Home » Academics » Schools » School of Liberal Arts and Education » Music, Art & Design » Thomas Larose, Ph.D. » W.R.I.T.E.

A. The topic should be one you are interested in and one on which you have some opinions yourself.

1. Research is an important part of your preparation in terms of acquainting you with the ideas of historians, critics, and artists, but the paper should not be a mere resume of others' ideas.
2. The paper should present your own views and their bases.

B. Choose your topic carefully: some subjects are dead ends.

1. Avoid subjects for which little or no literature exists.
2. Avoid subjects for which all problems have already been settled.
3. Subjects about which there is a great deal of disagreement will usually allow you to come up with your own arguments and will give you the opportunity to try to prove or disprove the points of others.

C. Confer with your instructor.

1. Your instructor will be able to advise you of the profitability of a topic.
2. S/He may know if a number of others are already researching a specific topic and thus help you avoid a rush on material in the library.
3. S/He will be able to direct you to a few resources to begin developing an adequate bibliography.

II. Research

A. Exploring Libraries

1. The VSU Library, as well as most other university and public libraries, have searchable databases that are accessible via the internet. On VSU's homepage, a click on the 'Library' button will give you instant access and allow you to begin locating materials.
2. Computer databases can be used to conduct searches for TITLE, AUTHOR, SUBJECT, and KEY WORDS. However, these much be entered and spelled correctly, or the system will not recognize the target information. If not immediately successful, try spelling and/or wording variations, particularly in SUBJECT and KEY WORD searches.
3. Check computer databases for other Virginia university libraries (such as VCU, UVA, University of Richmond, Hampton, etc.). Books and articles for other institutions can be obtained fairly quickly through Interlibrary Loan requests.
4. Go to the stacks and browse. Books on similar subjects are shelved together, so when you locate one on your subject, see if the neighboring books might have pertinent information.
5. Use specialized bibliographic databases (available through the 'Library Subject Guides' button on the VSU Library's web page) to search journals and magazine articles. Again, be inventive when searching with SUBJECT and KEY WORD prompts.
6. Don't limit yourself to fine art books and magazines. Many other disciplines, such as history, religion, archaeology, and anthropology, contain valuable information about art and the cultures that produce it.

B. Finding information for your topic (or, one source leads to another. . .)

1. To get started, check the bibliographies in your texts for books and articles with titles that seem to be related to your topic. Then check these sources for their bibliographies, again looking for titles that may be related to your topic. Even if a source is not directly relevant to your topic, it may contain useful references.
2. Pay attention to footnotes with references. As you read through books and articles on your topic or related topics, pay attention to the author's footnotes, especially in those sections of his/her writing that relate to your own topic. Footnotes often contain valuable leads to other sources.
3. Interviews (phone, letter, email, personal) are bonanzas of information. If your topic is a living artist, you can sometimes approach them, or knowledgeable experts in that area. If your request is broached politely and intelligently (identifying yourself as a university student), there is a good chance that they will agree to answer questions that have been thought out and prepared in advance. The more you indicate that you have carefully researched and thought about your subject, the more responsive and helpful you may find such sources.

C. Record your source data.
Always take down complete citations and references when collecting information. There is no excuse for incomplete bibliographic data because you could not relocate a source: write it down first whenever you examine a book. Even if you don't use it, you will have a listing of dead-end sources so you won't waste valuable time on them in the future.

D. Finding information in your sources (now that you have found them, how to get the most from them . . .)

1. Source documents such as letters, exhibition catalogues, or critical reviews of an artist's work should be read completely to assure your understanding of the various points or conflicting theses made by the authors.
2. Articles of less than 20 pages should be read completely. Articles longer than 20 pages may be skimmed through to find information relevant to your topic.
3. Books: It's a bit difficult to locate relevant information within a book since most of the monographs you will encounter will not be written specifically about your topic. There are things you can do to extract information about your topic from a book short of reading the entire book (which is not always realistic!).

a. Look through those parts whose illustrations look as if they pertain to your topic.
b. Read the table of contents for appropriate chapters.
c. Or, best of all, go through the index, using various headings and subjects to locate the relevant section of the book.

E. Assessing your sources for reliability (not all books are of equal value . . .)

1. Look at the date of publication. Older sources could contain material that is outdated or incomplete in light of more recent research. Check them against more recent sources to see how reliable the information is.
2. Check the author's credentials. Is s/he a specialist on the subject? What else has s/he written? What is his/her profession?
3. Look at the author's bibliography and footnotes. Is the source well researched and documented? Did the author use current research?
4. Check the book reviews in scholarly periodicals. Since rivals or friends sometimes write them, they may be biased, but they often point out areas of controversy and different ways to assess the work.
5. Evaluate the evidence the author uses to support his/her assertions.
6. Use your own judgment. Is the source clearly written? Are the author's arguments and presentations logical and clear? Remember, sources that are generally sound can contain faulty reasoning and errors, and, conversely, even a flawed study may contain insights or data of value. The more you read on the topic, the more able you will be to assess your sources.
7. When in doubt, ask your professor, although sometimes s/he may also be in doubt.

III. Content and Organization

A. Always follow your teacher's instructions and directions carefully and completely.

B. Organize your paper around the main idea or thesis that you want to present.

1. The main idea should be reflected in the title.
2. The main idea should be clearly set forth in the introductory paragraphs.
3. The main idea should be developed in a systematic manner in the body of the paper by presenting and interpreting evidence that supports and clarifies it. Don't lose track of the argument and clutter up the paper with irrelevant facts and unnecessary background information. Conversely, don't make a host of claims and generalizations for which you have no evidence.
4. Background information should be used only to make specific points. Interesting or controversial information not directly bearing on the main idea can be included in footnotes.
5. Familiarize yourself with all of the evidence and arguments that do not seem to support your conclusions and explain why they can be discounted (see if your friends can find any loopholes in your reasoning).
6. You must use pictures, diagrams maps, etc., to support your argument or to illustrate your points. Discuss them in your own words and, when possible, make your own comparisons between pictures. Learn to trust your eyes-but watch out for the unreliability of reproductions and find what alterations works of art may have undergone since they were made. Use good quality photocopies or laser-printed images. Never use pictures cut from books or magazines, including your own.
7. Draw a conclusion based on the evidence and arguments presented in the body of your paper.

C. Style

1. Write as clearly, precisely, and forcefully as you can. Be sure you mean exactly what you say. Don't shy away from being blunt if you can prove your claims, but don't claim more than you can prove. If you are unsure what a word means, look it up; e.g., don't use media for medium, effect for affect, unique for unusual, infer for imply, it's for its, 'in the picture plane' for 'in the picture,' etc. Do not use contractions or abbreviations unless they are necessary. Do not use the non-word 'a lot.'
2. Use commas properly. Except for their use between a series of two or more adjectives (the quick, red fox) or nouns (gods, men, and pharaohs) commas may, for the most part, be understood by the following one basic principle: they work as informal parentheses that set off sub-sections of a sentence from the main part or independent parts from each other. Therefore, except when the phrase to be set off by commas comes at the beginning or the end of a sentence, commas always work in pairs.
3. Avoid sentence fragments. Such as this one, for example.
4. Writing About Art by Henry Sayre (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002) and Visual Literacy: Writing About Art by Amy Tucker (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002) are excellent references not only for style, but ideas on writing about art as well.

D. Use of summary and quotation (or 'How I can avoid a '0' for plagiarism').

1. Any summary or quotation of another writer's words must be clearly attributed and footnoted and must not be used as a substitute for your own words and thoughts. Basically, a summary or quotation should present a viewpoint or insight you want to discuss, use as evidence, or note with approval (or disapproval).
2. You must make clear exactly where any summarizing of ideas and information begins and ends.
3. The following example shows how the writer uses sources without confusing his viewpoint with the quoted writer's. Note how the quotation and the summary are introduced with the author's name and their purpose in the article is indicated. Those portions that are directly quoted are set off by quotation marks:

Thomas Gray's remark that "not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry"1 confirms that such melancholy scenery could affect a poetic sensibility. But, as Samuel Monk has pointed out, Gray's appreciation was prescient and remained unexpressed in poetry until Wordsworth's work later in the century.2

4. You must acknowledge your indebtedness for material when a) you quote directly from a work; b) you paraphrase or summarize someone's words (the words of your paraphrase or summary are your own, but the points are not); or c) you use a fact or idea that is not common knowledge.

E. Footnotes

1. Credit (footnote) other scholars' words when you quote five or more words in succession directly from a source.
2. Credit others' ideas that you use even when not directly quoted.
3. Footnote factual information when it is not common knowledge or might be questioned by your reader. It is better to have too many than too few footnotes.
4. Use footnotes to elaborate on those ideas that are interesting but not directly related to the theme of your paper or on reasoning and evidence that would interrupt the flow of your paper if it were included in the text (notice how other authors use their footnotes for this purpose).
5. If all of your footnotes come from one or two sources, it indicates insufficient research.
6. Make clear, either in the text or in the footnote, the purpose of each footnote (if the reference is to the source of a fact, concept, insight, or passage that has been summarized, indicate somehow what has been used).

F. Bibliography

1. The bibliography should indicate that you have consulted the best available literature on the subject.
2. It should not include general encyclopedias, books on art appreciation, introductory art history books, etc., unless they present original viewpoints.
3. Since the most important and recent research appears most frequently in scholarly periodicals, their absence from your bibliography is usually an indication of superficial research.

IV. Form

A. Order

1. Title Page
2. Text
3. Footnotes (if not at bottom of pages)
4. Illustrations
5. Bibliography

B. Underlining and Italics

1. Titles of works of art, titles of books, poems, and periodical publications should be underlined.
2. Technical terms or phrases in a language other than English should be placed in italics. This does not include direct quotations in a foreign language, foreign titles preceding proper names, names of buildings, or words anglicized by usage (e.g., ibid.).

C. Quotations

1. Quotations must always be footnoted.
2. Quotations of three lines or less are placed within the text of your paper and not physically separated.
3. An extensive quotation (of more than three lines) should be separated from the rest of the text in a single-spaced block, which is indented four spaces (one tab or ½ inch) from the margin. Quotation marks are eliminated.
4. Words that are omitted are indicated by an ellipsis (a series of three dots, each separated by a space). If the words omitted are preceded or followed by a period, colon, or semicolon, this punctuation mark should remain in the same location relative to the three ellipsis points. Ellipsis points are not necessary at the beginning or end of a quotation.
5. Occasionally, a quotation, excerpted from a fuller discussion, will require clarification within the quotation marks. To distinguish your words from those of the author, they should be placed in brackets. For example:
As Northcote remarked, "They [Neo-Classicists] know as little of nature as a hackney-coach horse does of a pasture."3
6. When quotation marks appear in a passage you intend to quote, single marks replace the original double notation.

D. Reference Citations

1. All references should be verified before the paper is submitted.
2. Reference citations to the text should be clearly designated after the punctuation by either a) a footnote, presented as a numeral raised above the text, or b) an interstitial notation surrounded by parentheses.
3. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively. They should be typed at the bottom of the page on which the reference appears, or at the conclusion of the text (as endnotes). Most word processing programs will automatically place and sequence your references.
4. Footnotes for a book. The first, full reference to a book includes:
a) name of the author(s) or editor(s);
b) title of the books (underlined);
c) number or name of the edition, if other than the first;
d) city of publication;
e) name of publishing agency;
f) date of publication;
g) volume number, if any;
h) page number(s) of the specific citation.
Example: 24. Douglas Fraser, Primitive Art (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1962): 31.
5. For an article in a periodical or a chapter by a different author in an edited book. The first, full reference includes:
a) name(s) of authors;
b) title of article (in quotation marks);
c) name of periodical or book (include editor of book);
d) volume number, if any;
e) date of volume or issue;
f) page number(s) of the specific citation.
For example: 15. James M. Vreeland, "Ancient Andean Textiles: Clothes for the Dead," Archaeology 30 (May 1966): 168.
6. Following the initial reference to a source, subsequent citations to that source should use the author's last name, title of the article/book, and the page of the reference. For example: 16. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: 30.
7. Interstitial notations may be used instead of the more traditional footnote system, but only for reference citations. Separated from the text by parentheses, they include the author(s) last name(s) and the page number of the reference. For example: (Patton, 57). If you are using more than one book or article by an author, the notation must also include the title of the cited work. For example: (Patton, African American Art, 57).

E. Illustrations

1. Illustrations are placed together at the end of the paper, after the endnotes (if used) and before the bibliography. Each illustration should be placed on a separate sheet of paper, accompanied by its identification information.
2. Illustrations should be assigned consecutive numbers in the order that they are referred to in the text. If it is not referred to in the text, an illustration is of no value to your argument and, therefore, should not be included.
3. In the text, reference to an illustration should appear in parentheses before the punctuation (Figure 3).
4. Identify your illustrations. A caption must be typed either above or below each illustration (be consistent) and should contain figure number, artist, title, date, medium, present location (when possible), and a short citation for the source of the image (this source must also be present in your bibliography). For example:
Figure 4. Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris (Friedlaender, David to Delacroix, pl. 47).

F. Bibliography

1. A bibliography that includes all of the sources you have used (both text and illustrations) must appear at the end of your paper.
2. The references are listed in alphabetical order according to the author's last name, which appears first in each entry.
3. The entry form follows that of the footnotes with four exceptions:
a. Bibliographic entries begin on the left margin and are indented on the second and successive lines.
b. The author's name is listed with the last name first, and first name last (Smith, John.).
c. Book entries do not include page numbers.
d. Articles from books and periodicals must indicate inclusive page numbers. For example:

Vreeland, James M., "Ancient Andean Textiles: Clothes for the Dead," Archaeology 30 (May 1966): 166 - 190.

4. Single space within entries; double space between entries.

G. General

1. All manuscripts must be printed on 8 ½" x 11" white paper.
2. The text should be double-spaced and maintain consistent margins.
3. Do not skip lines between paragraphs. Indent the first line of each paragraph.
4. All pages should be numbered consecutively and presented in their proper order.
5. Always maintain an updated electronic copy of your manuscript, and a separate copy on a disk or CD.
6. As you are writing your paper, save and make a backup copy of the text often. A good rule of thumb is to hit the save button at the end of each paragraph.

H. Proofreading
Be sure to proofread your paper. Spell-check will not pick up on homophones used incorrectly (such as 'there' for 'their' or 'alter' for 'altar'). If possible, have one or more friends proofread your paper as well - more eyes find more mistakes. They can also tell you if your paper makes sense and has a cohesive argument.

V. Criteria

A. Accuracy of information.
B. Thoroughness of research.
C. Coherence of organization.
D. Adherence to assignment and specifications.
E. Effectiveness of writing for presentation of information.