Short Papers

These papers will usually be less than a page long. Though a title would nice, there should be no separate title page. The title should only occur where the paper begins.

Typically, these papers do not need an introduction or a conclusion.

Papers should be typed, double-spaced, with an 11 or 12 point font.

Do not put your name anywhere on the front of the paper. Instead, fold the paper from left to right, and print your name in the upper corner. This allows me to grade each paper without knowing who the author is. (This instills a bit more fairness and objectivity into the process.)

If you use any quotes, please just include the author's last name and the page number in parentheses, after the quote. No need for any citation or reference, so long as the quote is from a class text or the coursepack. If in the very unlikely event that you happen to use some outside source, I'll need to know the bibliographical information. Follow the format for citations and references suggested below.

I stop reading when I reach the word limit.  I base the grade just on what I've read.

Longer Papers

Please provide a title page with the title, your name, the name of the course and the date. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the paper except on the title page. The title should also appear on the first page of the paper.  The title should be appropriate in tone and structure to a philosophy journal;  it should be descriptive of the paper; it should get the attention of the intended audience..

These papers typically do need a formal introduction and conclusion.  The introduction should provide a concise overview of the basic structure of the paper, including a thesis statement; it should make clear the relevance of the paper to the audience.  The conclusion indicate the most important aspects of the paper; it should draw good inferences from the preceding arguments that are pertinent to the thesis and should relate them back to the interests of the intended audience.

Papers should be typed, double-spaced, with an 11 or 12 point font.

Here's a format you can be sure I will be happy with as regards citations and references:  If you use any quotes, please just include the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page number in parentheses, after the quote.  Any of that information (other than the page number) that is not necessary to easily locate the source in the list of references can be left out of the parenthetical remark.  The list of references occurs at the end of the paper, on a new page, after the last page of text.  Sources are listed in alphabetical order by the authors last name.  Examples:

 
Block, N. (1978) "Troubles with Functionalism" Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I. Block (ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Searle, J. (1980) "Minds, Brains, and Programs" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 417-457.
 

Some Grammar Reminders

(1) Quotations:  Long quotes (more than a line) should be indented without quotation marks.  Shorter quotes can be kept in the main body of the text and should be indicated with (double) quotation marks.  (2) Punctuation: Periods and commas, generally, go within quotation marks. They, however, go outside parentheses (except when the parenthetical remark is a complete sentence). Semi-colons are used to set-off independent clauses, not dependent ones.  (3) One convention commonly followed in writing philosophy. When you are mentioning a sentence, word, or phrase--not using the sentence--then the sentence word or phrase should be set of by single quotation marks, and any punctuation should go outside the single-quote. Here's an example: The name 'Robert' has six letters.