Audience

For the research paper I think the audience would be an academic one, I'm assuming the readers would be classmates or instructors. Because I'll be writing to people with a good base understanding of many topics I'll be able to start with a basic overview of the topic and then go into more detail and not have to worry about the audience getting "lost" like they would if I were writing to young children or something. I think a good visual element to use would be a graph or chart because they convey a lot of information in a more organized way than simply listing tons of numbers or data and allow the writing to flow better without the interruption of such technical information.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is not crediting others for their thoughts and ideas whether on purpose or accidently.

I don't think many people at this level intentionally plagiarize but it can definitely become confusing when you're researching a topic and learning so much new material. I think it becomes tricky to make sure everything is properly cited unless you do it as you go. Otherwise I think I would start to think I already knew these things and not give proper credit. The DK Handbook suggested having a friend highlight in 2 colors what's your thoughts and what comes from others so you can see if everything is properly credited. I'd never really thought of a paper as a collection of your thoughts + outside people's thoughts but that's really what composes one.

Something that helps me with citing outside information is using online sites that generate a works cited page in MLA form and just adding each source as I find it so nothing will get left out.

Research Paper Ideas

For the research paper I think I would like to chose a topic that has an ethical dilemma. In BioSc last semester we also did a similar research paper and there were several topics I was interested in for that paper so I think I'll choose one of those. Some ideas for my topic are doctor assisted suicide or organ donation. I want to look into which topics I can find enough sources and information about before deciding on a final topic.

Editing

The DK Handbook was interesting to read through for ideas on editing. It suggested printing out the paper and actually looking over a hard copy. I agree that it can be really helpful because for me it's easier to glance over mistakes on the computer screen.

For editing the hardest thing for me was making sure MLA style was correct because in high school english I didn't do many typed papers, we always wrote in-class essays and they were intended to be more of a "rough draft" style. Multiple edits were a new idea to me but you do catch more mistakes every time and reading the paper aloud helped me to catch things that didn't "sound right".