Leadership Communication Skills Center


Marine Corps University Communications Style Guide

PART TWO: RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION

Research, like writing, is an iterative process. It typically begins with a problem, question, or broad topic; you then choose a specific angle of this topic that you can thoroughly investigate and write about within the time and page constraints of your assignment. Figure 26 depicts the connections between research and writing processes, as students often move back and forth among these different stages throughout the duration of their projects.

 

Figure 26. Research and writing processes

Source: adapted from Mike Palmquist, The Bedford Researcher, 13.

 

Part 2 of The Marine Corps University Communications Style Guide offers an overview of the research process, strategies, and heuristics to help you through different stages of your research, as well as a guide to citing and documenting your work using CMOS. The chapters cover the research process; developing a research question, writing a literature review, and organizing research; developing a working thesis statement; writing with sources; and endnote and bibliography formats.