Syllabus Supplement
Term
Paper Guide

The Term Paper must meet the following requirements. I will not read or grade
the paper unless it meets these requirements.
Minimum length is 3,000
words.
For History of Philosophy (Ancient and Medieval or Modern) the topic should be a philosopher or
philosophical position from among those that we discuss in the course. You can
research aspects of the philosopher's life, or thought.
A minimum of three references should be used for research. The textbook can be
one of the references. If web sites are used as references they can be included
as links in the paper. Avoid plagiarism!
Plagiarized papers will receive an F which would mean the best possible grade
that could be earned for the course would be a C.
Graphics can be included but do not change the minimum word length.
The paper must be turned in via e-mail. This is necessary since I check each
paper for plagiarism.
The paper can emailed either as a Word attachment or pasted into your email
message itself. Note that if you are using an email system such as hotmail the
entire paper might not be sent in the text of an email message if there is a
limit on the size of the message that can be sent. There is no requirement
concerning the mechanics of the paper. You are encouraged to use your imagination! If you are
interested in suggested ways to reference materials on line you can look at this
MLA guide. However, I prefer to have a
"live" link myself. Using the web for research is still so new that
conventions do not seem adequately established. They may never be!
Here are some of my thoughts on how you can write a
great term paper.