RESEARCH Writing

Sources  Primary: Firsthand Accounts  Examples:  Historical documents, works of literature, interviews, experiments, etc.  Secondary: sources that report or analyze info from other sources.  Examples:  A historian’s account of an event, a critic’s reading of a poem, a book report, etc.

Things to Consider about Sources  Check the title  Check the publisher  Check the length of periodical articles  Check the author  Note the viewpoints of the author or organization  The date of the source

Things to Consider about Web Sources  The web address  The layout  Graphics  Author/Organization  The site’s purpose  Website Updates  What the website has to offer

Plagiarism  Why is it important?  Because the work of an author is his or her intellectual property.  What is it exactly?  It is the presentation of someone else‘s ideas or words as your own. Whether deliberate or accidental it is still plagiarism.

How to use Sources  Direct quotation  Using the exact words of the author or source  Must identify by using quotation marks around the “quote”  Use brackets if you add or change something within the quote.  Ex. A bad reporter, Lyman implies, is one who “[fails] to separate opinions from facts” (52).

How to use Sources  Use Ellipsis marks to omit irrelevant material in a quote.  Example: Wilson writes, “Natural ecosystems…maintain the world exactly as we would wish it to be maintained.”  An exception to this is if you just use a word or a phrase from the quote.  Punctuation marks also go inside the quotation marks except if a citation follows it!

Example of this…  The famous line know from As I Lay Dying is “my mother is a fish.”  “I want to go to the movies,” said John.  Lowry writes about “release” (28), a word for death.

How to use Sources  To Summarize:  When you condense an extended idea or argument into a sentence or more in your own words.  Don’t need to cite!  To Paraphrase:  When you restate an author’s original presentation in your own words and sentence structure.  Do need to cite!

How to integrate sources  Use transitional expressions and signal phrases! Signal words usually contain the author/source’s name and an action verb. Can be used to precede a quote, interrupt to introduce a quote, or follow a quote.  Example: One editor grants that “new reporters, like everyone else, form impressions of what they see and hear.”  One editor disagrees with this view, maintaining that “ a good reporter does not fail…”

Common Knowledge  Knowledge that is the norm that doesn’t take any kind of research to obtain.  Does not have to be cited.  Examples:  Standard info (major facts-such as the date of America’s independence).  Folk Literature: can not be traced back to a writer and is well known  Commonsense observations

MLA Format  1 inch Margins  Double-Spaced  12” font: Times New Roman  Need Last Name, pg # on top right hand corner  Need Name, Class, Date, and Assignment on Left hand corner  Need Title  Research:  MLA requires paragraph incitation's  Use authors last name and page number (Johnson, 54).  Work Cited Page