1500 words plus. You Need At Least Six Scholarly Sources Minimum. The final draft of your research paper should have a minimum of six (6) cited sources (more is better) and presented in strict APA format (per the APA Sixth Edition style manual; double-spaced, in alphabetical order and with the required hanging indents). The minimum six required scholarly PRIMARY sources (you are strongly encouraged to find, use, and cite additional sources; better essays have 10 or more) should include:
at least 1 scholarly, non-fiction book;
at least 2 scholarly websites;
at least 3 scholarly articles from professional, peer-reviewed journals derived/found in paper (hardcopy) or online (electronic-published) formats. Required Diversity in Source Origins. You may not draw more than two sources from the same journal, author(s) or website. Limits on Quotable Material. You are limited in the amounts of verbatim quoted material you are allowed to include. You are being evaluated on how well you write, construct and present an argument, and by the overall quality of your writing. You may include verbatim quotations from personal correspondence (e.g., interviews, emails) as part of your overall quotation limits. The mission-critical requirement here is that YOU MUST WRITE this paper, not merely assemble a series of salient quotations and expressive commentary from your sources. Limit your quotes to include empirical, observable facts, statistics, quantitative and qualitative data, not (even well-stated) opinions by other authors. Moreover, no more than 10% of your paper (not to exceed 150 words) can be direct quotes. Also, avoid quoting unsupported suppositions, assumptions, assertions, speculations, conjecture, musings, interpretations, and cherry-picked facts, concepts or ideas simply presented/repeated from other people’s potentially biased, confounded, unverified, unproved, unreliable statements. APA Note: In-text citations for quoted sources must also contain the page or paragraph number where that quote is to be found, retrieved, and verified. Directly quoted sources not specifying page or paragraph numbers are considered incorrect. Additional Paper Design Considerations. You may (or may not) choose to use sub-headers to break up your pages of text. Unlike other courses—the use of charts/graphs, tables/figures, pictures, pictographs, diagrams, photos, illustrations, or other information graphics is always encouraged A picture indeed may say ten-thousand words (original Chinese aphorism). However, graphics used must be properly labeled and (of course) fully attributed in APA source notation and standard, professional technical writing conventions.
