By: Chelsea Tamborski
When you write an article, there’s a lot of different factors to consider to make sure your paper reaches its full potential. Not only are the title, topic, style, and information all vital, but so is the time-consuming act of finding accurate and credible resources. No matter the topic of your article, ensuring that your information is precise will strengthen the backbone of the paper. Usually every claim, quote, and piece of data that is included can be easily proved or disproved with a simple Google search, and safeguarding the information provided it is a necessity to confirm its authenticity.
There’s a variety of different research strategies you can use, depending on what your topic is. When searching the internet or browsing through the library for secondary resources, remember that the more recent, the better. Though many subjects have been studied and the results have since been unchanged, there’s others that are constantly changing. For instance, if your topic is about a specific science discovery, would want to use the most up to date information available, whether it be in regards to data reports, accident reports, or and update to the original discovery.
It’s also important to use only credited websites or books, and avoid using websites that are edited by the public, like Wikipedia. The Encyclopedia Britannica, Google Scholar, EBSCO hot, and LexisNexis are all excellent examples of websites that have both dependable material and reliable information. When searching through these websites, it’s key to sort through anything that might be outdated or lacking expert opinion. Although most articles usually have undertones of the author’s personal bias, don’t let that deter you from the facts. You can use their opinion to support or contrast your own. Just make sure they didn’t distort any of the actual facts.
When people first delve into the researching process, they tend to avoid the library, even though it can be extremely useful. Though searching online may seem easier, there’s a wealth of information hidden within the library, and as long as you’re thorough in your research and confident that the authors you’re reading from are well versed on the subject, it should help to create an effective and valuable paper.
Research
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Hello Chelsea.
Thank you for sharing your post to help direct other writers to find credible resources. This is an important topic, and your piece offers solid strategies about creating an effective paper. There were a few instances where I tripped, so please allow me to share a few tidbits of feedback.
– In academic writing, it is best to avoid using contractions (unless they are used in a certain context such as in quotes of characters). For instance, instead of “don’t”, simply use “do not” instead. These contractions are usually used as colloquial language, but it can trip the reader if it’s too conversational or grammatically incorrect. To illustrate: there are two instances when you use “there’s”, but this is grammatically incorrect because the subject of the sentence is plural. If you look back to your first sentence where you tell the reader there are *several* factors to consider, factors is plural so you would want to say “there *are* a lot of different factors to consider”.
– You offer three excellent, well-explained strategies for writers to use. If you wanted to, you could easily transform this posting into an academic essay with a formal structure that has an intro paragraph and a conclusion paragraph. To do this, you could add a sentence or two that briefly introduces the three ideas. If it were me, I might pop that first sentence of the second paragraph up to the intro/first paragraph and then add a final sentence to the intro paragraph that read something like, “This paper will address three such strategies: focusing on recent reports; using credited sources instead of open sources that can be modified by the public; and leveraging the wealth of information that stands at-the-ready at the physical library.” Then the following three paragraphs could each take a turn and start with a transitional sentence that helped the reader understand “Ok, now I’m going to talk about Strategy 1… Now I’m going to talk about Strategy 2…etc.” The conclusion is always a nice wrap-up to summarize your ideas and perhaps mention other strategies that you might not have addressed in the space of this paper. These type of guideposts for the reader are always appreciated in academic papers because it is sometimes easy to get lost with such a wealth of info. (I was not lost in your paper, though, because your ideas were clear and concise.)
– The last sentence of the second paragraph tripped me a little when I read it because I had to fill in some tiny blanks. I assume you want to say “…*you* would want to use the most up to date information…” in the middle. I also assume you would want to use “*an* update” rather than “*and* update”. These are certainly easy-peasy mistakes that everyone makes ALL the time…but sometimes these little mistakes that make the reader trip can add up to confusion.
Very nice work!