After you have read the "How to Cut Your Research Paper Time in Half," specifically the first section on selecting your research paper topic, and nothing seems to jump out at you, consider this tip.
Do NOT try and select it.
Here's what you should do:
1. WRITE DOWN the essential parts of what it is you want to research;
2. Put them in a logical sequence;
3. That becomes your table of contents. So take virtually those EXACT words, and then make it your title. I'm dead serious about using virtually the exact words. In about 95% of the cases, a student will give me some over-generalized title, but when I look at the actual paper, the table of contents is very different from the table of contents. THAT'S A TRAP;
4. As pointed out in the "How to Cut…" document, you can create your title by making the table of contents FIRST.
5. Here's an oversimplified example. A student will create an over-generalized title, such as "Weapons of Mass Destruction" but I look at the table of contents, it will have:
What Ricin Is;
How It Works.
What the title should have been is: Ricin: What It Is; How It Works.
6. Get the absolute MAIN FOCUS into just one, or a very few words, and put that word/ words as the BEGINNING of the title, following by the colon sign. Example: Ricin:
7. THEN, take each of the segments (chapter headings from the table of contents), and put them right behind the colon. Each segment will end with a semicolon, except for the last one, which will end with a period.
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