UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY

HOW TO DO IT:

A SAMPLE ESSAY FOR GENERAL GUIDANCE

EN101: COMPOSITION

SECTION 32E

MAJ. CRYSTAL M. HILLS

BY

CADET CHLOË MILLS ’13, CO F1

WEST POINT, NEW YORK

20 AUGUST 2009

____ MY DOCUMENTATION IDENTIFIES ALL SOURCES USED AND

ASSISTANCE RECEIVED IN COMPLETING THIS ASSIGNMENT.

____ NO SOURCES WERE USED OR ASSISTANCE RECEIVED IN

COMPLETING THIS ASSIGNMENT.

SIGNATURE:
 Mills 2

This sample essay will help you format your written work and create the

necessary documentation for homework essays in this and other classes here at West

Point. Keep in mind that this is only a guide. Though this sample essay strives to comply

with the guidelines found in your composition text, the current editions of The MLA

Handbook, The Little, Brown Handbook, and the Dean’s Documentation of Written Work,

you must consult those base documents and your instructors for definitive policies and

rules. Following the rules of academic documentation helps readers determine what is

your original work, what help you have received from others, and what outside sources

you have used to support your claims. You must carefully follow the guidelines in

Documentation of Written Work and the appropriate chapters in the composition

handbook. Avoid faulty documentation and be aware that plagiarism is unethical and a

potential cause for referral to an honor board. Significantly more important is the

reliability that comes from developing yourself as an honorable person upon whom others

can depend.

If you received help in an informal study group or an individual gave you

substantial assistance with this paper, you must document that help. A good rule of thumb

in this situation is this: if you would have said “Thank You” to someone for that

assistance, document it. According to the Dean’s Documentation of Written Work, you do

not have to document assistance with basic editing for grammar, spelling, and

punctuation or if the assistance came about in a formal group assigned by your instructor.

Still, when in doubt, it is always better to document assistance than to assume that it is

authorized collaboration.
 Mills 3

To document your sources, use parenthetical citations, as outlined in the Little,

Brown Handbook. The next sentence gives you an example of a parenthetical citation

after a direct quotation. The character of Jacob Blivens “always obeyed his parents, no

matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were” (Twain 240). Now look at the

Works Cited page and see the full citation for this source under the author’s last name.

Notice that the Works Cited entry conveys significantly more information, and that the

Works Cited page is arranged alphabetically.

If you are quoting two or more lines from a poem, indicate line breaks with

slashes and a space before and after those slashes, as in the next sentence. The poetic

voice conveys his sorrow as he tells us, “At night I could hear the blood in my veins /

Black and whispering as the rain / On the streets of Philadelphia” (Springsteen 522).

Notice that we preserved the capital letters at the beginning of each line. Usually, you can

change lower case letters at the beginnings of direct quotations to capitals and vice-versa,

but in poetry, it is usually best to retain the capitalization of the original to preserve all

possible nuances of meaning. Additionally, when quoting from a dramatic work such as a

play, you must specify which act, scene, and line you are citing, as in the next sentence.

Iago declares, “Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners” (1.3.315-

16).

When citing from an alphabetically arranged reference work such as a dictionary

or encyclopedia, cite the title of the work and the appropriate page number in

parentheses, as demonstrated in the following sentence. The standard definition of honor

is “honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions” (Oxford American College
 Mills 4

Dictionary 643). Also, note that when we refer to words as individual words, we should

indicate that intention by italicizing or underlining them.

Document information you find on the internet almost as you would printed

material, including the medium for the source (e.g., Web). On the Works Cited page,

include a web address or URL and the date you first looked at this site for the purposes of

the essay you are writing. For example, some claim that in King John (3.4.93-98),

Shakespeare expresses his own personal grief over the death of his son, Hamnet, who

died in August of 1596 (Gray). The Works Cited entry for this reference would read as

follows:

Gray, Terry A. “The Canon.” Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet. 4 Mar. 2005. Palomar
University. Web. 15 Aug. 2009. <http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/canon.htm>

Often, electronic sources do not list authors, or places and dates of publication, so list as

much of that information as you can find. What is important is to provide the reader with

enough information to locate the same source you discovered in your research. Most

word-processing programs treat the web address as one word, so you must manually

insert a “hard return” after a period or a slash in the URL so that you will not have

confusing line breaks in your footnotes or on your Works Cited page. You may have to

right-click on the web address or URL and then click “Remove hyperlink” to put the

characters in the correct color and font and to remove underlining.

Remember that you must document all instances of direct quotation, paraphrase,

and summary whenever you present ideas or series of word patterns that are not your

own. For instance, look at the following two sentences; one is a direct quotation and the

other a paraphrase of the same material. Historians tell us that “with gunpowder bombs
 Mills 5

and phalanxes of archers protected by a forward wall of soldiers carrying overlapping

shields, the Mongol forces were formidable” (Craig et al. 267). Historians tell us that the

use of gunpowder and massed archers, protected by a barrier of forward-deployed

soldiers with overlapped shields, made the Mongols quite frightening (Craig et al. 267).

Since the paraphrase closely duplicates the source’s vocabulary, syntax, and intent, you

must cite the original.

If your selected quotation runs longer than four typed lines, it is usually better to

set it off as a block quotation. Take the following selection, for example. In “The Bride

Comes to Yellow Sky,” the narrator hints that the townspeople perform as if they were in

a play when he describes the scene outside the saloon:

Across the sandy street were some vivid green grass-plots, so wonderful in

appearance, amid the sands that burned near them in the blazing sun, that

they caused a doubt in the mind. They exactly resembled the grass mats

used to represent lawns on the stage. At the cooler end of the railway

station, a man without a coat sat in a tilted chair and smoked his pipe.

(Crane 227)

Notice that block quotations are indented twice as far as paragraphs (normally, just hit the

Tab key twice). They are double-spaced like the rest of the text (unless your instructor

specifically tells you to single-space them), they use the same right-hand margin as the

rest of the essay, and they do not have quotation marks.

Submit an Acknowledgement Statement with your essays. Construct it according

to the example at the beginning of this document; use all capital letters without boldface

or underlining. Notice that the Acknowledgement Statement has no number and is not
 Mills 6

counted as a page of text. On all other pages, put your last name and page number in the

header. To do this, go to the Standard tool bar, select “Insert,” then “Header.” Click on

the “Edit Header.” To bring up the Header/Footer toolbar, double-click in the

Header/Footer area. Put an enabling checkmark in “Different first page.” Now park the

blinking cursor on your first page of text. Again, click the “Header” area. Type in your

last name, one space, and then click on the “Page Number” icon that looks like the pound

sign or tic-tac-toe sign. Then click on “Format Page Number,” the icon that looks like a

hand pointing to the pound sign. “Number format” should be “1, 2, 3” and “Page

numbering start at” should be “0.” Highlight your name and page number; make them

right-aligned and Times New Roman 12-point font.

The standard format for homework essays is to use Times New Roman 12-point

font. Set your margins to 1” all the way around. This sample paper also has an additional

½” gutter margin on the left-hand side so that cadets can three-hole punch it and insert it

into a three-ring binder or writing portfolio essay binder. Check with your individual

instructors to see if they have preferences in this matter.

Finally, keep in mind that this basic guide is just a quick reference for formatting

and documenting homework essays at USMA. You may encounter problems due to the

software conflicting with the MLA style in terms of spacing, font, the formatting of

notes, or other technical glitches. Patience and persistence are key in these matters. You

will also note that for ease of reference your instructor wants your name to appear on the

running head. You may have specific questions about format not covered in this essay.

Consult your course syllabus, look it up in your Little, Brown Handbook, refer to

Documentation of Written Work, or ask your instructor for guidance. The most important
 Mills 7

aspect of documentation is giving credit where credit is due, and you should always seek

to provide the most information possible so that concerned scholars following thinking

can track, validate, or replicate your research1. As the previous sentence shows, this

documentation includes acknowledging assistance received in completing your work, and

you format this documentation by using a superscript in the text itself, creating a Notes

page, and citing the person who gave you assistance in your Works Cited page as well. If

you turn to the next page, you will see a sample Notes page, and if you look for that

person’s name in the Works Cited list, you will find a sample of how to format that

documentation, too.
 Mills 8

Notes

1. CDT Kate Mehrer, A-1, ’12, assistance given to the author, verbal discussion,
West Point, NY, 19 August 2009. CDT Mehrer reminded me that I had not included
directions on how to document assistance received and told me I should include these
directions, and showed me how to use the superscript function in Microsoft Word.
 Mills 9

Works Cited

Craig, Albert M., et al. The Heritage of World Civilization. Comb. ed. 6th ed. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. Print.

Crane, Stephen. “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” The Compact Bedford Introduction

to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 224-31.

Print.

Gray, Terry A. “The Canon.” Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet. 4 Mar. 2005. Palomar

University. Web. 15 Aug. 2009. <http://Shakespeare.palomar.edu/canon.htm>.

Mehrer, Kate. Discussion with author. 19 Aug. 2009. Speech.

Office of the Dean. Documentation of Written Work. West Point, New York: United

States Military Academy, 2009. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Othello the Moor of Venice. The Compact Bedford Introduction to

Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 1037-

1117. Print.

Springsteen, Bruce. “Streets of Philadelphia.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to

Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer, 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 522.

Print.

Twain, Mark. “The Story of the Good Little Boy.” The Compact Bedford Introduction

to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 240-42.

Print.