Marsden – term paper and grammar guidelines
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General instructions for term papers
Writing is correctly considered to be a reflection of your thinking process and your carefulness. You will be judged
throughout your life and career on how well you are able to express yourself in writing, and how the writing is
presented (i.e., grammar, spelling, format). (Incidentally, but of equal importance, you will be evaluated throughout
life on your ability to follow instructions!) Do not underestimate the importance of good writing.
You are blessed with access to computers - don’t underestimate this advantage, or under-utilize it. Word processors
give you infinite flexibility to change your text, reformat, correct, and reorganize, in addition to giving you tools such
as spell-checkers and thesauri - use them! You will be graded on presentation (grammar, spelling, format) as well as
content and organization. Specifically:
 I will take points off for spelling errors. Spell-checkers leave no excuse for this.
 I will take points off for mistakes (such as the write word in the wrong plaice) that make it obvious that you have
not proof-read your final copy. Lack of proof reading suggests that you do not value your work or my time.
Items to watch out for (also see “Grammar tips” at the end):
Capital letters. Don’t use them at random; if you capitalize words in a title, for example, capitalize all of them
(except conjunctions and prepositions), do not just randomly capitalize a few. Use capitals for names such as
James Bay (not James bay); but a series of lakes or rivers are “lakes Michigan and Ontario” or “the LaPlatte and
Lamoille rivers”. In fisheries, common names of fish are NOT capitalized. Genus names are always capitalized,
species names are not. Thus, yellow perch is Perca flavescens (note use of italics)
Commas. Many people tend to write first, then scatter commas at random across the text to make it look good. If
you are uncertain about where commas should be used, review a grammar book, seek assistance from the
Writing Center, or read the paper out loud, pausing at the commas, and see if it sounds right.
Consistency. If you italicize and indent one sub-heading, do it to all sub-headings at that level.
Style. Be very careful with flowery or dramatic language. It sounds great in popular articles and magazines, but it’s
very difficult to do well (it just looks easy). Better to stick with somewhat drier, factual information than lose
your reader with metaphors.
Length
Scientific writing should be concise, precise, and to the point. Verbosity is unnecessary except in novels, and is not
tolerated in scientific writing. Your papers should be approximately 5 pages, not including reference material.
Organization
There are four parts to writing: (i) idea generation and synthesis, (ii) fermentation of ideas and restructuring of
thoughts (outlining), (iii) getting words on paper (the rough draft), and (iv) fine tuning (proofing and editing).
Organize your thoughts, concepts, and information before you begin to write. Don’t underestimate the value of
outlines. Writing an outline, no matter how rough, can be invaluable both for arranging your ideas in a logical order,
and for ensuring that you have not left any important points out. Use section and even subsection headings to set off
portions of the text if you like - these can be of particular use to the reader (but don’t overdo them).
Format
Text should be in 12 pitch, and double-spaced (I must have room to scribble notes)
Use 1” margins all around
Number the pages, and staple them together.
Backup your files frequently. Do not keep your backup in the same physical place as the original.
Marsden – term paper and grammar guidelines
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The general format for your paper should be as follows:
Title: short, succinct, informative, and grammatically correct (though it need not be a complete sentence)
Introduction: Include a statement of the issue or topic, some background (with literature citations) to demonstrate
the importance of the topic, and the major objectives of the paper. This is the section which puts your reader in
perspective about the topic, and (if you do it right, and don’t ramble) gets them interested in reading the rest of the
paper.
Body of text: The main thesis of your paper is presented here. Information from sources should be integrated and
discussed. Try not to discuss papers one by one (“Smith said this. Jones said that. Borzoi said something else.”),
but rather try to summarize across sources to draw important conclusions common to all the work in a particular
area. After stating the general conclusions, you can point out differences of opinion, or alternative hypotheses, made
by particular authors.
Conclusions: In this section you should summarize the important findings of your literature review. You should
concisely and succinctly present the salient features of your paper to the reader.
Literature Cited: You should use at least 3 articles from the original literature (not including text-books, though you
may want to draw information from these also). All the facts in the paper that cannot be classed as “common
knowledge” should be supported by citations from the literature. When you cite a reference, list the author(s) and
year of publication in parentheses at the end of the sentence (Smith 2001). If there are two authors, list them both
(Smith and Jones 1999), but for more than two, use “et al.”, which means “and others” (Ferdinand et al. 2000).
Only the articles that are actually cited in the paper should be included in the literature cited section. The World
Wide Web is an acceptable source from which to find information, but use it in addition to the 3 articles from text
sources.
Journal articles:
Danehy, R. J., N. H. Ringler, and J. E. Gannon. 1991. Influence of nearshore structure on growth and diets of
yellow perch (Perca flavescens) and white perch (Morone americana) in Mexico Bay, Lake Ontario. J.
Great Lakes Res. 17:183-193.
Chapter in a book:
Leach, J. H. 1993. Impacts of the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) on water quality and fish spawning reefs in
western Lake Erie. In: T. F. Nalepa and D. Schloesser, eds. Zebra mussels: biology, impacts, and control.
Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL.
Book:
Strunk, W. Jr., and E. B. White. 1979. The Elements of Style. MacMillan Publishing Co, New York, NY.
Web site:
Provide the URL, and any title, author, and publication date information that is available.
If you are citing a source that was cited in a paper you read, but you have not read the original source, then the
correct citation is “the world is round (Columbus 1492, cited by Jones 2002)”; you do not list, in this example,
Columbus in your literature cited section. This usage avoids propagation of error in the scientific literature; after all,
Jones may have misunderstood Columbus’ paper in 1492, and you have not read Columbus to make sure that Jones
was correct.
Helpful sources for writing:
For scientific articles, many journals such as the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society and the Canadian
Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, give specific guidelines for form, content, citations, use of scientific units,
spelling of scientific words, etc. These are found in the “Guide to authors”, usually in the first issue of a given year.
Strunk, W. Jr., and E. B. White. 1979. The Elements of Style. MacMillan Publishing Co, New York, NY.
Also note that the Writing Center at the Living and Learning Center on campus offers free tutoring on writing - I
urge you to use this resource, particularly if you are revising a paper which received a poor grade.
Marsden – term paper and grammar guidelines
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Grammar and other points
These are just a few items of grammar or word use that I see frequently abused.
Define terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader, and spell out all acronyms the first time you use them.
When referring to a species, give the scientific (Latin) name the first time you mention it, thereafter use only the
common name. The genus is always capitalized, species is lowercase, both must be in italics or underlined.
Capital letters are frequently misused. Confine their use to proper names and beginnings of sentences. Random
capitals within a sentence is a sure sign of absence of proof-reading.
Trailing comparisons: if you use a comparison word such as “more”, complete the comparison with “than”
e.g., “Lowland rivers tend to be more turbid than headwater streams”
Similarly, use of ‘-er words (greater, lesser) requires a comparison. “Europeans are taller” is not a complete
sentence.
Specify the subject of your sentence, particularly at the beginning of a paragraph.
not “These were the most likely to suffer mortality”
instead “The tagged fish were the most likely fish in the study population to suffer mortality”
better “Tagged fish had higher mortality rates than untagged fish.”
Start each paragraph with a good topic sentence. Let your reader know what this paragraph is going to talk about.
Subject and verb should agree (singular vs. plural); ‘none’ is a singular word: “None of us is perfect”, “ The pail of
frogs was heavy.”
Don’t confuse:
effect vs affect
its vs it's (it’s is always and only an abbreviation for “it is” or “it has” - the apostrophe is not possessive, as
in “Fred’s dog”, so you would write “its tail”)
like vs such as – “Many fish like sturgeon are benthic” is wrong (there are no other fish like sturgeon,
sturgeon are being used as an example)
they're vs their vs there
principal vs principle
presently vs currently - the first means soon, the second means now
lead (noun - heavy stuff), lead (verb - opposite of follow), led (verb, past tense of lead)
freshwater (adjective); fresh water (adjective and noun). Thus: freshwater fish live in fresh water
Any two words used together to modify a noun should be hyphenated: snow-covered mountain
Remember that data is a plural word, datum is the singular. “The data were analyzed.” not “The data was analyzed”
Beware of turning one word into two:
throughout, not through out
without, not with out
Punctuation
always put a space before an opening parenthesis, but not within the parentheses (like this)
use characters such as % for percent,  for degree, $ for dollars - that’s why word processors are so cool
p. is an abbreviation for ‘page’, pp. is an abbreviation for ‘pages’; sp. is one species, spp, is several within a genus
avoid the temptation to preach about the ills of mankind’s influence on the environment
avoid using esoteric words - they are more often misused than not
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In science writing, always use metric!
Et al. is an abbreviation for the Latin “et alia” meaning “and others”, used in citations such as “the paper by Smith et
al.”. Thus al. is an abbreviation and has a period after it.
In the text, do not describe figures or tables (“Figure 1 shows the relationship between fish length and weight”);
describe the data (“Fish tended to increase in weight linearly with increase in length (Figure 1)”).
“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and
writing an exact man.” -Francis Bacon