Part One laid the groundwork for a good essay, but what makes a good essay a good term paper are the citations. Some professors go crazy over these things, and some students just go crazy thinking about them. Let’s get away from basic form and structure. It’s time for…

The Juicy Stuff

So you just finished the introduction on that big term paper. You’re about page-and-a-half in, and have seven pages to go.

If it weren̢۪t for the lack of substance, you just know you̢۪d ace it.

Hopefully, you’re not such an extreme case — if you don’t actually have any substance, I can’t help you. I mean, I would if I hadn’t already run out of moronitocin suppressants.

Citations are hard. This means you should whip one out as often as possible.

Your professor will be impressed if you throw two or three in the least-important two-page paper. If not, they’ll at least know you’re trying to impress them with cheap tricks.

Either is good.

If you want to go about citing stuff honestly, use most resources twice, with another two or three resources cited several times — a solid backbone to an undergraduate paper.

Whatever you do, don’t try to use all of them a lot unless you’re really going for the diligence award — with a lot of sources on the same topic, there’s going to be a lot of overlap.

If you already wrote the paper, just put the citations in as necessary. Of course, those of us reading this guide probably don̢۪t have much of the paper done.

In general, the more sources the better — aim for double the minimum. If there’s a minimum for in-text citations, use double that also.

Real academic papers published in real academic journals tend to go for two to five in-text citations per page, depending on the obscurity of the subject and the relative reliability of the sources cited.

Regardless, there are a few different methods we can use here, with varying degrees of ease and success.

The Smitty Way

First described to me years ago by a Smittcamp scholar — who is, by the way, long-graduated — this method is brilliantly simple. Named in the honor college’s honor, the Smitty method boils down to two precepts.

Write first. Fake your citations.

If you paid attention during class, you probably know all the material anyway and falsify some citations plausibly.

“If you don’t remember where you got a bit of information, but you’re sure it’s correct, just guess,â€Â she had said. “Professors don’t have time to check every little citation.â€Â

This won’t pass muster for serious academic work, but those of us using this method probably aren’t cut out for it anyway.

Note: In all fairness, I’ve discovered that non-Smitties tend to use this method just as often, but I think I’m going to keep the name in honor of the since-forgotten source. It amuses me so.

The Slow Way

As you̢۪re going through on the first or second drafts, note all statements that need support from a third party. Check through your books and websites carefully and find which source has that information, citing it carefully.

This method is favored by responsible students.

Of course, there won’t be any responsible students reading this blog — better yet, even fewer professors, if you’re worried about them finding out all your secrets. The Internet is pretty newfangled, after all.

The Smart Way

Find your sources online and read through at least the first three pages to get a feel for the material, then use the main points from what you just read to back up your paper.

With no more than 20 pages worth of content to outline or remember rather than several books’ worth, all of which you’d have to check out of our stackless library, it’ll go rather quickly.

It usually takes me no more than an hour to get a good fourteen sources crammed in a finished ten-page paper.

“Woah, Ben,â€Â you cry. “My professor said not to use too many online sources. The arbitrary limit for this paper is two.â€Â

The answer? Use the many university-provided online article databases. Don’t worry, they aren’t online articles — they’re scanned copies of actual articles in actual academic journals. In short, they count as much as paper citation.

With a little practice, they’re also much easier to track down and get a copy of without losing your momentum, especially because we don’t have a real library.

Some are even long-out-of-print, and so they’re worth major kudo points with well-read professors.

These databases are free for you, as long as you use your university ID and password, accessing it through the library Web site.

Of these databases, I’ve always used JSTOR. Need help with it? Try out Part 3.