History 2T03: Canada, beginnings to 1885

Article review guidelines

General guidelines and advice

• Use formal writing and full sentences.
• Do not use subheadings; the review should be one continuous text.
• Place a full bibliographic citation of the article at the top of the first page of the
review; use the conventions of the Chicago Manual of Style. (See the Library Web
site for more information on documentation styles.)
• Use parenthetical page references to refer to passages within the article under
review. Use footnotes to refer to any other sources (as required).

Question to ask when

Situating the work

• What is the topic of this article? What are its temporal, geographical/
spatial, and thematic limits?
• What led the author to investigate this topic? Why does s/he consider it
important?
• Is the study part of a larger project?
• Does the author have any special background or experiences that qualify
her/him as an expert on the topic?
• What is the author’s thesis?

Dissecting the work

• What are the major constituent parts of the article? What is the principle
behind the organization of its parts?
• How does one subtopic flow into the next?
• What are the main arguments used to support the article’s overall thesis?
• What evidence is used to support each argument?

Appreciating the work

• Did the author respect the stated limits of the study?
• Does the evidence support the conclusions?
• What issues were not adequately addressed?
• What questions were left unanswered?
• Why is this work important?