MKTG 498 Syllabus

The one-page paper is intended as a jelling device, a means of stating what you know about an assigned topic in a brief, systematic, and thoughtful way. You must produce the paper yourself, in your own words, and all matters of organization or study methods are strictly up to you. The paper is also meant to discourage system beating (in which American education has trained its students as experts from K-12) since the writing of critical papers is an individual art. To write is always to reveal one's intellectual self because writing is not only a cultural constant, but truly neutral: it functions as a strange and wonderful instrument of communication, a technology of the intellect that varies only with the mentality of the writer who uses it.

The responsibility for producing critical papers is university-wide. The student who cannot think systematically and write thoughtfully, regardless of her or his field, is not really educated. Writing is fast becoming a lost art, because clear thinking in any field is downright difficult. We are educated by what comes out of us, by what we can produce, not by what goes into us. Students can be bottomless pits when it comes to absorption of instruction; but receptivity is only a means of becoming educated: it is not per se an educational virtue and will not be rewarded in this class. The lectures, the assigned readings, your ability to benefit by instruction, your notes, and all other things pertaining to the class are only the means of provoking you, not to anger, but to thought, so that you can write the best one-page paper you are capable of producing.

I will read your papers as though I was the editor of a scholarly journal devoted to publishing critical articles on the topic(s) you have been assigned. In order to get an A, your paper must convince me it could be published as is without revision of any kind. You are therefore competing against the elusive standard of publishability, which means, as I see it, that your paper will be evaluated against five criteria: 1) substance (the content of what you say); 2) form (the way you say things in terms of their logical and mechanical structuring; 3) originality (whether you contribute anything of your own or merely re-plow cultivated soil); 4) factuality (your ability to present evidence); and 5) significance (the meaning of your interpretation). A paper in any field is virtually assured of publication if it meets criteria like these; its very antithesis is the re-hashed paper in which content and meaning are unrelated or the style does not accord with the facts.

"The braggart who talks a great game, but cannot score a point-that's form without substance. A concerto in which all the notes are played, but played badly-that's substance without form." --Jeff Holland, former President of Brigham Young University.

A good paper, remember, is a significant combination of substance and form produced by an original thinker according to the evidence.

Rules
The brevity of a one-page paper necessitates the following rules.

Limit the paper to one side of one sheet of paper. The paper should be double spaced and one-inch margins should be left on all four sides of the paper. Use a 10 or 12 point font, and under no circumstances should the paper exceed 275 words (use a word count or statistics function on a word processor to count your words and include the word count at the top of your paper. Your name, my name, the course name and number, the word count, and the tile of your paper do not count toward the 275 word limit). Make sure your ribbon is new and provides a dark print. If the printed paper is too light, I will not read it. You will be marked down for violating these rules and I will stop reading your paper after one page and grade you accordingly. To avoid problems, make sure the paper conforms to the above guidelines. No quotations, footnotes, or bibliography. I cannot tell what you know if you fill a short paper with quotations, etc. Say everything in your won words, paraphrasing the thoughts of others if you use them. Papers will be due at the beginning of class. If you don't make it to class by the time I collect the paper, I will not accept your paper. I do not accept late papers. If you cannot make it to class, you may turn in the paper early or have a classmate hand it in for you. Please do not e-mail one-page papers to me.