You're sitting at your desk in a classroom or in an airless cubicle, wondering how many minutes are left in a seemingly endless day, when suddenly your teacher or supervisor lowers the boom: She wants a research paper, complete with footnotes and a list of sources. She wants accuracy, originality, and good grammar. And – gasp! – she wants ten pages! You may be 16 years old or 60 years old, but your reaction is the same: Help!

Take heart. A research paper may seem daunting, but it's a far-from-impossible project to accomplish. Turning research into writing is actually quite easy, as long as you follow a few proven techniques. And that's where Research Papers For Dummies steps in to help. In this easy-to-understand guide, you find out how to search for information using both traditional printed sources and the electronic treasure troves of the Internet. You also discover how to take all those bits of information, discarding the irrelevant ones, and put them into a form that illustrates your point with clarity and originality.

Here's just a sampling of the topics you'll find in Research Papers For Dummies:

• Types of research papers, from business reports to dissertations
• The basic ingredients of a paper: Introduction, body, conclusion, footnotes, and bibliography
• Note-taking methods while doing research
• Avoiding plagiarism and other research paper pitfalls
• Defining your thesis statement and choosing a structure for your paper
• Supporting your argument and drawing an insightful conclusion
• Revising and polishing your prose
• Top Ten lists on the best ways to begin your research online and in print

Research Papers For Dummies also includes an appendix that's full of research paper ideas if you're stuck.

If you're tasked with writing a research paper, chances are you already have a lot of demands on your time. You don't need another huge pile of papers to read. This book can actually save you time in the long run, because it gives you the easiest, fastest, and most successful methods for completing your paper.