Interdisciplinary Research Manual - Units.muohio.edu

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extent possible, you should develop that understanding, probe its implications (both for
theory and for action), and apply it. When you reach the limits of what you can do
yourself in this project, feel free to speculate on possible additional implications or
identify potential applications. See if you can come up with recommendations for further
development, implications, and applications, including suggestions of principles or
procedures to follow and caveats regarding what to avoid in carrying out that additional
work.
After doing as much as time permits to improve the completeness and integration
of your project, the next task is to insert, revise, or expand transitions. Check the flow of
ideas throughout the project, adding transitions between paragraphs as needed. Since you
wrote chapters separately and without full knowledge of the whole project of which they
would become parts, pay particular attention to the beginning and end of each chapter.
Are readers sufficiently apprised at the beginning of what is covered in the chapter? Have
you explained, either at the beginning or end of each chapter, how it fits into the project
as a whole? And have you provided transition at the end of each chapter, or
foreshadowing within the chapter, so that readers can anticipate where you are headed in
the next chapter? Then turn your attention to the sections of each chapter, making sure
that there is sufficient transition, explicit or implicit, from one section to the next; as with
chapters, readers should start each new section with some sense of why it’s there and how
it relates to the section they just finished.
If you discover that some of your paragraphs are too long (let’s say, more than
two-thirds of a page long), then you need to make a conscious effort to balance length
and coherence in breaking them into paragraphs of more appropriate length. Find a place
to break up a too-long paragraph that gives both shorter paragraphs a different
substantive focus while leaving them roughly comparable in length.
The last task before handing in your project to be duplicated and bound is to
prepare the pages that precede and follow the body of the project (see the next section of
the Research Manual entitled “Outside the Body of the Project”). As you prepare those
pages, remember that potential readers will form a first impression of the body of your
project from the pages that precede it, much as you form first impressions of people you
meet from the clothes they wear. It is pointless to sink months into producing a high
quality project, only to turn away readers because of a sloppy abstract, for example. Your
challenge is to persuade prospective readers, especially professionals for whom you were
writing, to devote their scarce time to reading a lengthy undergraduate project. If the
cover doesn’t catch their eye, if the title doesn’t draw them in, if the abstract and then the
table of contents do not appear to reflect thorough scholarship and careful attention to
detail, or if the preface is amateurish, then they will never find out how good the body of
your project is because they will never read it. Dress your project as carefully as you
would dress for a professional job interview. Before you turn it in to be duplicated and
bound, carefully scrutinize its appearance one last time, much as you would check
yourself in the mirror before walking into the interview.
Outside the Body of the Project
The Cover. When you turn your attention from the body of your project to the
pages that surround it, you need to shift mental gears. You leave behind the challenge of
making your argument credible to confront the challenge getting it read. You leave the