Once you have narrowed your topic and established a working thesis, you can start researching your essay. You may want to begin by writing what you know about the topic before you head to the library or the Internet. Generally, information that is assumed to be common knowledge does not have to be identified. However, you should identify, either by quote or citation, all specific phrasing that comes from another writer. Paraphrasing is a valuable way to summarize long passages or ideas from other writers.
Write an outline to focus and develop the main ideas which support or explain your thesis. You can organize your ideas in a variety of spatial or chronological ways. If you make your outline detailed, then the body of the essay should be easy to write. While a written outline can seem like extra work, it is a valuable, almost essential, key to writing a good first draft.
When you have a topic, you begin thinking of what you'll say. Write a thesis statement to organize your thinking. Before you start writing, take notes. For personal essays, write down your thoughts, observations, memories, and experiences. When analyzing a text, take notes on the significant sections or underline them. For most other essays, read materials with an eye to finding details, examples, and illustrations to support your main idea.
If you want to use quotations, write them down accurately. Remember that you'll need to footnote tiny facts, ideas, or quotations you borrow from other sources, so be sure to include bibliographical information in your notes. Some of what you write down will probably never appear in your essay. Your notes might even include questions that occur to you as you read, possibilities you want to explore, warnings to yourself, or reminders to check further on certain points. This stage of preparing a paper is not only to ensure that you have examples and evidence but also to help you think in more detail about your topic and thesis.
Brainstorming, taking notes, and outlining
Begin the process by trying freewriting on the computer. You can get ideas down quickly and legibly and save them as a brainstorming file; later, you can import parts of this file into your first draft. Take notes on the computer too, being sure to include the information you'll need to cite references. Word-processing programs can format and place footnotes when you're at the point of preparing your final draft, but of course you are responsible for accurately recording the sources of your information. If your writing project requires a bibliography, start a list of your references. Later you can easily add to and rearrange the list.
Most programs have a feature that allows you to create a formal outline according to a style you choose, such as roman numerals for headings, alpha characters for first-level subheadings, and so on. If you go back into your outline to add a heading or subheading, the program will automatically update your outline designations. Changing an outline on your computer is so simple that you can experiment with different organizational plans.
Using the computer for research
With a computer, you can gain access to thousands of documents and databases, some in portable form on CD-ROMs (disks that store large amounts of information) and some directly online. You can call up journal and newspaper articles, abstracts, a variety of encyclopedias and dictionaries, and much more. Through the Internet (which includes the World Wide Web), you can view databases on many subjects and have access to library archival materials. The challenge is to know what there is and how to search for it. So much information is available online that you may feel overwhelmed and frustrated. Before you use the Internet to do serious research, it's a good idea to get some training. How-to books and classes are available, as are Internet directories that steer you in the right direction. Once you are online, search systems (or search engines)—to which you enter key words—help you navigate. When you use information from electronic sources in a paper, consult a current style guide (such as the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Fourth Edition) on the correct forms for citing it in footnotes and a bibliography.
Cliffs Notes Online