GUIDELINES FOR PREPARING PAPERS
Assignment: To write a short (at least 5 page) paper.
- An example of a good paper.
- Help on finding geological resources in the library.
- Help on carrying out a bibliographic search using GEOREF - an on line bibliographic data base.
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- Format: The paper should have
- - A title
- - A brief abstract (summary) of the information in the paper
- - Introduction
- - Main body of information
- - Summary if the paper is reporting on an issue
- or - Conclusions if the paper tested an hypothesis
- - Bibliography
- -Figures and tables if appropriate.
- All material both text and figures that is obtained from someone else's work must be referenced.
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- Format for citations:
In geological publications, references to source material are presented as follows:
- - Smith (1987) describes the trauma of having to write a paper. After referring to the appropriate sources (Jones, 1788; Grouch and Friend, 1792; Crawford and others, 1991) it appeared that writing such a paper is not relevant to existential philosophy. Nevertheless external forces were brought to bear and the material was submitted in graphical form. All of this material was copied verbatim from Keller (1988).
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- Bibliography:
The bibliography should include all items cited in the body of the text. Also all items in the bibliography must be cited in the text. In other words, the bibliography is not a list of things you read, but a report of the items referred to in the material you present.
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- Format for Bibliography:
Items must be listed alphabetically by author. If there are several publications by one author they are then listed in sequence by year.
- Crawford, ML, Lindline, J., and Bosbyshell, H. 1991. How to survive Geology 103. Unpublished pamphlet. 1857 pp.
- Grouch, XY and Friend, AB. 1792. On the futility of trying to think, a reply. Journal of Transylvanian Culture, v. 17, p. 1-845.
- Jones, IM. 1788. On the futility of trying to think. Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales, v. 44, p.78-79.
- Keller, WW. 1988. Environmental Geology. Absurd Publishing, Washington, DC. 15 pp.
- Smith, FF. 1987. My experiences as a slave for a semester. Bryn Mawr Now, v. 7, p. 17.
- Additional help on formatting citations in a bibliography

- How the papers will be graded

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