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| Preface | |
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| Methods of Proceeding | |
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| Introductory | |
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| Selecting a topic | |
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| The irrelevance of most library research | |
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| Resolving controversies | |
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| Appreciating philosophers of an earlier period | |
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| The outline | |
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| Preparation of the final draft | |
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| Writing blocks | |
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| Rules of the Game | |
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| Plagiarism as a legal wrong (violation of another person's property right) | |
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| Plagiarism as a moral wrong (cheating and lying) | |
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| Quotation, attribution, and acknowledgment | |
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| Alternative formats for notes | |
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| Acceptable abbreviations in notes | |
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| Criteria for Grading Student Papers | |
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| Clarity | |
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| Presence of argument | |
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| Cogency of argument | |
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| Originality, subtlety, imaginativeness | |
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| Degree of difficulty | |
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| Ordering the criteria | |
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| General Principles of Good Writing | |
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| Clarity again | |
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| Simplicity | |
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| Economy | |
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| Padding | |
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| Repetitiveness | |
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| Redundancy | |
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| Misplaced emphasis | |
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| Pretentiousness and fancy words | |
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| A miscellany of further judgments | |
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| Mistakes of Grammar | |
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| Grammatical and nongrammatical writing errors | |
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| Criteria of correct grammar | |
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| A sampler of grammatical rules and their problems | |
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| Summary | |
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| Some Common Mistakes in Diction | |
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| Diction and grammar | |
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| Linguistic correctness and controversy | |
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| Constantly changing usage | |
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| Linguistic liberals and conservatives | |
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| Sample mistakes of diction | |
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| Stylistic Infelicities | |
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| The concept of style | |
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| Prose writing as a source of pleasure | |
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| The paragraph | |
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| Motion metaphors | |
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| Smoothing the flow | |
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| Conspicuous over-use of favorite words | |
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| Forget adornment and eloquence | |
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| Types of poor writing styles | |
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| Language and Logic | |
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| Correct and incorrect reasoning | |
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| Deductive and inductive reasoning | |
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| Sentences and propositions | |
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| Arguments | |
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| Premises as unproved assumptions | |
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| Logical necessity versus psychological certainty | |
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| Necessity and contingency | |
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| Three types of impossibility | |
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| Basic Deductive Logic | |
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| Possible truth value combinations | |
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| Validity and soundness | |
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| Definition of truth functional connectives | |
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| Necessary and sufficient conditions | |
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| Valid deductive argument forms: a sampler | |
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| Logic Without Necessity | |
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| Informal fallacies | |
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| Some inductive inferences, good and bad | |
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| Begging the question | |
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| Analogical reasoning | |
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| A sampler of fallacies | |
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| Varieties of Philosophy Papers | |
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| Rules of strategy | |
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| Manageable philosophical tasks | |
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| Modest partial reasons | |
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| Interpretation | |
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| Generalization and counterexample | |
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| Definition | |
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| Other categories of philosophical papers | |
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| Philosophical Research on the Internet | |
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| Appendix: A Checklist for Philosophy Papers | |