2. Your paper needs an introduction that does more than specify the topic.  What do you want to know about the topic and why is it worth knowing?  What thesis will you argue or what point will you make that goes beyond the simple detailing of facts.

3. Having described and unpacked your point and thesis, indicate how is the paper organized so as to argue this thesis.  It makes it much easier on the reader if you make clear where the argument is heading and why, to make the desired point, you have organized things the way you did.

4. Conclude with conclusions, not simply a summary of what you have said but a clear depiction of what we now know and why it is worth knowing.  This probably means rephrasing the argument you indicated as you thesis in the beginning but now, with all the facts in hand, completing unpacking and explaining the significance of that thesis.

5.  Cite your sources throughout the paper, even where you do not directly quote from some other author’s work.  If you present historical facts, indicate where you got them.  If you express a judgment that is not original, you need to indicate who first thought it up.

6. Refrain from using long citations of secondary studies.  Rephrase these things in your own words and cite to the original source.  The idea here is for me to grade your writing and thinking, not that of published scholars.

7. Paragraphs should almost never be more than half a page long.  Paragraphs should express and unpack a single idea.  Longer ones almost always turn out to be ungainly: diverse and poorly organized.

8.  You need a full and carefully organized bibliography at the end, even if you only used one or two books.

9. Number pages.  This gives the reader a general sense of where he or she is in the argument and, from the perspective of grading, makes it much easier, in comments at the end, to refer back to specific problems.

10.  Use standard margins (1 inch all around), a regular font size (normally, 12 point), and a straight, clear font intended for long documents (Times or something like it).  Double space.

11.  Proofread and then proofread again, looking not only for obvious errors, such as in spelling, but for clumsy uses of language, for unclear sentences or paragraphs, and for words that do not really mean what you are using them to say.  Since you will amost certainly believe that everything you have written is clear and correct, it is helpful to find some brutally honest friend to read your work for you.  Or bring a draft by for me to check.  But, in the final analysis, you must be able to read your own work critically and, even if you thought it was done, to rewrite and rewrite again.

12.  Acomplishing all of these things requires having a pretty complete draft done no later than a week before the due date.  Editing and correcting require time and distance from what you wrote and so will take at least a week, an hour or so each day.  It is close to a certainty that, without regard for how much research you have done and how much you have learned, if you do the majority of your writing the night before the paper is due, you will not get a very good grade.