Hey, without knowing what level you're at, I'll start at the most basic. A history paper is a specific genre of writing about history that tries to make an argument or convince the reader of something about the past. There are lots of other genres that you have probably read many times, like a news article, a short story, a young adult novel, and stuff like that. Most students NEVER read a history paper until they are asked to write one. That is why it is hard for a lot of people to write them!...because they never read examples of them before.

So a history paper is a specific type of writing. They expand from "short statements that are directly related to a piece of evidence or historical quote given to me." What I mean by that is you have probably been given some historial evidence, and then you write a little paragraph or something to answer a question. To answer your short questions, you probably learned to have a topic sentence, a few sentences of evidence based on the text, and a concluding sentence. Right? That form is the skeleton of a history paper, except instead of having it be topic sentence/evidence sentences/ concluding sentence, you have introduction paragraph, body paragraphs (where you present more evidence), and a concluding paragraph. In school, people sometimes learn five paragraph essays , but history papers don't necessarily need to have 5 paragraphs. It's all about what evidence you have. Usually for a history paper, you will use more evidence than just one or two sources like you've used in the past. You may analyze one bit of historical evidence in a lot more detail, or you may use many different sources and put them together to answer the question.

How do you write a history paper? There are a million different ways to do it. But basically, start with the question. Often, your teacher will provide it (but as you go along you will ask your own question and then answer it with the evidence you have). Begin by formulating a one-sentence answer to that question. That is called a thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be bold. You should be able to be proven right or wrong by someone else. Someone might disagree with your answer. You have to take a stand. You should give your opinion that you think you can prove with the evidence you have. It shouldn't be some boring summary sentence. NO: "The American Civil War was a conflict fought between 1861 and 1865." Yes: "The American Civil War was a struggle over the place of slavery in the United States." Do you see the difference between those sentences? The first one is just a boring statement of fact. The second one is a position that you will try to convince the reader of. You will try and prove that the war was fought over slavery. This sentence goes at the beginning of your paper somewhere, depending on where your teacher thinks it should go. I usually like to start my papers with an interesting little story from one of my sources, and then I put my thesis after that story at the end of my first paragraph.

After you have your thesis statement sentence, begin thinking about your evidence. How will you convince the reader that you are right? I think about my sources and list out what I learned from each of them. I try to think of many different angles to support my thesis statement in different ways. I group similar evidence into paragraphs, and write a paragraph using the same basic premise I learned in school. Topic sentence, similar supporting evidence, concluding analysis/transition to next paragraph.

So for our Civil War example, perhaps I noticed that many states declared independence by talking about protecting slavery. I might have this be a paragraph organized around this line of evidence. So I might begin with a topic sentence like...First, many states seceded from the US in order to protect slavery. For example, officials in Texas said "blah blah blah" (citation). In South Carolina, they wrote a lot in documents X and Y about blah blah blah, which shows they too left the Union principally because of slavery. [And on and on you go through the paragraph, trying to show all the different related evidence that supports your topic sentence.]

Now, before you go on to the next paragraph, there is one really important step that most students miss. You need to circle back to your thesis statement. At the end of the paragraph, you should try to explain how this paragraph as a whole and all your evidence that you have just given proves your thesis statement. This might be one sentence or several sentences of analysis in your own voice. These are your ideas based on the evidence. So in our example, how does the fact that many states said they were leaving the Union to protect slavery support our thesis that the Civil War was about slavery? I would write something like..."Based on all these examples, slavery was an important issue in the minds of the powerful people in the American South who decided to leave the Union. From the very beginning, slavery became the central deciding factor of whether there would be a united States or not."

After you sum up your evidence. Begin the next paragraph with a new line of evidence. And then another. And another. Until you run out of similar ideas to group into a paragraph. In your final paragraph, you should remind the reader what your thesis was. I like to rephrase my thesis statement at the beginning of that paragraph. Then I summarize the paragraphs I presented. And then I try to blow the reader's minds with a sentence that is really powerful and keeps the reader thinking about my paper. Don't just stop.

Other tips: Avoid writing a history paper about something you don't want to learn about! Sometimes, you can't do this because your teacher assigned you a specific essay topic. But a lot of times, the teacher will have you write a research paper about whatever you want. I've never understood why students sometimes pick topics they don't care about. You're gonna have to spend a lot of time with this topic, so pick one you want to learn about. Also, make sure you revise your paper before turning it in. I like to read my papers out loud. It feels silly at first, but reading out loud helps me hear where my words are awkward or confusing. It also helps me find some of my typos.

Sorry this answer is a bit long, but it is hard to sum up all your questions quickly. In any case, I hope it helps. Mainly, think about having an argument, and then use lots of examples organized into paragraphs that help you convince your reader about what happened in the past.

Well, a [research] paper (unlike, for example, an essay), is a consistent text - practically anything between a few and possibly a hundred pages - which is written to certain general academic standards of research and thematizes a specific "problem" (just a fancy word for "topic"), or issue that it argues to be of interest to its audience.

It can be about almost anything, from summarizing current knowledge on a subject, analyzing a specific historic source, introducing a fresh look on things, etc., as long as it introduces new knowledge to its intended audience or provides a fresh perspective on things.

An alternative, more general, way to describe what a paper is, is maybe that it is a text written in a mode of "argumentative writing." In other words, what you say needs to make logical sense for your readers :)

There's books which explain how to drive an argument within a text composition, and I think in order to learn how to write papers - especially good papers - it is absolutely necessary to, well, read papers (duh!). As always, imitation is one of the best teachers.

Reading something like A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is also helpful to understand how to generally write argumentatively. Its definitely not something you just can do well from one day to another.

(Suffice it to say, all the papers I wrote as an undergrad student are a steaming pile of smelly garbage; actually, even those from the master's program are things I'd no longer want to show anyone either :D)

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An easy way to differentiate between a research paper and another type of text is to check if it is properly sourced: does it include references for the claims it makes, or not?

Since the main importance for academic writing is to be able to verifiable, this means that as an author of a paper you have to provide for every fact which cannot be considered widely known, where you have it from. And for everything you claim that someone else said, you have to do the same (else it would be not just shoddy work, but plagiarism, which can have quite negative consequences).

Hope that helps. ^^b