A Manual For Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations by Kate L. Turabians

A Manual For Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations by Kate L. TurabiansKate L. Turabians's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations is the best guide on paper writing I have come across. As a graduate student I needed to write papers for my dissertation and teach in an advanced seminar. I was not happy with the advice I received from my college's faculty for writing my dissertations. I therefore purchased this book to get some guidance on this crucial aspect of my academic life.In The Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations, Turabians guides you through all of the stages of writing. There are sections covering the process of how to choose a topic, research, structuring your writing, addressing your audience, checking the correctness of your work, selecting a topic, setting up your research format, and submitting your paper. For the first step, choosing a topic, she advises using a database to gather data on many topics. She suggests that you look for topics you enjoy, know a lot about, or that you can learn about quickly. After you have collected enough information, you can start the process of selecting a topic, which is almost certainly the most difficult step of the whole process.Your next step in The Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations is researching for a topic. Turabians describes her experience as an editor with the National Science Foundation, which she says is a good source of research. Another source of research can be your research assistants, whom you can call or email.Part two of Turabians's 'A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations' is structuring your writing. It starts with a chapter on research design. Here she recommends that you use both research questionnaires and interview questions. You should also think about writing style, including paragraph structures, sentence structure, and what kind of layout you want your text to have. If you like to discuss something more than just the research, then this is the section for you.Your audience is an important part of your research paper. Turabian's guides you through this as well as grammar and punctuation. One tip that I particularly like is the suggestion that you make your title 'your target.' This tells the reader who your target is. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to addressing your audience.Disseminating your paper is the last step in The Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations. In this chapter, Turabians advocates conducting a preliminary survey of your audience. A sample research questionnaire will help you evaluate who is most likely to be interested in your research and who will be most likely to be able to understand it. From here you can determine whether or not the style of the presentation will be appropriate for the audience.After cond ucting a survey, the last step in the book is to check your work. Turabians acknowledges that sometimes the wrong changes may be necessary in order to prepare your paper properly. This is where another chapter comes in, where Turabians reviews the information you gathered for a research questionnaire, including possible questions, how to design the actual questionnaire, and how to evaluate it.Overall, this Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Disseminated Dissertations is great. It is very simple and straightforward. The short chapters are broken down in easy to understand steps so that you can easily follow them. It's easy to pick up and start reading from a book that contains clear descriptions of each step.