Argumentative research paper cheat sheet

1. Argumentative Research Paper Cheat Sheet (with examples)
REVIEW
(Things I’ve already told you that many people have not applied in their first paragraph)
1. Do not use words like “I think/believe/assume/guess/etc..” We are not interested in belief
or opinion here, only fact and argument. State your claims and your evidence clearly and
confidently.
2. BE SPECIFIC
a. Avoid vague modifiers; i.e. very, certainly, definitely, totally, a lot, many, several,
often, sometimes, usually, etc. Instead, find an actual way to measure what you
want to claim.
b. Avoid vague or general verbs: tend to, increase, help, improve, harm, hurt, etc.
Again, find evidence that measures these claims. How much does a thing
increase? How much worse is the thing?
3. Don't make unnecessary/impossible claims: always, every time, everyone, everywhere,
forever. You do not need to prove that “Everyone” believes or thinks a certain thing, so
don’t say that. It hurts your credibility.
4. Work on writing simple, straightforward sentences. Write sentences with one subject and
one verb. This will help you be clear and concise, and avoid rambling, repeating yourself,
or constructing confusing sentences.
5. Every paragraph should be focused on one argument, one main idea. This argument/claim
should be made explicitly in a topic sentence (which is kind of like a mini-thesis
statement for your paragraph). Here’s a resource on writing those: Topic Sentences
6. Everything must be MLA. You should all know this by now. If you need help, visit
Purdue OWL. There are explicit rules, and I will not be teaching them. They are always
available for reference, and to do these things incorrectly can only be attributed to
laziness or inattention. Do it right.
On the next page, you’ll find additional information and feedback.

2. NEW INSTRUCTIONS
(Things I want you to work on for your next paragraph and future revisions, that I haven’t
taught you yet. I noticed many mistakes in these areas on most people’s first paragraph.)
INCORPORATING SOURCES
1. Evidence from sources must SUPPORT your own ideas and arguments. You should not
simply quote a source and let it stand on its own.
Why? Because I don’t care if someone else made a claim. They may not have
supported it with good evidence or argumentation, even if they are a respected
person. I want you to make a claim yourself (and, typically, just citing a source
that makes the same claim is NOT good evidence), and then use sources for your
evidence. Your brain should come up with the claim and the argumentative
structure; your sources provide facts, data, and information.
2. With that in mind, here’s how I want you to incorporate a source into an argumentative
paragraph:
A. Introduce your idea/argument
B. Quote or summarize the evidence to support your claim (and cite it)
C. Explicitly connect this evidence to your claim.
D. Interpret the evidence for your reader, and define key terms they may not know.
Here’s an example from a paper of my own about the poetry of Kendrick Lamar’s album
To Pimp a Butterfly:
(A) During the nascent years of the hip-hop genre, the prosody of
lyrics was relatively simple. (B) The meter was accentual (four
stressed syllables per line), and rhyme schemes were typically
abab or abcb (Morris 223). (C) These features related to other
popular music genres and the blues, but also aligned hip-hop
surprisingly closely to nursery rhymes.
Note that in this example, I do not define terms or do much interpreting. That is because
my audience consists of master’s level students and professors in poetry, so they will
effortlessly understand things like “prosody,” “accentual meter” and a particular type of
rhyme scheme. They will also know that nursery rhymes are simple, and thus understand
that this piece of evidence (early hip-hop structures resembled nursery rhymes) supports
my claim (early hip-hop structures were simple). In your own work, you have to know
who your audience is in order to determine what needs explaining, interpreting, and
defining.

3. 3. Citing evidence. Use in-text citations (following MLA) rather than introducing all of the
source information in the sentence. Rather than saying “According to So-and-So in Such-
and-Such book…” just give the evidence and at the end of the sentence put a
parenthetical citation with author and page number (Shane 83).
Why? You’re not doing a book report. In the end, it doesn’t matter where you get
your info, except that if I look it up it better be reliable and accurate. What I’m
interested in are YOUR ideas, and how YOU put together information from
various sources, how YOU synthesize and integrate that information to support
YOUR idea, YOUR argument. I have a feeling many of you were given the
advice, or even required, to put that info in the sentence, and I may be asking for
the opposite thing. Well, that’s okay, I understand. For my class, try it my way,
and afterwards make a decision for yourself what you prefer.
If you are mostly reading sources that are argumentative, try looking at their
citations or bibliography. Rather than quoting the original article that makes an
argument, you can find the source with the objective information that helps you
make your own argument. This is a really great way to do better, deeper research.
4. Quoting vs. Paraphrasing information from a source.
Quote:
i. When it is already as concise as it can be said;
ii. When the specific words/numbers matter to your argument/analysis
iii. When you will be analyzing/using those specific words/numbers;
Paraphrase:
iv. In any other case.
Why? Several reasons. First, when you paraphrase rather than quote, you
show me that you actually understand the information. Anyone can
copy/paste without comprehending. Second, summaries are more
concise and focused, so your reader can more readily follow the purpose
of the cited information.
Whether you quote directly or paraphrase or summarize, you need to have an in-text
citation, or else it is plagiarism. Read this explanation of paraphrasing carefully. It
contains information on effective and honest paraphrasing. Be careful, if you do this
incorrectly, it is easy to plagiarize.

4. 5. If you are citing a statistic, I want you to find at least two sources for that same statistic,
to make sure you’re being accurate and fair. If that is totally impossible, that’s okay, but
make a note that there is only one study anywhere in the world to cite.
6. Be careful about using evidence that shows correlation between events, and claiming it
shows causation. That is a logical fallacy (cum hoc ergo propter hoc, or, sometimes, post
hoc ergo propter hoc).
FYI:
I entered grades for your first paragraphs based on how closely you followed the assignment
requirements. Thus, I took off points for MLA, etc., but not the actual content/quality of the
writing. Just know that on future writing assignments, I will assess based on the quality of the
writing, too, so your grade here doesn’t necessarily reflect that. If you turn in the same,
unrevised, unedited paragraph later, it may not earn an A as it did here.