Elements of a good paper

Elements of a Good Paper

Here are the seven things I looked for in your first paper; the explanations may be helpful as you revise it or as you plan your second paper.

Thesis and introduction
    You announce at the outset what will be the paper’s material, what approach you’re going to take, and what claim you’re going to make about it. The reader can clearly identify one or two sentences that convey the major claim, or thesis. The thesis appears to have been written after you composed the body of the paper, because it’s both broad enough and definite enough to explain what all the points in your paper have in common.

Organization
    An attentive reader could look at the paper and reconstruct your outline. Each paragraph hangs together, and all the paragraphs are somehow relevant for your chosen approach and your thesis.

Argument and development
    The paragraphs, and the parts of the outline, lead naturally and progressively out of each other. Your paper presents itself as a process of discovery, or even as a kind of detective story. What are the questions to which your ideas in this paper are the answer? The paper should not read like a simple list of interesting points you thought of, or like a randomly ordered list of evidence.

Signposting and transitions
    The reader knows immediately what’s the point of each new paragraph, how it relates to the previous material, and why it’s going to add something new. Most likely, this happens because each paragraph opens with a topic sentence that announces (1) what will happen next and (2) how this will relate to the previous paragraph (expanding on it, qualifying it, contrasting with it, etc.). Further, there are probably some important key words that get repeated throughout the paper to remind the reader of the paper’s thesis and general approach.

Evidence
    The passages you discuss are relevant and interesting, and there’s something good to say about them. Sometimes you call attention to passages whose importance for your topic is very obvious; sometimes you discover that seemingly minor passages are also of interest. If the specific words are important, you quote verbatim; if only the general idea of the passage is important, you paraphrase to save space. You were also selective in choosing your passages, leaving room to present your own analysis of each one.

Analysis
    The paper goes well beyond plot summary because you present your own account of each passage you discuss, usually for at least a full sentence following your quotation or paraphrase. Somehow, you also make it easy for the reader to tell what you mean to present as an uncontroversial observation, and what truly counts as your explanation or analysis. If your paper already has good analysis, it should be fairly easy for you to reread it, decide what were the best ideas you had, and then use those ideas to improve your thesis, signposting, and transitions throughout.

Mechanics
Are the spelling and grammar acceptable? Do you remember to cite page or line numbers?

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