While instructors will differ somewhat in terms of specific instructions for writing history papers, the following guidelines—to be meticulously followed when writing papers for Wehrle classes—generally should apply to all history courses.

Structure:

A history paper should begin with an introduction (usually a paragraph), stating your thesis/argument. Several paragraphs should then follow that develop your thesis. The paper should end with a conclusion, summing up your major points.

A history paper is not a mystery. Your thesis statement should leave no question or mystery about your central argument. For instance: “Dubois had much to say about education” is not an adequate thesis statement.
 

Citations:

 
Parenthetical Citation:
If you are required only to use one source for a paper—you may cite parenthetically (in the text) rather than use footnotes or endnotes. If you are using more than one source, use footnotes or endnotes. Never use both parenthetical and footnotes citations.  When parenthetically citing simply put the page number in parenthesis following either a quote or reference to a particular fact presented in the monograph that is not common knowledge.

Examples:
According to Tuttle, The Chicago Defender “actively sought to lure blacks north” (31).

The police who arrived at the scene failed to make any arrests (5).
 

Footnotes and Endnotes:
When utilizing more than one source, provide footnotes or endnotes according to the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines as follows:

Book:
Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York, 1993), 3.

Book with two authors:
James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, My Lai: A History with Documents (New York, 1998), 16-19.

Article in a collection of Essays:
Jack Ho, “Rosie the Riveter Revisited,” in Gary Wilson, ed. Women in World War II (Lexington, KY, 1996), 15-19.

An Article in a Magazine or Journal:
Todd Gitlin, “The SDS Reconsidered,” Journal of American History 26 (June 1986): 15.

Reference from a newspaper:
New York Times, 13 March 1968.

A document in a published collections of documents:
Oran K. Henderson, “Statement to Peers Commission,” 1970 in My Lai: A History with Documents, eds. James S. Olson and Randy Roberts (New York , 1998), 9.
 

*Use web sites with great caution. When citing from a web page, include the author’s name (often an organization), the web page title, Internet address, and date accessed. For instance:
Blackout History Project, “The Day the Lights When Out in New York City,” <http://blackout.gmu.edu>, 5 February 2003.
 

When citing the same source more than once, use Ibid (short for ibidem or “in the same place”), page number (when the page number is different from the one in the original citation, otherwise use Ibid)—if the citations immediately follow each other. If another citation comes between two references to the same work, when you repeat a citation already made in full, provide just the author’s last name and page number. Example:

1. Ronald Spector, After Tet (Boston, 1995), 15.
2. Ibid, 19.
3. “Woodrow Wilson to Edwin House,” 15 August 1915, in Arthur Link, ed., Collected Letters of Woodrow Wilson, (Princeton, NJ, 1965), 17.
4. Spector, 25.
5. Ibid.

*There is no need to supply a “Works Cited” page (other instructors may require one).
 

Things to Keep in Mind:

• There’s no need to include a cover page (nor illustrations, nor anything along those lines).
• Avoid lists.
• Be very careful about incomplete sentences. Often students fail to join two separate sentences with a semicolon or conjunction—a comma is insufficient. For instance: “Chicago’s black migrants often found jobs in the stockyard, they replaced workers called to war” is incorrect. Instead of a comma, the sentence requires a semicolon or conjunction.
• Underline or italicize titles of books, newspapers, magazines; put the names of movies, articles, short stories in quotes.
• Unless you are citing parenthetically, commas and periods belong inside the quotation marks, semicolons and colons outside.
• A history essay should be written in the past tense—make sure to stay in the past tense.
• Avoid the passive tense. It disguises agency.  For instance: “Mistakes were made.” We don’t know who made the mistakes.
• Avoid contractions in a formal essay.  Example: avoid “wasn’t” use “was not” instead.
• It’s=it is; its=possessive. It’s an exception to the rule.
• A work of nonfiction is not a novel. It is a monograph, study, book, etc.
• Do not begin or end a quote with ellipse (…). For instance, do not write “….The governor refused to send help.”   Quotation marks themselves indicate material is separate from its source. Ellipse indicates the omission of words, and thus should be used in the middle of a quote to indicate omitted words. For instance: “The Rosenbergs were not…prominent national figures.”
• Avoid ending sentences with prepositions or verbs.
• Paginate (number your pages).
• Block quote any quotation longer than 4 lines (and unless you have a compelling reason don’t use a 4 line quote).
• Vary your words. In particular, avoid using the same word twice in the same sentence.

A Word about Plagiarism

We seem to be in the midst of an epidemic of plagiarism—resulting from the rise of the “cut-and-paste” culture of the Internet. Make sure you’re very careful about material taken from books, articles—and especially the World Wide Web. When you write down other people’s words (or cut them from a web page), make sure to put quotes around them. Don’t let someone else’s words get mixed up in your words.

This essay should contain your original thoughts and words—and those of no one else. Any words (or sometimes even a word) that is not your own should appear in quotes and be cited in the fashioned outlined above.  You are encouraged to talk over the assignment with your classmates, or even have your fellow students read over your paper. But when it comes to the actual writing of the paper—make sure it’s entirely your own effort.

The same Internet resources that facilitate plagiarism also make it easy to check suspect words or phrases.  Plagiarism results in an automatic F on the paper—and a serious case would mean flunking the course.