How to write a research paper on index cards

You have eleven sources, a thesis you cannot quite state, and a paper due Thursday. Everyone who has written a research paper knows this exact moment, and most people handle it the same way: open a blank document, stare at it, and start typing the introduction because the introduction comes first.

That is the mistake. Not the staring, the starting. A research paper is not written from the top down. It is assembled from pieces, and the order of the pieces is most of the work. The tool for that job is two hundred years old and costs about four dollars: a pack of index cards.

This guide is the whole method. You do not need any software to follow it. If you do use software, the steps are the same.

Why cards, in one paragraph

A card holds one thing. Because it holds one thing, it can be compared with other cards, put in a pile, moved to a different pile, thrown out, or put back. A paragraph in a document cannot do any of that without you retyping it. Writers have used cards for this reason for as long as cards have existed: Nabokov drafted novels on them, Robert Caro pins his to a wall, and every student who has spread notes across a dorm floor at 2 a.m. has rediscovered the same thing unaided. Cards work because they make order something you can see and change.

Step 1: One card per thing you found

Read your sources with a stack of cards beside you. Every time you meet something you might use, it gets a card. Not a page of notes. A card.

Three kinds of card come out of reading:

Source cards. One per book, article, or website. Write the full citation on it now, while the source is open in front of you. This is the least interesting card and the one that saves you the most misery on Wednesday night. Number it: S1, S2, S3.

Quotation cards. One exact quotation, in quotation marks, with the page number and the source number it came from. Write it exactly. If you paraphrase, say so on the card. A quotation card without a source number is a citation error waiting to happen.

Fact cards. A date, a statistic, a finding, in your own words, with the source number and page.

Give each card a one-line title across the top. If you cannot title it in one line, it is two cards. This is the single most useful discipline in the method, and it is why the cards are small.

Do not decide yet whether you will use any of it. You are collecting, not choosing.

Step 2: Write down what you think

After a few sources, opinions start forming. Each one gets a card too, a different color if you have them.

Claim cards. One sentence you believe is true and intend to argue. Not a topic ("the causes of the war") but a claim ("the war began over trade, not religion"). Write it as a full sentence with a verb. A claim you cannot write as a sentence is not a claim yet.

Counterpoint cards. The objections. What would a smart person who disagrees with you say? Write each one down honestly, as strongly as you can. You will need them.

Most students skip this step because it feels presumptuous to have opinions before the reading is finished. Do it anyway. The claims will change. That is what the cards are for.

Step 3: Lay them out and connect them

Clear a table. Put the claim cards in a row. Under each claim, put the quotation and fact cards that support it.

Now look at what you have. Three things will be true, and each one is information:

• Some claims have no evidence under them. Either find evidence or cut the claim. A claim with nothing under it is an opinion, and the paper is not about your opinions.
• Some evidence sits under no claim. Set those cards aside in a pile of their own. You may need them later. You probably will not, and that is fine. Research produces more than a paper can hold.
• One source is doing most of the work. If nine of your fourteen evidence cards came from one book, your paper is a summary of that book. Go back to the other sources or get new ones.

Put each counterpoint card next to the claim it attacks. Every counterpoint needs an answer, and the answer is usually another claim card you have not written yet. Write it now.

You have just done the thing most students do in their heads, badly, at midnight. You did it on a table, in daylight, and you can see it.

Step 4: Find the thesis under the claims

Look at your row of claims. What do they have in common? What is the one sentence that, if true, makes all of them matter?

That sentence is your thesis. Write it on its own card and put it at the top.

Notice the direction this went. You did not start with a thesis and go looking for support. You gathered, you formed claims from what you found, and the thesis emerged from the claims. This is how research actually works, and it is the opposite of how the blank document makes you work. A thesis written first is a guess. A thesis written last is a conclusion.

If no single sentence covers all your claims, one of two things is true: you have two papers, or one of your claims belongs in a different paper. Set it aside. It is not wasted; it is next month's paper.

Step 5: Put them in order, then try a different order

Now arrange the claims into a sequence. First claim, second claim, third. Each claim with its evidence beneath it and its counterpoint beside it.

Read the sequence aloud, just the claim titles. Does it build? Does each claim make the next one easier to believe?

Then do the thing that only cards let you do: pick up the whole row and try a different order. Lead with the counterargument. Put the strongest claim last instead of first. Start with the surprising fact instead of the background.

You will know within a minute which order is better, and you will have spent a minute instead of an afternoon of rewriting. This is the entire reason the method exists. Order is where an argument lives, and a document makes order expensive to change. Cards make it free.

Section cards help here. Write "Introduction," "Background," "The case for," "The objection," "Conclusion" on cards and use them as dividers. They are not content. They are the shelf the content sits on, and you can move the shelf.

Step 6: Write the bridges, not the paper

You now have the paper. It is on the table. What is missing is the connective tissue: the sentence that gets the reader from the end of one card to the start of the next.

Go through the row and, at every junction between two cards, ask: what does the reader need to hear here? Sometimes nothing. Usually a sentence. Write it on a small card and slot it between them, or write it in pencil on the bottom of the first card.

This is the only new prose you write before drafting, and it is the prose that makes a paper read like an argument instead of a list. Students who skip it produce the paper where every paragraph is fine and the whole thing does not go anywhere.

Step 7: Type it in order

Open the document now. Type the cards in order. Card, bridge, card, bridge. Expand each card into a paragraph; most claim cards become one paragraph, most quotation cards become part of one.

You will be surprised how fast this goes. The thinking is done. You are transcribing a structure that already exists, and the introduction, which you would normally have spent an hour on, is now easy: it announces the thesis card and previews the section cards. Write it last.

Your works cited page is the stack of source cards, in alphabetical order. You made it on the first day without noticing.

Step 8: Keep the cards

Do not throw them away. Keep the ones you did not use with the ones you did. Next semester's paper in the same field starts with a head start, and the semester after that a bigger one. Students who keep their cards arrive at their senior thesis with a deck of several hundred, and the thesis is assembled rather than begun.

They also answer a question that comes up more often than it used to: how did you write this? A stack of dated cards, with the sources on them and the claims that grew out of the sources, is a record of your process that no finished paper can provide. Instructors are increasingly asking students to show their work rather than just hand in the result. The cards are the work. Guide 7, Showing your work, is about keeping that record without doing any extra work, and about what it can and cannot say.

The whole method on one card

1. One card per thing you found: sources, quotations, facts. Cite as you go.
2. One card per thing you think: claims and counterpoints, as full sentences.
3. Lay claims in a row; put evidence under each. Cut what has no evidence.
4. Find the thesis in what the claims have in common. Write it last.
5. Order the claims. Then try a different order. Keep the better one.
6. Write one bridge sentence at every junction.
7. Type it in order. The introduction goes last.
8. Keep the cards.

The printable

Two sheets, four card faces each, to print on card stock and cut on the dotted lines: a source card (citation fields, source number), a quotation card (source number, page, the exact words), a claim card (one sentence, "supported by"), a counterpoint card ("against claim", its evidence); then a fact card, a thesis card, a not used card for the top of the pile you set aside, and the whole method on one card. Each face has a line for a title and a corner for the date. Letter · A4. A pack of 3×5 index cards does the same job.