Writing Homework Help

1. Search. Locate scholarly sources that pertain to your school. These should be books or articles. You may only use online articles in the extreme condition that no print material exists, and then only as a source of basic facts about your project. Other materials (related in terms of time period, architect, program type, etc.) must be used beyond this. Sources:

a. Kappe Library catalogue and librarians (Kevin and Stefanie)

b. Avery Index of Architectural Periodicals

c. JSTOR

2. Narrow. From the available material, choose a minimum of three and a maximum of five sources to examine in detail. Aim to choose sources that represent the current state of knowledge about your school. Look for things in major periodicals (that we have at Kappe Library) or books that seem to be published by reputable presses. If you are unsure about the validity of your source, Google the author, ask our librarians, or reach out to your teaching staff. Beyond just basic due diligence about the quality of a particular source, focus on pieces of writing that you find interesting.

3. Note. Skim each of your selected texts first. Then begin. Open a fresh Microsoft Word document or Google doc (something with a footnote function), and label it with your name, our course name, and the name of the school you are investigating. Make a heading with the name of your first source. Many people use the last name of the author for this, but you could also simply type out the title of the article. Start a numbered list under this heading. As you read the text, stop and note the things that stand out to you in this list. Use your own words. Sometimes you may find yourself paraphrasing a point the author of the piece makes. Rarely the author will say something so compelling that you feel you must quote a few words directly. Remember the caution above: use quotation marks, and don’t do this more than twice. The best notes are actually your own thoughts, occasioned by something you read, but in response to it rather than acceptance or translation of it.

4. Cite. After each note, use your footnote function (learning your keyboard shortcut comes in handy here) to footnote the place in the text at which the author says what you are paraphrasing, or at which your own idea occurred to you. Use the Chicago Manual of Style for your format. Copy-paste your footnote, changing the page numbers each time, so that you have a complete

footnote attached to each numbered note you take. Failure to cite after a note is plagiarism and will result in automatic failure of this course.

5. Go on. Continue this process until you make it through each of your sources.

6. Edit. You must submit a minimum of 3 pages of notes and a maximum of 4 pages of notes for this assignment. The format is the same as last time: Times New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced. If you submit less than three pages or more than four pages, we will not read your work, and you will automatically fail this assignment. Go through your notes and condense them, deleting points that seem less important or that you ended up making more than one time. Prioritize notes that relate to your own interests and observations about the architecture (things that you already focused on in your Ekphrasis notes). The research notes may corroborate or contradict your own observations, but if they address the same things that caught your attention, you should keep them.