If you're looking for an electronic method of organizing your research, Microsoft OneNote  is a great option. Microsoft OneNote can be used for organizing your classes, like in this Bright Hub article I wrote: "Organizing College Classes Using Microsoft OneNote." Alternatively, OneNote can be used for organizing your projects like in this article: "Organize Your Home Business Using OneNote."  Here, I will describe how you can use OneNote to organize a research project.

OneNote is like a digita...
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Chances are, you feel a severe case of anxiety in class when you need to come up with a good research paper idea. Whether you are working on a senior research paper or you need ideas for your presentation, coming up with paper ideas can be a daunting task.  Here are some tips that worked for me when I needed ideas for research papers, ideas for a senior thesis, and even ideas for a dissertation when I was contemplating writing one.

1. Write it all down.  Sometimes when you are reading, or in clas...

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Sometimes professors (or bosses) request a précis on some book or journal article.  When I first started graduate school, I wasn't sure how to write a précis. By the time I left, I found the short summary paper to be an incredibly helpful tool for studying for comps and preparing for seminar classes. Below you will find step-by-step instructions for writing a successful precis for class (or work).

1. The very first step in writing a précis is reading the reference material carefully.  While re...

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It's almost time to start back at school.  Whether you are in high school, college, or graduate school, chances are that you will need at some point to write a research paper.  Sometimes our jobs require us to do research.  In this post, you will find the steps to successfully writing the research paper that will get you the grade you want.

1. Set up a time schedule.  That's right, the first thing you should do when you are assigned a research project is set up a schedule to complete your rese...
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It's the beginning of the month again, and for me, that means it's time to do some general housekeeping with respect to my Writing Research Editing projects.  At the beginning of each month, I consult my project list and update it.  This means taking off any client projects I have finished, updating next steps, and creating a schedule of when each item on my list will get done during the month.  My focus this month is on adding a few more client projects to my repertoire.

Here's a list of some...
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An important step in beginning research is to conduct a survey of the materials available.  By formulating a preliminary bibliography before beginning work on a research project, you can help kick-start your project.  The first step in constructing a working bibliography is to consult an encyclopedia.  Now, an encyclopedia is not a valid source in itself.  It can provide you with a general overview of a topic, and subtopics you should be familiar with.  The most useful part of using the encyc...
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As promised, today I will discuss electronic note-taking methods. It is vital when taking notes to be accurate and organized with the information you record. The main benefits of using a computer for note-taking are that paper is conserved and searching is facilitated. Using a computer is also suggested when taking extensive notes for large research projects. Below are three methods for taking notes on research sources electronically. 

Using a Word Processor

1. Open a new document for each new so...

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It is vital, when writing, to document any material you used during the research phase.  Being able to document accurately quotations and paraphrases depends upon careful note taking methods. 

One method for taking notes on research material is with pen and index cards.  To do this, you first obtain an index card box, some dividers that correspond to the topics you will be covering, and index cards.  This can be done two ways.

The classic way to use index cards is to use one index card for eac...
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