DMIN Final Project Style & Format Review
Student’s Name: Clint
Schnekloth Date: March 5, 2012
I enjoyed reading
the first two chapters of your final project.
Your submission meets the necessary requirements for Turabian and Doctor
of Ministry writing standards.
Please see the
comments below and throughout your paper for details regarding changes you
should make for the first draft. Within
your paper, initially I will alert you to a needed correction by placing a
comment in the text. Subsequently I may
highlight places that require similar corrections, although please note that not
all places requiring correction have been marked.
1. Front
Matter:
·
The blank page should be followed by an
abstract.
·
Use the page number function in MS Word so that
the page number falls exactly 1 inch from the bottom of the page.
2. Format:
·
There should be two line spaces (rather than three)
above a subhead.
·
The chapter number should be given in numeral
form.
3.
Style:
· Capitalize
“Church” when it refers to the Church universal.
· Avoid
the use of “we” with no clear referent.
Instead, use “people” or “believers” or whatever applies.
· Avoid
directly addressing the reader: use “one may notice” rather than “you will
notice,” for example, and avoid colloquial “dialogue” with the reader such as
“You will see . . .”
· Avoid
posing questions to the reader. Rephrase
as declarative statements. See page 13
of the DMin Style Guide on “Questions/Question Marks.”
· Avoid
the use of the first person unless you are inextricably connected to the
situation or event you are describing.
· Avoid
beginning your sentences with “I believe” or “I will suggest,” as the reader
will assume that all statements in the paper are the author’s (your) delcarations. If you prefer to soften the language a bit,
maintain objectivity by writing “It seems that . . .” rather than “I suspect
that . . .”
4. Footnotes:
·
“Ibid.”
cannot appear as the first footnote on a page.
Use the short format instead.
·
The footnote number should be placed at the end
of the sentence unless there are multiple footnote numbers in a single
sentence.
·
For all footnotes, add the city of publication
(and the state abbreviation if the city is not well known).
5. Grammar:
·
Avoid using contractions in your paper.
·
An ellipsis should be a set of periods with
spaces between, like . . . this.
·
Use “and the like” or “and so on” in place of
“etc.”
· Commas and periods belong inside quotation
marks; semicolons and colons belong outside.
· Some of your sentences are not complete and
need to be revised.
6. Quotes:
·
Each quote must be introduced, usually by
presenting the author’s last name (e.g., “Carson writes, ‘ . . .’”). Add the author’s first name and the name of
the text when quoting it for the first time.
·
Use the block quote format if you have five full
lines or more.
·
Quotation marks should not be used around a
block quote.
7. Numbers:
·
Note 1: Write out all numbers between one and
one hundred, and any number that can be written as two words. This includes ordinal numbers like “first” or
“twentieth.”
8. Bibliography:
·
Delete any line spaces at the top of a page.
·
Entries by the same author should be ordered
alphabetically by title. You may
alternatively order the books by date, but then you need to apply the same
pattern to all sets of books by the same author in your bibliography.
·
Each website reference should have an author, a
title (which could be the title of the article or the title of the page) in
quotation marks, the url address, and the date accessed.
·
For website references, break up the url address
so that you don’t have a lot of empty space at the end of a line.
