ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS:  PLAGARISM IS A VIOLATION OF UNIVERSITY POLICY ON STUDENT CONDUCT.  Plagarism is the use of another person's work without attribution of the source.  For example, if you copy more than a few words, you must place quotation marks around the material copied and recognize the source.   Otherwise, you are taking someone else's work and claiming it as your own.  In addition, if you use the ideas of someone else which are not considered common general knowledge, even though you may not directly quote verbatium, you must also cite the source.  Failure to cite sources may constitute cheating and result in a grade of zero on the paper in question and failure in the course.  If you have questions regarding quotation or citation, you should contact me by phone or email, or talk to another faculty member within the University.

General Guides

General guide for all students.  Grammar and syntax are important.  Your papers should be free of misspelled words and incorrect sentence structure.  Even a short paper should be based on some type of outline which guides the writer as he or she writes.  There should be an introduction, a body, and some type of conclusion or summary.  Longer papers should have headings to help organize the material and assist the reader in following the points being made.

Organization.  A paper should have a title page on which is displayed the title of the paper, the course for which it was prepared, semester, year and so forth, as well as the name of the writer.  The title page is followed by the body of the paper.  Only very long papers need a contents page of any type.  If footnotes and/or bibliography are used, they should follow the body of the paper.  Should an appendix be used, it normally comes last (only rarely would most of you use one).

Format.  Papers should be prepared using the Times New Roman or Times Roman font, 11  point size.  Margins should be one and one-fourth inches on the top and left margin, and one inch on the right and bottom margin.  Spacing should be double space unless otherwise specified in class.  Title and headings should be bold print.  Primary headings are centered, secondary headings are flush with the left margin.  Both these headings should be on line by themselves with a space above and below them.   Additional headings if used would be as follows:  Third level headings are flush left followed by a period with text following; additional headings are indented and numbered 1, 2, 3, etc with text following.  Most students typically use only primary and secondary headings. Consult with me if you need further guidance on formatting a paper.

Quoted material of more than 5 lines should be single spaced and indented 5 spaces from the left margin and 5 spaces from the right margin.  Citation is required after the quotation.

The general format I request you  use for notes and bibliography follows.  Notes within the body of a paper should be inserted where they are needed in the text.  Example:  Some authorities note that the Supreme Court is "fuzzy" on the issue of takings and the standard to be applied (Rosenbloom, 1989:  12).  The citation for Rosenbloom would then be in the bibliography at the end of the paper.  Example:   Rosenbloom, David (1989).  "The Supreme Court and Takings," Public Administration Review 34, 2 (Fall):  10-24.  The number 34 refers to volume, and the number 2 is the issue number of the specific publication. [If there is no issue, omit it.] A weekly or monthy periodical might have a date like August 12, 1998.  It would be placed in parenthesis followed by a colon and then the inclusive pages of the article.   Citation within the text is the same as noted above.

Example of a book bibliography citation:  Rosenbloom, David (1997).  Public Administration and the Law. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:  Prentice Hall, Inc.

A journal citation:   Rosenbloom, David (1989).  "The Supreme Court and Takings," Public Administration Review 34, 2 (Fall):  10-24.

A magazine article:  Smith, John (1998).  "The Case for City Annexation," Governing 23, 4 (May):  33-44.

A weekly magazine:   Smith, Jane (1998).  "The Fed's Strike Out," Time Magazine 78 (June 10):  56.

Internet addresses can be difficult.  Generally, we will use the following.   Cite the homepage source of the address, followed by the specific page title you are using  then the http address. Here is an example using my homepage:

Town Hall, "Teaching and Learning on the Web-Internet Links and Course Materials by Charlie Tyer," http://people.cas.sc.edu/tyer/     If you were citing a specific page, such as Study Questions, you would add after the internet homepage address, "see Study Questions" , page 4 html.   There is not yet a standard widely accepted for internet citations so if you find one, let me know.  Otherwise we will try to use simple rules such as this one.   If you have questions, email me with them giving me the internet address you have a question about.

If you need to use footnotes to add explanatory material, you should use superscript in the text to indicate a footnote and then place the note at the end of the body of the paper in a section called Footnotes.

Grading and Style

Style will have an impact on the grade of a paper.  For undergraduates, between 5 and 9 misspelled words will result in a 10 point deduction.   Ten or more misspelled words will result in 15 points being deducted.  Poor sentence structure, weak syntax, etc. will also result in point loss--between 5 and 9 such instances will result in a 10 point loss. More than 10 errors will result in a minimum of 15 points deducted from the paper's grade.  Excessively high error rates may receive additional penalty up to and including a zero on the paper.

Graduate students are held to a higher standard.  Five or more errors in spelling or syntax may result in the paper being returned for revision at the discretion of the instructor and time permitting.  A letter grade penalty will be levied on the revised paper if it is returned.  A revised paper that still contains five or more errors will not be counted and a grade of zero will be earned. Papers that are not returned for revision are graded based on both substantive content and style.   Thus, style, or syntax, is a factor in determining the grade on a paper, and the final grade in a course.  Graduate students are expected to be able to communicate well in writing!