbacks and money to political parties in
foreign countries in an effort to secure contracts.”
n Another way to do this would be to leave the writer’s name out
indicating the ownership only in a bracketed section at the end of the
indirect quote. It would have looked like this: (O’Higgins, 2006)

15. Indirect quotes continued
o O’Higgins uses this way to handle sources on page 242
In the past, 23 percent of states dependent on oil exports have experienced civil
war in any five-year period. The figure for countries with no natural resources is
just .5 percent (Ross 2001).
o Or on page 243
The model portrays the dynamics of the systemic type of corruption described by
Riley (1998), and why it is so intractable, once established (Gray and Kaufmann
1998). The model is depicted in Figure 1.

16. After the drafting is done …
o Leave time for it to sit
o Check your assignment guidelines/expectations
o Read the work aloud – watch for jumps in logic, poor
expression, faulty grammar, mechanics or punctuation
o Check citations for accuracy and proper documentation