As you all know, essays three and four must include outside sources to back up what you discuss.
By the way, this is not an option.
| At least one of the
essays that you place into the portfolio must include a minimum of three sources that are effectively cited in the
essay and presented in a works cited page, based on the MLA style;
otherwise, your portfolio will
automatically fail. Furthermore, any time you quote, summarize or paraphrase from a source--including The Composition of Everyday Life--in either of your portfolio essays, you must effectively cite it in your essay and present it in a works cited page. |
Every academic discipline uses a style that is followed for manuscript format, citing sources and presenting bibliographic information about those sources.
We have been using, and will continue to use, Modern Language Association (MLA) style, which is used in English, literature and modern language studies.
The point is that you need to develop habits for using an academic style and to realize that you will need to be flexible about the one you use depending on the course, instructor and discipline.
However, the principles behind summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting and attributing sources are pretty constant throughout all academic writing.
And for those that are peculiar to the academic style, there is your handbook. So keep it in front of you whenever editing and proofreading.
Now, PSM discusses MLA style in detail, and I am not simply going to regurgitate what you can easily follow there.
| Again, I suggest that you have the handbook out and open whenever you are editing for in-text citation and for your works cited page. |
PSM 107-10 effectively explains the differences between quotations, paraphrases and summaries, when to use them, and how to cite them.
Become very familiar with these passages in our texts.
Now, what follows is some basics about using sources within your writing. Do note, again, that any differences you find in this virtual lecture or the one on MLA works cited supersedes what you find in PSM.
Most of the time, when we think of citing a source, we think only of quotations. However, we need to note where we borrow ideas from, even when they are in our own words.
| Michael Medved, film critic with the New York Post and
host of Sneak Previews, suggests that because advertising influences viewer buying habits, it's reasonable to assume that TV programming will influence viewer values (250-51). |
Notice that I begin with the writer's name and some information that clarifies his credentials, a very effective thing to do when you first use a source.
Also, note that in parentheses, I only place the page numbers, no p., no pp., no pg., no nothing!
Often when we present a quotation from a source, we use a tag, or what PSM calls a signal phrase (112). In other words he says, Dillard explains, Medved argues followed by the quotation.
| Thus, the use of diction in depicting order in the description of
events is undoubtedly necessary. But just as important is depicting the events themselves in the order they occur. As Gardner states, "If we are to see a perfectly focused dream image, we must be given the signals one by one, in order, so that everything happens with smooth logicality, perfect inevitability" (113). |
Notice that after the tag, I used a comma and then capitalized the first word of the quotation.
You present quotations longer than four lines as follows:
| After Chaplin becomes a policeman, he as the Christ-figure rescues
Edna from a dope fiend and cleans up Easy Street. The last scene shows all of the former miscreants dressed nicely, behaving civilly and going to church at the New Hope Mission. As Gerald Mast in The Comic Mind describes,
And the agent for both Charlie's salvation and his cleansing of the street, is Edna, the Madonna of Easy Street. |
Notice with a long quotation that you drop to the next line and indent the quotation one inch from the margin. You stay with double spacing, though.
Also notice that there are no quotation marks. The indentation identifies that it is a quotation.
Whenever you borrow language from a source you need to put it into quotation marks, even if it is less than a full sentence.
| Chaplin again uses the Madonna image in The Kid. The film opens
with Edna, now the nameless woman "whose sin was motherhood" standing before the charity hospital. Smith describes this opening as "the sudden frozen image of Christ bearing a cross in hazy counterpoint to the Woman and her infant burden . . . " (49). |
Notice that when I use the intertitle quotation from the film--"whose sin was motherhood"--I did not capitalize the first word of the quotation, nor did I separate the quotation with a comma. That's because I made it part of my sentence.
The same is so with the quotation from Smith. By making it part of my sentence--as "the sudden frozen image of Christ bearing a cross"--I keep the beginning word lower case and use no comma.
You can even have a long quotation that is part of your sentence. Again, you don't separate the quotation with a comma and you don't capitalize the first word:
| After Chaplin becomes a policeman, he as the Christ-figure rescues
Edna from a dope fiend and cleans up Easy Street. The last scene shows all of the former miscreants dressed nicely, behaving civilly and going to church at the New Hope Mission. Gerald Mast in The Comic Mind summarizes the conclusion to the film, stating that
And the agent for both Charlie's salvation and his cleansing of the street, is Edna, the Madonna of Easy Street. |
Occasionally, instead of naming the writer you quote from or paraphrase, you can put the name in the parenthesis rather than in your sentence:
| Chaplin again uses the Madonna image in The Kid. The film opens
with Edna, now the nameless woman "whose sin was motherhood" standing before the charity hospital. One film scholar describes this opening as "the sudden frozen image of Christ bearing a cross in hazy counterpoint to the Woman and her infant burden . . . " (Smith 49). |
However, most of the time, tell us who the writer is up front, especially when paraphrasing and summarizing.
That way, you can note his or her credentials when you first use the source.
One last point: after first mentioning an author and using the full name, you may want to use only one name with subsequent mentions. Use the last name, not the first.
You will no doubt come across sources that do not identify the author, usually in newspapers and magazines. Here's an example from a previous semester student essay on television violence:
| There are many bad things that happen in our world, but not as often as is shown on TV. Take, for example, the television shows NYPD Blue, Millennium, or Profiler. They show such things as bank robberies, kidnappings, murders, serial bombers, and serial killers. One reporter notes that "the pilot of Millennium was probably the grimmest crime scene in prime-time history" ("Fall" 98). |
Instead of the name of the author, the writer used the first word of the article title so that we can find it on the works cited page.
When you quote, summarize or paraphrase a WWW article or an LCC library database article in your essay, you can give the paragraph number where the passage is found. Here's an example of a paraphrase from a Web article that is in the Works Cited page presented in Part 2:
| Dunn asserts that not only is testosterone not a cause of aggression in men, but it actually decreases among soldiers under the stress of combat (par. 21). |
However, again, there are two exceptions:
|
[Introduction] [Parenthetic Citation] [Works Cited]
Created by Dan H12 Oct 2009 02:45 PM -0400olt: 11/3/1997
Last Revised:
© 2009 by Daniel T. Holt
Instructor note: feel free to use in your classes. However, if you copy anything from this page and paste into your materials, please practice what you preach and cite appropriately.