A-manual-for-writers-of-research-papers-theses-and-dissertations

6.2.3 Identify Key Terms Expressing Concepts That Unite the Report and Distinguish Its Parts6.2.4 Use Key Terms to Create Subheads That Uniquely Identify Each Section6.2.5 Order Your Reasons6.2.6 Make Your Order Clear with Transitional Words6.2.7 Sketch a Brief Introduction to Each Section and Subsection6.2.8 For Each Section, Sketch in Evidence, Acknowledgments, Warrants, and Summaries6.2.9 Sketch a Working Conclusion6.3 File Away LeftoversOnce you assemble your argument, you might be ready to draft it. But experienced writersknow that the time they invest in planning a draft more than pays off when they write it. Todraft effectively, though, you need more than just the elements of a sound argument; you needa plan to assemble them into a coherent one. Some plans, however, are better than others.6.1 Avoid Unhelpful PlansAvoid certain approaches.1. Do not organize your report as a narrative of your project, especially not as a mysterystory, with your claim revealed at the end. Few readers care what you found first, thenproblems you overcame, then leads you pursued, on and on to the end. You see signs ofthat in language like The first issue was . . ., Then I compared. . . . Finally I conclude.2. Do not patch together a series of quotations, summaries of sources, or downloads fromthe Web. Teachers want to see your thinking, not that of others. They especially dislikereports that read like a collage of Web screens. Do that, and you'll seem not only anamateur but worse, possibly a plagiarist (see 7.9).3. Do not mechanically organize your report around the terms of your assignment or topic.If your assignment lists issues to cover, don't think you must address them in the ordergiven. If you were asked or you decide to compare and contrast Freud's and Jung'sanalyses of the imagination, you would not have to organize your report in two parts, thefirst on Freud, the second on Jung. It would be more productive to break those two bigtopics into their parts, then organize your report around them (for more on this, see 6.2.5–