Research Papers

I love to write and I love to research, but I hate to write research papers. I'm not sure what my hang-up is with writing for academia. I guess it's that I feel like my creativity is squelched by end notes and abstracts. At any rate, research papers are an almost inescapable part of university life; here are a few resources that I have found helpful:

Easy Bib: Why am I always "a day late and a dollar short?" My pal introduced me to this site just as we were completing our papers. It's a free service that create your works cited page. You have to enter in all the vital information, of course (like titles, authors, dates, etc.), but Easy Bib automatically sets up your entry in the correct style and will alphabetize all your entries. Sweet!

Tips for APA format: Having only written in MLA style in the past, I had to do a little research about APA style. The OWL at Purdue website was the one place that I kept coming back to when I had questions, and it answered them all for me.

The Elements of Style is a must-have book for any writer. This book focuses on the fundamentals rather than forms of writing. Since there is more to a research paper than making sure you have your title page formatted correctly, Elements of Style is a great resource to help professionalize your writing.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition
is another must-have book for every college student's bookshelf. If you're required to use APA format as I was, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association would be a great resource to have as well.