1. Parenthetical Documentation

2. Purpose of Parenthetical Citations… You need to be able to give an author or source credit even though you have taken their information and placed it in your own words. Think of it this way… If you came up with a great idea, you would want credit for it. Parenthetical citations are a way of giving credit. The only time you give credit to the source is when you are changing to a new one.

3. Here is my notecard… Notecard #18 Source # IV “ Capote’s interest in the murder of a family in Kansas led to the prolonged investigation that provided the basis for In Cold Blood (1966), his most successful and acclaimed book. By ‘treating a real event with fictional techniques,’ Capote intended to create a new synthesis: Something both ‘immaculately factual’ and a work of art. However its genre was defined, from the moment it began to appear in serialized form in The New Yorker the book exerted a fascination among a wider readership than Capote’s writing had ever attracted before. The abundantly publicized masked ball at the Plaza Hotel with which he celebrated the completion of In Cold Blood was an iconic event of the 1960’s, and for a time Capote was a constant presence on television and in magazines, even trying his had at movie acting in Murder by Death.”

4. Here is my source… Capote, Truman and Price Reynolds. The Complete Stories of Truman Capote. New York: Random House, Inc., 2004. Print.

5. When I want to cite the source in my paper there are several ways I can do this… If there is an author, use the author’s last name and the page number if there is one. (Andrews 45) If there is no author, use the title of the book, magazine article, journal, or web page. (“The Complete Stories of Truman Capote” 72) Notice that I placed quotation marks around my title.

6. Keep in mind… There are many different types of sources. For each type of source, you will have a different way to cite the source. For instance, my source has two authors. So my citation will have to include both authors. Here is my citation: (Capote and Reynolds 65)

7. If you do not know how to cite your source, use one these resources… The handout (in your packet) on parenthetical citation. www.citationmachine.net MLA Handbook You must know what kind of source you have before you figure out how to cite it!!

8. So once you have your citation, you need to know when to cite it in your paper. When I determine where in the paper I want to use my information, I will take my notecard and change it into my own words. Now, here is the important part!!! EVERYTIME you switch to information from a new source, you MUST cite the previous source BEFORE you begin your using your new information.

9. So, my paper will look something like this… In 1966, Capote began writing his most successful novel, In Cold Blood, after he read about the murder of a family in Kansas. This interest led him to investigate the crime and then use factual statements and fictional techniques to write his novel. His intention was to create a new genre. The book was first published in serials in The New York Times. Capote had never before had so much interest from readers. In order to celebrate properly for the success and completion of his “new” novel, he held what was called the Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel. After this, Capote became popular on television and in magazines (Capote and Price vi). This paragraph is information that I took from my notecard and placed in my own words. After I was done with that source and wanted to switch to another one, I made sure to cite my source, and then continue.

10. If my source did not have an author available, then my citation would look like this… In 1966, Capote began writing his most successful novel, In Cold Blood, after he read about the murder of a family in Kansas. This interest led him to investigate the crime and use factual statements and fictional techniques to write his novel. His intention was to create a new genre. The book was first published in serials in The New York Times. Capote had never before had so much interest from readers. In order to celebrate properly for the success and completion of his “new” novel, he held what was called the Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel. After this, Capote became popular on television and in magazines (“The Complete Stories of Truman Capote” vi).

11. Understandably, you would not want to have to cite a source after each sentence. So try instead to keep information from your sources as close together as you can. While you may have a few sentences and then need to cite your source, try not to have to cite your source after every sentence. Instead, group your information together by source. But, if you do need to change sources after a sentence, by all means do!!!

12. Tricks for Organization… I am a color person. Colors help to keep me organized. So I use colors to organize my sources. I assign each source a different color. Then as I am taking information from a notecard, I correspond the color of my font on the computer with the color of the source. It is an easy way to keep track of where you need to insert a citation. Basically, every time you switch colors, you insert a citation.

13. Sample of Color Coding Richard Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi in 1908. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an illiterate sharecropper (Hill). At the age of twelve, Wright published his first short story, “Voodoo of Hell’s Half Acre” in his school’s newspaper. This would fuel Wright’s passion for writing and he would go on to continue to write short stories for the remainder of his life (“Wright Begins to Write”). For numerous years in his life, Wright was shuffled in and out of school. Due to his mother’s illnesses, his father’s abandonment, and his need to help support the family, Wright worked various jobs. These jobs included running errands for whites, working at a post office, and working as a busboy in a restaurant ( Peters). D. A. Baldwin points out, Wright remembered living with “the sustained expectation of violence” (195).

14. Examples of Parenthetical Citations… In their Preface, the authors point out that "Learning Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) is like learning any new language, computer or human" (Musciano and Kennedy xi). Musciano and Kennedy suggest that we should avoid breaking tags across lines in our source document whenever possible to promote readability and reduce potential errors in HTML documents (41).

15. More examples… On May 2, 2002, some 4500 students wrote the difficult University of Waterloo, Physics Department, Sir Isaac Newton (SIN) Examination. Amazingly, there were three perfect papers! Two team members from Don Mills Collegiate Institute broke Waterloo's SIN record not so much for finishing First Place but both students on the team had perfect exams ("SIN 2002"). For more examples, check this website: http://www.aresearchguide.com/9parenth.html