Research Writing: Essential Vocabulary

MLA Format “Modern Language Association” Dictates format of paper: font, margins, heading, documentation… Usually used in humanities courses such as ELA

Thesis Statement Last sentence of Introduction

Plagiarism the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. Can often be done unintentionally by careless paraphrasing or lack of documentation

Turnitin.com: “originality report”

Source A “source” of information that you have found in your research related to your topic Ie: reference source (encyclopedia); website source; book source; database article source

In-text Citation Gives credit to a source “in the text” (documentation) Generally author’s last name or title of article Corresponds with Works Cited

Works Cited An alphabetized list of “works cited” (sources used) which appears at the end of your research paper gives publication information for each of the sources you have cited (or used) in your paper. Includes only sources that you have quoted, summarized, or paraphrased Corresponds with in-text citations

Ways we write in a paper… Paraphrasing: a restatement of text or passage, giving the meaning in another form; rewording (putting text in your own words) Summarizing: taking a larger section of text and reducing it to the bare essentials (the main idea/point) Directly quoting: Using an author's language word for word; verbatim (we don’t do this a lot!) *Any time you do any of the above, you must use an in-text citation!!!