You should follow any guidelines provided or recommended by the professor for whose course you are writing a paper and, in general, prepare a paper in accordance with the type of Classics course for which you are writing it: history and literature papers, for instance, usually take different forms. You may find helpful the guides and advice for writing papers that some departments at Williams provide on their own websites or on Sawyer Library’s. The English Department, for instance, provides very useful materials on its Resources page, including Advice on Writing and Revising Critical Essays, by Professor Alison Case.
The following online resources should also prove helpful.
- Williams College’s Citation Guide. If you aren’t sure which citation style to use, be sure to talk to your professor.
- APA Citation Style Guide.
- MLA Style Guide.
- Chicago note-based citation style; in-line author-date citation style.
- How to evaluate sources—a checklist.
- OWL, The Purdue Online Writing Lab, offers over 200 free resources including: Writing and Teaching Writing, Research, Grammar and Mechanics, Style Guides, ESL (English as a Second Language), and Job Search and Professional Writing.
- Guide for researching and writing history papers, by Patrick Rael of Bowdoin College.
- Helpful guidelines and examples for avoiding accidental (or intentional) plagiarism from Indiana University’s Writing Program.
The Writing Workshop at Williams
Students are highly encouraged to avail themselves of this wonderful resource, described at their website thus:
The Writing Workshop is a student-staffed program designed to provide assistance with any stage of the writing process, from initial brainstorming to final drafts. Staffed by sophomores, juniors, and seniors, selected and trained to work with individuals in an informal, non-judgmental context. Writing Tutors can help you solidify an idea, develop a thesis, organize a paper, or tighten and unify an argument. They can also help with sentence structure, style, and grammar. You can bring any type of writing from any field–essay, lab reports, seminar papers–and anything in between. The workshop runs nightly drop-in centers Sunday- Thursday in Jesup, Sawyer, and Schow, where students can just drop by for a half-hour session. Tutors also work as writing assistants for classes, and offer individualized tutoring programs.