3/24/ · Useful pieces of advice for writing a paper on History State your information in the past tense. Unlike other types of papers, the subject of this paper is history that has already blogger.comted Reading Time: 3 mins Writing a history paper is your opportunity to do the real work of historians, to roll up your sleeves and dig deep into the past. What is a history paper? History papers are driven by arguments. In a history class, even if you are not writing a paper based on outside research, you are still writing a paper that requires some form of argument 5/25/ · Begin writing your history research paper based on the outline of your argument. Conclusion. Writing a History Research Paper is a step by step process. Initially, you may tend to be overwhelmed or taken back with the paper prompt, but with smaller steps, writing the Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins
Steps for Writing a History Paper | UCLA History
Drawn from a survey of the History Department You engage in cheap, anachronistic moralizing. You are sloppy with the chronology. You quote excessively or improperly. You are vague or have empty, unsupported generalizations. You write too much in the passive voice. You use inappropriate sources.
You use evidence uncritically. You are wordy. You have no clear thesis and little analysis. Avoid pretentious, vapid beginnings. Get to the point. For example, writing a history research paper, you might go on to argue that greater British sensitivity to Indian customs was hypocritical. Whether you are writing an exam essay or a senior thesis, you need to have a thesis. A good thesis answers an important research question about how or why something happened.
Develop your thesis logically from paragraph to paragraph. Your reader should always know where your argument has come from, where it is now, and where it is going. Students are often puzzled when their professors mark them down for summarizing or merely narrating rather than analyzing. What does it mean to analyze? In the narrow sense, to analyze means to break down into parts and to study the interrelationships of those parts. If you analyze water, you break it down into hydrogen and oxygen.
In a broader sense, historical analysis explains the origins and significance of events. Historical analysis digs beneath the surface to see relationships or distinctions that are not immediately obvious.
Historical analysis is critical; it evaluates sources, assigns significance to causes, writing a history research paper, and weighs competing explanations. Many students think that they have to give a long summary to show the professor that they know the facts before they get to their analysis, writing a history research paper.
Try instead to begin writing a history research paper analysis as soon as possible, sometimes without any summary at all. You can't do an analysis unless you know the facts, but you can summarize the facts without being able to do an analysis. Like good detectives, historians are critical of their sources and cross-check them for reliability.
Likewise, you wouldn't think much of a historian who relied solely on the French to explain the origins of World War I. Only a professional liar would deny this Neither the people, the government, nor the Kaiser wanted war As always, writing a history research paper, the best approach is to ask: Who wrote the source?
Under what circumstances? For whom? The first statement comes from a book by the French politician Georges Clemenceau, which he wrote in at the very end of his life. InClemenceau had vowed revenge against Germany for its defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. As premier of France from tohe represented France at the Paris Peace Conference in He was obviously not a disinterested observer. The second statement comes from a manifesto published by ninety-three prominent German intellectuals in the fall of They were defending Germany against charges of aggression and brutality.
They too were obviously not disinterested observers. Now, rarely do you encounter such extreme bias and passionate disagreement, but the principle of criticizing and cross-checking sources always applies. In general, writing a history research paper, the more sources you can use, and the more varied they are, the more writing a history research paper you are to make a sound historical judgment, especially when passions and self-interests are engaged.
Competent historians may offer different interpretations of the same evidence or choose to stress different evidence. You can, however, learn to discriminate among conflicting interpretations, not all of which are created equal. See also: Analyzing a Historical Document.
Vague statements and empty generalizations suggest that you haven't put in the time to learn the material.
The Revolution is important because it shows that people need freedom. Landless peasants? Urban journeymen? Wealthy lawyers? Which government? Who exactly needed freedom, and what did they mean by freedom? Be careful when you use grand abstractions like people, society, freedom, and government, especially when you further distance yourself from the concrete by using these words as the apparent antecedents for the pronouns they and it. Always pay attention to cause and effect. Abstractions do not cause or need anything; particular people or particular groups of people cause or need things.
Anchor your thesis in a clear chronological framework and don't jump around confusingly, writing a history research paper. Take care to avoid both anachronisms and vagueness about dates.
The scandal did not become public until after the election. Which revolution? When in the twentieth century? Remember that chronology is the backbone of history. What would you think of a biographer who wrote that you graduated from Hamilton in the s? Your professor may allow parenthetical citations in a short paper with one or two sources, but you should use footnotes for any research paper in history.
Parenthetical citations are unaesthetic; they scar the text and break the flow of reading. Worse still, they are simply inadequate to capture the richness of historical sources. Historians take justifiable pride in the immense variety of their sources. Parenthetical citations such as Jones may be fine for most of the social sciences and humanities, where the source base is usually limited to recent books and articles in English.
Historians, however, need the flexibility of the full footnote. Try to imagine this typical footnote pulled at random from a classic work of German history squeezed into parentheses writing a history research paper the body of the text: DZA Potsdam, RdI, Frieden 5, Erzgebiet von Longwy-Briey, Bd. I, Nr. The abbreviations are already in this footnote; its information cannot be further reduced. For footnotes and bibliography, historians usually use Chicago style.
The Chicago Manual of Style. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Use as many primary sources as possible in your paper. A primary source is one produced by a participant in or witness of the events you are writing about.
A primary source allows the historian to see the past through the eyes of direct participants. Some common primary sources are letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, church records, newspaper articles, and government documents of all kinds. Not all primary sources are written. Buildings, writing a history research paper, monuments, clothes, home furnishings, photographs, religious relics, writing a history research paper, musical recordings, or oral reminiscences can all be primary sources if you use them as historical clues.
The interests of historians are so broad that virtually anything writing a history research paper be a primary source. A secondary source is one written by a later historian who had no part in what he or she is writing about. In the rare cases when the historian was a participant in the events, then the work—or at least part of it—is a primary source.
Historians read secondary sources to learn about how scholars have interpreted the past. Just as you must be critical of primary sources, so too you must be critical of secondary sources. You must be especially careful to distinguish between scholarly and non-scholarly secondary sources. Unlike, say, nuclear physics, history attracts many amateurs. Books and articles about war, great individuals, and everyday material life dominate popular history.
Some professional historians disparage popular history and may even discourage their colleagues from trying their hand at it. You need not share their snobbishness; some popular history is excellent. But—and this is a big but—as a rule, you should avoid popular works in your research, because they are usually not scholarly.
Popular history seeks to inform and entertain a large general audience. In popular history, dramatic storytelling often prevails over analysis, style over substance, simplicity over complexity, and grand generalization over careful qualification.
Popular history is usually based largely or exclusively on secondary sources. Strictly speaking, most popular histories might writing a history research paper be called tertiary, not secondary, sources. Scholarly history, in contrast, seeks to discover new knowledge or to reinterpret existing knowledge.
Good scholars wish to write clearly and simply, and they may spin a compelling yarn, but they do not shun depth, analysis, complexity, or qualification. Scholarly history draws on as many primary sources as practical.
How to Write a History Essay: Forming an Introduction
, time: 3:59Writing Resources - Writing a Good History Paper - Hamilton College
5/25/ · Begin writing your history research paper based on the outline of your argument. Conclusion. Writing a History Research Paper is a step by step process. Initially, you may tend to be overwhelmed or taken back with the paper prompt, but with smaller steps, writing the Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins Writing a history paper is your opportunity to do the real work of historians, to roll up your sleeves and dig deep into the past. What is a history paper? History papers are driven by arguments. In a history class, even if you are not writing a paper based on outside research, you are still writing a paper that requires some form of argument Top Ten Signs that you may be Writing a Weak History Paper. You’re overjoyed to find that you can fill the required pages by widening all margins. 9. You haven’t mentioned any facts or cited any sources for several paragraphs. 8. You find yourself using the phrase “throughout history mankind has ” 7
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