How to Write a Prospectus and Bibliography

a) Your prospectus is your plan for your essay.  It can be a well-developed paragraph that includes your thesis statement and several sentences indicating your supporting arguments. It might include a concession statement and a refutation. It is not as formal as an outline unless you want it to be that formal. I will accept a detailed outline. 

Here is one possible format for your prospectus, giving it 3 parts:

1. I’m going to write about ______________. (Choose an issue from the assignment sheet.)

2. My thesis is:                       ( Click here to review how to write a good thesis statement.)

3. Some of my reasons for this position are:

b) A bibliography is a list of sources that you have read or plan to read in preparing your paper. It is not the same thing as a Works Cited page, which is a list of sources you actually used in your essay). On your bibliography, I expect to see at least five sources. Two may be the essays on your topic that are in our textbook. The other three must be from newspapers, magazines, or (preferably) the computer databases, NC LIVE.

Here is an example bibliographic or works cited entry for an essay from the book:

Harrop, Froma. "Stop Babysitting College Students." Dialogues: An Argument, Rhetoric and
    Reader, 5th ed. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Krueger. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. 43-44.

Here is an example bibliographic or works cited entry for an essay you find using NC LIVE:

Ridley, Matt. "Will We Still Need to Have Sex?" Time 8 Nov 1999: 66-69. Academic 
    Search Premier.  EBSCO.  NC LIVE.  Shaw Univ., Raleigh, NC.  11 Sep 2005 
     < www.epnet.com >.

Note that the author’s last name is at the left margin, and all succeeding lines are indented one Tab hit (or five spaces). Please pay careful attention to the punctuation and spacing you see here. In each case note the information required and the order in which it must be presented. Imitate these entries on your bibliography.  (Click here to review how to write correct Works Cited page entries.)

When you write your essay, you are not limited to the list of sources you turn in with your prospectus. You may add other sources; you may delete sources from your bibliography. But I repeat from the assignment sheet: you must use at least one source from your book and two sources from outside the book.