ADVICE ON WRITING PAPERS

The goal of writing a paper is to achieve a deep understanding of an issue or

position related to major themes or ideas from the course. A few words
about writing effective papers:

CONTENT
Take your audience to be an intelligent, college-age reader who is
uninformed about your particular paper topic. You may need to define
special philosophical terms, though you can assume knowledge of basic
concepts such as truth, validity and soundness.

Be sure your paper has a thesis. Most paper assignments will require you to
argue for or against a certain position. Take a stand or advance a view, and
let your reader know what it is, within the first paragraph (maximum, two).

Use evidence to support your thesis. Do not just proclaim the truth as you
see it. Effective evidence is frequently from the class readings, but do not
include quotations just so that you have some. Be sure that the evidence
you cite actually supports your argument.

Anticipate your opposition, and reply to them. That is, be your own devil’s
advocate: think of what someone who disagrees with your thesis might say
back to you, and what reasons they might have for their view. Then explain
why your interpretation or point is more persuasive than theirs.

Give your paper a logical structure. Make it flow smoothly from one point to
the next.

Be fair. When you disagree, do not attack the arguer; attack their reasoning.

Cite your sources. When you use evidence from the readings or class
discussion, be sure to provide citations. This allows your reader to look into
the evidence herself. It is also required to avoid plagiarism.

Draw a clear conclusion. Your conclusion should follow logically from your
evidence, and be closely related to your thesis.

Don't be afraid to change your mind while writing. This is a great sign since
it means you are doing serious thinking. But if you do change your mind,
incorporate the change throughout the paper, so that you end up arguing
one point effectively. Be sure to edit for organization and tone in light of the
change.

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FORM
• Be explicit, that is: say exactly what you mean. This sounds simple,
but it is actually quite difficult.
• Say things as simply as you can. Avoid pretentious writing.
• Be brief, but don't let the quest for brevity obscure your meaning.
• Use active voice over passive whenever possible.
• About pronouns: first, second and third person pronouns are all
fine. It is archaic to use 'he' for all third person pronouns that don't refer
to a specific individual, but as yet there is no good substitute. Try
alternating between 'he' and 'she' in a way that doesn't confuse the
reader, or use 'they'. Also: "It’s” is a contraction of “It is”; “Its” is
possessive (this is an exception to the usual rule about possessives, which
requires ‘s).
• Use transitions to help your reader know where you are going. They
are like drivers who are following you in a car: slow down and signal
when you change course.
• Proofread for all mechanical errors. Spell check! There is really no
excuse for spelling errors now. Also, vigilantly watch your grammar.
Incomplete sentences, run-ons, and verbs that don't agree with their
subjects are among my pet peeves.

TURNING IN YOUR PAPER

All papers must be typed and submitted electronically by email to me
(jdiller2@utoledo.edu or jeanine.diller@utoledo.edu). I am happy to accept
early work. As stated in the syllabus, late work is downgraded at 1/3 of a
letter grade per day (e.g., a paper that is one day late and deserves an A
would get an A-, etc.).

GRADING
See my checklist for grading papers for all the details, but in brief: I will
grade papers based on two things: (1) content, which includes explication
(how well you understand a particular philosophical text or issue) and
argument (how well you develop and argue for your own view about this
article or issue); and (2) form – the quality of your writing, including
mechanics. Because this is a WAC course, and because we have a midterm
and a final to further measure your grasp of content, I will weight each of
these equally when I grade papers. To give you a sense of the
considerations that go into assessing your performance, the paper should:

Content
Explication
• Present the issue or position at hand accurately, fairly, and clearly.
• Demonstrate depth of understanding.
Argument

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 • State a view or position, and develop it as necessary.
• Argue for the position, in a way that is sound and persuasive.
• Mention objections to the view, and respond to them.

Form
• Be well-organized, with a logical, clear progression of thought.
• Be concise. Make every sentence – or at least every paragraph -- work
for your thesis.
• Be easy to understand. I should not be forced to reread sentences.
• Be free of errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling.
• Have a good tone (some good tones: natural, creative, professional).

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PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is the act of misrepresenting someone else’s work as your own.

To avoid it:

Any time you quote an author, use quotes. You need them even if you are
explicitly discussing the author in that sentence. For example, say that you
are presenting the following passage:
“A naive reaction to the idea that everything we do is completely determined
by a causal chain that extends backward beyond the times of our
births involves thinking that in that case we would have no control over
our behavior whatsoever.” (from an article written by Susan Wolf)
You should not write:
Wolf says that determinism holds that everything we do is completely
determined by a causal chain that extends backward beyond the time
of our births. A naive reaction to this case is that we would have no
control over our behavior whatsoever.
If you do, you are plagiarizing. If you do not put quotes around an author’s
phrase or sentence, you are telling the reader that that phrase is your own.
That constitutes misrepresenting the author’s work as your own.

Any time you even paraphrase, use a page number. But paraphrase
sparingly. Close paraphrases might be borderline plagiarism. For example,
you might write:
We can conclude that a house had a builder because we have often
experienced that kind of effect coming from that kind of cause.
Here the existence of plagiarism is controversial: if you follow the sentence
with a citation--”(Hume 38)”--then it may not be in technical violation of the
standards of academic conduct. It is, however, inadequate scholarship. If
you paraphrase an author’s words, substituting synonyms here and there
and juggling the sentence order around, you are not saying anything that the
author isn’t saying. Furthermore, you are not demonstrating comprehension
of the material.

Here is an acceptable way to summarize the above passage:

First, avoid paraphrasing altogether and try to say things as much in your
own words as possible: this helps you learn, and shows me that you have.
Second, if you claim that an author said something, use a direct quote to
back up that claim. Here is an example:
Hume rightly insists that we can only infer from an effect to its cause if
we have experienced that cause-effect pair often. For instance, he
says, “if we see a house…we conclude, with the greatest certainty,
that it had an architect or builder because…we have experienced [this

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 species of effect] to proceed from that species of cause…” (Hume, p.
38). We have no such experience, he goes on to say, with universe-
designer pairs, so we are not licensed to infer from this universe to a
designer.

There are severe penalties for plagiarism. I am required to report all

instances of plagiarism in my courses, and sanctions for plagiarism
range from failing the paper to being expelled from the University.
Don’t do it.