• Use a title page (not numbered) but do not provide other preliminary pages. The title page should contain, as a minimum, your full name, the title of the assignment, the date it is due, the school name, course name, and the course number (LIS 386.13).
  
  
• Use double spacing for all text and single spacing for references and other items as encouraged on page 336.
  
  
• Use italics instead of underlining in the text and italics and hanging indents in the references list as discussed on page 335.
  
  
• Number all pages beginning with 1 after the title page. Page headers and numbers go on the top right side of each page within the top 1 inch margin. Notes, the title page, references, figures, and appendixes do not count toward page limits. With the flexibility of the font and pitch allowed, you should have no difficulty meeting page limits of each assignment.
  
  
• Use APA standards for notes and references. Properly cited secondary references may be used for this course. Certain assignments will demand the use of notes (either footnotes or endnotes) and references. It is particularly important in professional schools such as the GSLIS that notes and references be impeccably done. Please use APA standards. There are other standard bibliographic and note formats--for example, in engineering and law--, but social scientists and policy analysts ordinarily use the APA style. Familiarity with standard formats is essential for understanding others' work and for preparing submissions to journals, professional conferences, and the like. The sixth edition of Blanche Ellsworth's English Simplified is on reserve at the Perry-Castañeda Library; it is an excellent resource for information on notes, grammar, punctuation, and so forth. In addition, you may also consult "A Guide for Writing Research Papers" by Charles Darling (2000), which is a useful if non-canonical source.
  
  
• Use APA standards for electronic references. Electronic references should be prepared according to Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA 2000).
  
  
• Submit formal essays as a Microsoft Word email attachment to the class emailbox unless otherwise specified in the assignment instructions.

It is imperative that you proofread your work thoroughly and be precise in editing it. It is often helpful to have someone else read your writing, both to eliminate errors and to increase clarity. Use the spell checker in your wordprocessor to review your documents, but be aware that spell-checking dictionaries: do not include most proper nouns, including names; omit most technical terms; include very few foreign words and phrases; and cannot identify such errors as writing "the" instead of "them" or using homophones, e.g., writing "there" instead of "their."

If you have any questions about these standards, please ask. We will be pleased to discuss them with you at any time.

Accomplishing this work would be is very tedious without software help. If no wordprocessor is available to you at home, please consult with the staff of the GSLIS Lab on the fourth floor of the Sánchez Building. You are encouraged to purchase MS Office 2000 for this course. It is available at a greatly reduced student-only price from the Campus Computer Store (registered UT-Austin students anywhere--not just those in Austin--are eligible to purchase items from this store).

Since the production of professional-level written work is one of the aims of the class, we will read and edit your work as the editor of a professional journal or the moderator of a technical session at a professional conference would. The reminders below will help you prepare professional-level written work appropriate to any situation.

1. Use formal, academic prose.  Avoid colloquial language, e.g., *you know?*  It is essential in graduate work and in professional communication to avoid failures in diction -- be serious and academic when called for, be informal and relaxed when called for, and be everything in between as necessary.  For this course, avoid words and phrases such as "agenda," "problem with," "deal with," "handle," "window of," "goes into," "broken down into," "viable," and "option."

2. Avoid clichés.  They are vague, *fail to "push the envelope," and do not provide "relevant input."*

3. Avoid computer technospeak like "input," "feedback," or "processing information" except when using such terms in specific technical ways; similarly avoid using “content” as a noun.

4. Do not use the term "relevant" except in its information retrieval sense.  Ordinarily, it is a vague and colloquial cliché, but it also has a strict technical meaning in Library and Information Studies.

5. Do not use "quality" as an adjective; it is vague, a cliché, and colloquial.  Instead use "high-quality," "excellent," "superior," or whatever more formal phrase you deem appropriate.

6. Study the APA style convention for the proper use of ellipsis *. . . .*

7. Avoid using the terms "objective" and "subjective" in their evidentiary senses; these terms entail major philosophical, epistemological controversy.  Avoid terms such as "facts," "factual," "proven," and related constructions for similar reasons.

8. Avoid contractions.  *Don't* use them.

9. It is unacceptable to use "/" in prose, except in fractions and in the construction "and/or". For example, say "she or he" rather than "s/he."

10. Be circumspect in using the term "this," especially in the beginning of a sentence.  *THIS *is often a problem because the referent is unclear.  Pay strict attention to providing clear referents for all pronouns.  Especially ensure that pronouns and their referents agree in number; i.e., "each person went to their home" is a poor construction because "each" is a singular form, as is the noun "person," while "their" is a plural form.  Therefore, either the referent or the pronoun must change in number.

11. The use of "if" ordinarily takes the subjunctive mood, e.g., "If he were [not "was"] only taller."

12. Put "only" in its appropriate place, near the verb if it modifies the verb and near the noun if it modifies the noun.  For example,  it is appropriate in spoken English to say that "he only goes to Antone's" when you mean that "the only place he frequents is Antone's."  In written English, however, the sentence should read "he goes only to Antone's."

13. Do not confuse possessive, plural, or contracted forms, especially of pronouns.  *Its* bad.

14. Do not confuse "affect" and "effect," "compliment" and "complement," or "principle" and "principal." If you do, readers will not *complement* your work or *it's* *principle* *affect* on them.

15. Avoid misplaced modifiers; e.g., it is inappropriate to write the following sentence:  "As someone interested in the history of Mesoamerica, it was important for me to attend the lecture."  The sentence is inappropriate because the phrase "As someone interested in the history of Mesoamerica" is meant to modify the next immediate word, which should then, obviously, be both a person and the subject of the sentence.  It should modify the word "I" by preceding it immediately.  One good alternative for the sentence is:  "As someone interested in the history of Mesoamerica, I was especially eager to attend the lecture."

16. Avoid use of the terms "valid," "parameter," "bias," "reliability," and "paradigm," except in limited technical ways.  These are important terms and should be used with care and precision.

17. Remember that the words "data," "media," "criteria," "strata," and "phenomena" are all PLURAL forms.  They *TAKES* plural verbs.  If you use any of these plural forms in a singular construction, e.g., "the data is," you will make the instructor very unhappy :-(.

18. "Number," "many," and "fewer" are used with plural nouns (a number of horses, many horses, and fewer horses); "amount," "much," and "less" are used with singular nouns (an amount of hydrogen, much hydrogen, and less hydrogen).  Another useful way to make this distinction is to recall that "many" is used for countable nouns, while "much" is used for uncountable nouns. Another example: In the Austin area, at least, upscale grocery stores attempt to appeal to the knowledgeable by having express lines limited to "10 items or fewer" while lower-scale groceries limit their express lines to "10 items or less."

19. *The passive voice should generally not be used.*

20. "Between" is ordinarily used with two alternatives, while "among" is used with three or more.

21. Generally avoid the use of honorifics such as Mister, Doctor, Ms., etc. when referring to persons in your paper, especially when citing their written work.  Use last names and dates as appropriate.

22. "Cite" is a verb, "citation" is a noun; similarly, "quote" is a verb, "quotation" is a noun.

23. *PROFREAD!  PROOFREED!  PROOOFREAD!*

24. Use double quotation marks (“abc.”), not single quotation marks (‘xyz.’), as a matter of course.  Single quotation marks are to be used only to indicate quotations within quotations.

25. As because.

26. Use "about" instead of the tortured locution "as to."

27. In a course studying public policy, the term "issue" is used in a technical way to identify sources of public controversy or dissensus.  Please use the term to refer to topics about which there is substantial public disagreement, NOT synonymously with general terms such as "area," "topic," or the like.

SOME EDITING CONVENTIONS FOR STUDENT PAPERS

The following are marks that the instructor and/or TA may use in grading your papers for this course.

Symbol	Meaning
#	number OR insert a space (context will help you decipher its meaning)
AWK	awkward (and usually compromises clarity as well)
block	make into a block quotation without external quotation marks; do so with quotations 4 lines
caps	capitalize
COLLOQ	colloquial and to be avoided
dB	database
j	journal
lc	make into lower case
lib'ship	librarianship
org, org’l	organization, organizational
Q	question
REF?	what is the referent of this pronoun?  to what or whom does it refer?
w/	with
w.c.?	word choice?

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association. (1994). Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

American Psychological Association. (January 10, 2001). Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved 2001 May 6 from the World-Wide Web: http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html

Darling, Charles (January 10, 2000). A Guide for Writing Research Papers based on Styles Recommended by The American Psychological Association. Hartford, CT: Author. Retrieved 2001 May 6 from the World-Wide Web: http://webster.commnet.edu/apa/apa_index.htm

Wolcott, Harry F. (1990). Writing Up Qualitative Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.