How to write a good history paper?

Academic writing

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3rd Oct 2016

Pick your topic

Picking a topic is probably one of the most important steps in writing a good history paper.

First, determine a general area that you're interested in. It's no use to choose something that you don't really care about since it would be obvious to all your readers. It's important to feign your passion.

Then you have to narrow your topic. How would you write a paper about something vague like the Civil War? It's not entirely possible, even, because you'd be basically flooded with information. You need to pick the aspect that you're truly invested in, whether it's politics, causes, battles, social problems, etc. When you deal with it, formulate your research topic as a question – find the key problem that you could use as a base for your paper. By creating an appropriate question according to your topic you'd make your research much easier since you already know what you have to look for.

Choose appropriate information

When picking a topic, you should already know how you're going to find all necessary information and also collect some background data about the general area. Without that it's pointless to choose what you're going to write about since you need to be sure that there's enough facts for your project.

writing history paper In order to conduct a good research outline you have to figure out how exactly you can find the information you need. What do you have to know about your topic from the very beginning? Maybe there are important statistics, personal letters, etc. If you can't handle this step on your own, you can always ask someone who knows for sure, for example, your professor or a librarian, they will provide you the guidelines you need.

After that you'd have to search for some information about specific events, places, people, etc. Try to avoid some general facts that are unreliable. It's always best to check if all facts that you use are correct since your history papers has to be accurate. Of course, it takes lots of time and effort but your hard work will be rewarded in the end, that's for sure. Anyway each bit of information you could possibly find is an open door that leads to various research paths.

Make sure you know how to use different research techniques. A good research requires a lot of work in regard to details, you can't just browse one shelf in the library or one category when it comes to online resources. Use any methods you can find and if you're not sure from where to start, again, ask someone who can definitely tell you what to do.

Conducting your research properly

Your research has to include several steps:

preliminary research: general information about the topic;
creating a basic bibliography;
expanding your bibliography and making it full;
major research according to all the sources you've collected before.

Effective writing guide

Of course, before starting to write you have to plan your project. For that you'd need to make sure you use the following structure:

outline of your paper (a “skeleton” of your project);
creating the first draft (start writing section by section);
perfecting your paper (making necessary changes);
finishing your project.

Obviously, writing a good history paper is a very time-consuming task. It takes a lot of effort and sometimes it's quite hard to handle it by yourself. However, you can always use our custom writing services and get professional paper help online at affordable prices.