1. Preparation

Agreement on Topic: The very first step in writing a term paper is to agree upon a topic with the respective lecturer - regardless of whether you choose from a list of provided topics or suggest a topic yourself. In this preliminary talk with your lecturer you should make sure to clarify the following points:

• the exact title of your term paper and the precise contentual definition
• which question(s) should be answered in the course of your paper?
• literature which has to be considered
• criteria of evaluation which your lecturer puts special emphasis on
• length, formatting and other formal aspects

It will save you a lot of worries and additional work if both parties are clear on these points from the start.

Development of Concept: When you have done all your research and are ready to put pen to paper, you should stop and write down in bullet points what concepts your term paper will cover and in what order you will do so - quite similar to the table of contents of your finished paper. To make sure that you are doing what your lecturer expects of your work and to avoid any unpleasant surprises when receiving your grade, you should then discuss this outline of your paper with your lecturer once more.

2. Formal Aspects

Title Page & Table of Contents: Each and every term paper should start with a title page and a table of contents. On the title page, you are required to specify: the title as arranged with your lecturer, your full name, your matriculation number, the field of study in which you write the paper, your postal address, your email address, your telephone number, the current semester, the name of your lecturer and the name of the lecture. These pieces of information are required to match your term paper with your exam registration and to make sure that you can be contacted if necessary. We have provided an example of a title page for reference here. Please keep in mind that this is only a suggestion which includes all the necessary information. The formatting, font size, font style, layout, etc. are all up to you.

The table of contents should include all headings of the first and second order with matching page numbers in a clear fashion. All major text processing programs (such as Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer) have automatic functions for creating tables of content - these are easier and faster to create and maintain than doing everything by hand.

Formatting: Although every lecturer has individual ideas about how pages and text should look precisely, there are some very general rules for scientific papers:

• font size between 10pt and 12pt
• margin at least 2.5cm to all sides
• paragraphs in fully justified format
• line spacing set to 1.5 lines, sometimes even 2 lines
• no underlining for headings - bold print and a larger font size are sufficient to mark something as a heading
• no double-page or double-side print

Make sure to use templates. This way, you can be certain that every kind of text you use in your term paper (paragraphs, headings of different orders, block quotes, etc.) is formatted consistently. Moreover, if you use templates, you can just modify the temlate instead of finding and adjusting every instance of text by hand.

Mistakes: By all means make no mistakes in grammar, orthography or punctuation. Especially in linguistic disciplines, this gives an extremely unfavourabe impression and will in case of doubt gain you the worse grade. Have your term paper proof-read by at least one person other than yourself - you are prone to overlook things in a text you already know so well.

Bibliographical References: Many lecturers find footnotes to be a disturbance in their flow of reading, which is why we recommend to use in-text citations. When you make a literal citation, please use the format (author's name year: page numer); when making analogous citations, please use the format (author's name year), as exemplified below:

To chart the representation of nation and book in these meta-media writings is to observe a representative instance of Todorov’s notion of genre change through “inversion” (Todorov 1976: 161) or perhaps of Moretti’s iteration of shared form at a given historical moment as a “diagram of forces” (Moretti 2005: 64). It is to encounter—again, in a still-preliminary form—the intimacy between social conflict and literary form (Moretti 2005).

The full bibliographical reference is then made at the end of the term paper in the bibliography.

Bibliography: When formatting your list of references, please do so in accordance with the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics, the Chicago Manual Style or the style sheet of the American Psychological Association. It is up to you which style of formatting you choose if your lecturer makes no other specification; just make sure that you format all references consistently and in completion. Do not mention references you have read but not used in the text.

Handing In: Hand in your term paper both as a hard copy and as an electronic copy via email. Do not hand in your your title page, table of contents, etc. as separate files. Merge them into a single file and choose a file name that allows your lecturer to identify it as yours.

Plagiarism: You have to attach a Plagiatserklärung to your paper, stating that your term paper consists of your work only and that all passages taken from different authors are marked as such.

3. Content

Sources: This is no general recommendation for writing scientific papers but a policy of the lecturers of our department: Try to avoid quoting web pages other than established e-journals (except, of course, if your research is involved with online phenomena in web pages). Do not try to pass off Wikipedia as a source!

Paragraphs: Split your body text up into paragraphs. A paragraph should comprise a single (larger) line of thought; thus, a new line of thought requires a new paragraph. A clear structure will make it easier for your reader to follow your explanations. A paragraph never consists of a single sentence!

Introduction: For the introduction, try to formulate in detail the basic question your term paper deals with and explain how you plan to tackle it, thus preparing the reader for the underlying argument structure they will have to follow. Moreover, a well-defined introduction will make it easier for you to write a good conclusion because you will already have research aim your findings can be connected to.
Try to set the context for your research topic, i.e. show to which major discipline it contributes or how it is set in the range of topics you dealt with in the respective lecture. Try to point out its relevance.

Main Part: Because you will construct your term paper using many different sources, the most important thing is to create a coherent text which allows the reader to easily follow your ideas and argumentations in spite of all the information coming from other authors. Establish all important terms and theories at the beginning of your main part so you can recur to them at a later point without having to interrupt your line of arguments with explanations. Moreover, you can keep your basic information part separate from your result part, allowing for conclusive connections between the two.

Conclusion: The conclusion should not be a mere recap of your term paper. Try to pinpoint your results with regard to the underlying question you formulated in the introduction. Offer a summary of the research success of your paper and give an outlook on questions which have been brought up by your term paper and have thus not been answered.