Community Development - Brescia

This is the Community Development guide for Brescia's Community Development program.

Writing

Writing an essay or research paper can be hard work! The resources below can help you with your writing:

Visit the Writing Centre at Brescia.
The OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab has lots of writing resources for you to use. You can find out about subject-specific writing, writing mechanics, grammar, and more.
Check out Western’s Writing Support Centre Online Writing Resources. They have lots of writing support handouts for you to use.

Writing Resources

The brief Penguin handbook by Lester Faigley, Roger Graves, Heather Graves
The Brief Penguin Handbook provides information on how to plan, draft, and revise papers, write for specific disciplines and purposes, the research cycle, and includes commonly used citation styles.
They Say / I Say by Gerald Graff; Cathy Birkenstein; Russel Durst
"They Say / I Say" with Readings shows that writing well means mastering some key rhetorical moves, the most important of which is to summarize what others have said ("they say") in order to set up one's own argument ("I say"). Templates help students make these moves in their own writing, and 50 readings demonstrate the moves and prompt students to think--and write.
McGraw-Hill's Concise Guide to Writing Research Papers
A concise and informative overview of writing a research paper from start to finish with helpful tips on how to interpret assignments, find valuable resources, and organize information to write a polished paper.

Citing

Citing is an important part of the research process – you need to give credit to the authors of the sources you used!

The library staff at the Beryl Ivey Library have created quick-reference guides for the major styles most often used at Brescia. The guides are available under each Citation Style tab where you can access information about the style and the Brescia Guide in both Word and PDF.

Specialized citations, formatting, and style questions should still be directed toward the manual for each specific style.

Citation Management

What is Citation Management Software?

Want to know more about specific products? Check out these Quick Start Guides:

Academic Integrity

What is Academic Integrity?

The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) defines academic integrity as "a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to five fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. From these values flow principles of behavior that enable academic communities to translate ideals to action" (ICAI, Fundamental Values Project, 1999).

If you have any questions or concerns about academic integrity please contact us or visit the Service Desk.

Learn about copyright, and how it is an important part of researching with integrity, on the Copyright @ Western site.

Learn more about the Licensed Use Guidelines for Electronic Resources, and how to use electronic resources responsibly while conducting research.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the “act or an instance of copying or stealing another’s words or ideas and attributing them as one’s own.” (Excerpted from Black’s Law Dictionary, West Group, 1999, 7th ed., p. 1170). This is the definition used by Western's Scholastic Discipline Policy

The following video helps to explain what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.