POLI 308 US Presidency

Citation Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize you with some of the basics of research and the citation formats required for a formal scholarly paper. This is the type of thing you’ll be doing a lot of during your time at VCU. It is absolutely critical for your success as a student to learn some of these basics. It’s even more critical for you to learn these skills now while you’re in college. When you’re out in the world, either in business or government, you’ll start your career in an entry-level job. Your job will likely depend on making sure your boss has the information your boss wants. That means making sure your boss has high quality information from high quality sources, and your boss will also want to know exactly where you found that information: what are your sources? That way your boss can judge the quality of the information and get more information if the boss wants more. The bottom line is this: in college and in your job, the quality of your work is dependent on the quality of your information, and the only way your teacher or boss can judge that is if you make it absolutely clear where you found that information. Remember this: All information available to you is not equal in quality and all sources of information available to you are not equal in quality. That is especially true of the Internet.

Think of it this way: Your boss needs to make a presentation to their boss. They will make this presentation relying on the research that they asked you to do. Your boss’s boss may interrupt your boss in the middle of the presentation and say: “Hey, what you just said. I find that fascinating. Where did you get that information?” If your boss looks at your paper and can’t find out where the information came from, they have to say: “I don’t know.” Then your boss’s boss says: “You just told me something and you don’t even know how you know this? Did you find it in a scholarly article or on AM radio? Is this information based on work done by a team of researchers over 30 years or is this something you read on Twitter? Did you make it up? You’re fired.” What you want and what your boss wants and what your boss’s boss wants is this:

· “That’s fascinating. Where did you find that information?”

· “Footnote nine. It’s a report by the Department of Agriculture from 1979. Page 74. I can send you a copy of it.”

Then you all get raises and promotions! (Maybe).

In short, you need to learn how to cite information correctly now. If you don’t take this seriously while you’re in college, you are likely to get a C on a paper. If you don’t take this seriously when you are out of college in your job, your boss will send you home; you’re fired.

The assignment is simple:

· Write one paragraph of your paper or one paragraph related to your paper topic and hand it in to me by the date on the syllabus for this assignment (weeks before the full paper is due). This paragraph needs proper citations (footnote or endnote or parenthetical) and a bibliography.

· The point is to learn the citation and bibliographic style before you turn in the full paper.

· Use three sources

o One book that you found in the library.

o One peer-reviewed journal

o One web site

· You must cite the book twice in the paragraph (because there are different formats for a first citation and then all subsequent citations).

· You must cite the refereed article twice in the paragraph (because there are different formats for a first citation and then all subsequent citations).

· You must cite the web site twice in the paragraph (because there are different formats for a first citation and then all subsequent citations; I won’t be too nitpicky on this because the standard format here is very flexible; lots of ways of doing this are accepted).

· Use any standard form is acceptable (MLA, APA, Chicago). I will suggest Chicago Manual of Style as a guideline because its website has the easiest guide for how to do citations and a bibliography.

· Here’s the catch: you must hand in two versions of the paragraph:

o One will use footnotes or endnotes as the citation method

o One will use parenthetical references as the citation

· Nitpicky stuff

o Use one-inch margins

o Double space the paragraph

o Single space the footnotes

o Use 11-point font for everything and you can probably limit it to one page.

o Have a header like the header on the examples I provide

I’ve used footnotes in the example for no particular reason. You can use endnotes, but footnotes will save paper. The format for footnotes and endnotes is the same. The difference is where the citations go in the paper. Footnotes go at the bottom of the page. Endnotes go at the end of the document. You don’t need to practice both because most word processing programs allow you to convert endnotes to footnotes and footnotes to end notes with one click. If you’d like to know how to do that on your program, play around with it, or ask me and I can show you.

The examples I provide:

I have done written sample paragraphs for you. These provide a template for what I want from you. Just click the links.

o Sample paragraph with footnotes

o Sample paragraph with parentheticals

o Sample Bibliography

As you can see, the point here is to give you some experience in citing material in different ways.

The assignment is worth 5% of your grade. It is a unique assignment because you will either get a 100 on the assignment or a zero.

The point of this is to make sure you get it right. For that reason, you will have multiple chances to turn in the assignment, as many as you need.

· The due date for the assignment is on the syllabus. You will turn in your two paragraphs and one bibliography. I will check it.

· If you’ve done it correctly, you get a 100. Woohoo.

· If not, I will mark it up, hand it back to you, and you will make your corrections, and hand it in again.

· If you’ve got it the second time, you get a 100. Woohoo!!

· If not, I will mark it up, hand it back, and you will make corrections, and turn it in again. We’ll keep this up until you’ve got the format down. In the end, everyone gets a 100.

· The final date for turning in the paragraph is on the syllabus as well. If you don’t have it right with that final version, you will get a zero.

· Do not wait until the last minute on your revision. Everyone who takes this assignment even half seriously will get a 100. The only people who will get zeros are those who make no effort. No effort should get you a zero.

Of course, if you have questions on this, come to office hours and say: “I have no idea what you’re talking about! What is this stuff!?! Who are you anyway?” I will walk you through all of it.

The Paragraph

The topic of the paragraph and the content of the paragraph should be based on your research topic. That just makes it easier. The paragraph doesn’t have to be one that will eventually be part of the paper. The first due date is at a point where you might just be starting to do research. That’s not a problem. Just get some basic information that you can use for citations. The connection to the final paper is not important. I’m not looking for a well-written theme or introductory paragraph that could be used for a larger research paper. The key parts here are the citations and the sources. Your paragraph is just about stating six facts that can be cited. I have sample paragraphs above of exactly what this should look like, but here is an example of how basic this can be. I’ll choose an example that won’t be something that anyone wants to choose. This paragraph won’t include actual citations or information because it is just to show you how basic this can be. This would be the parenthetical version.

Michigan and Pennsylvania are often considered to be “swing” states for presidential elections, states that may lean toward Democratic or Republican candidates (citation). Other analysts argue that they have been part of “blue wall” of states that reliably vote Democratic during presidential elections (citation). The picture is more complex that a simple categorization of each state as “swing” or “blue wall.” From the 2000 election through the 2020 election, the voting pattern in these two states shows significant shifts. In 2000 and 2004 (Bush vs. Gore; Bush vs. Kerry), the Democrat won each state by a relatively small margin: 5 percent and 6 percent in Michigan and 4 percent and 2 percent in Pennsylvania (citation). In 2008, Obama won both states by a larger margin: 14 percent in Michigan and 10% in Pennsylvania (citation). During the 2012 election, however, though victorious, Obama’s margin of victory was cut exactly in half in both states (citation). The 2016 election marks a drastic shift. In 2016 and 2020, the margin of victory (for Trump then Biden) was about 1 percent (citation).

That is basic.

For information how to find sources and anything else related to the research paper, see the research paper instructions linked to the syllabus.