in-text citation - ellipsis

Ellipsis (plural ellipses) deserve some discussion. Check out the following sources:

• wikipedia
• Purdue's online writing center
• the JCCC writing center on ellipsis

In prose, ellipses are not generally needed at the beginning or end of a quote. The rule is different for poetry - and if there is confusion between the above sources - my rule is no ellipsis at the beginning or end of a quote. Even if you end a quote before the period. Even if the first part of the sentence is left off.

MLA has gone back and forth on whether brackets [...] are needed to clarify that you inserted ellipsis rather than include punctuation found in the original source - so that one is you call. Just be consistent.

in-text citations the basics

Duke has a great guide to parenthetical citations with MLA - and as a KU alum it's hard to praise Duke. St. Cloud U. Writing Center also has a guide which points out how to cite when the author's name is mentioned in the text.

Something that bugs me - when I see the long and drawn-out slow wind up. It isn't concise. It amounts to filler. For example

Stephen Krashen, a world authority on No Child Left Behind and author of "Remarks on Race to the Top," wrote an interesting article. In it he said, and I think correctly, "Students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families score outscore all or nearly all other countries on international tests."

This is too wordy. The end text citation will give me the title of the article, and appeals to authority should be carefully used. Krashen is popular, but not the authority you might expect among serious scholars. It's better to frame the quote for your purposes, and let the parenthetical citation do much of the work for you.

Testing may not be the solution to our problems in education, but fighting poverty. "Students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families score outscore all or nearly all other countries on international tests " (Krashen).

It's shorter, and conveys much more information. Note: the above came from a web source. If it's a pdf, or paginated source - such as print - insert the page number after the author's last name but without commas. The two links above to a great job explaining that.

Textbook Annotated Bibliography

How to write an annotated bibliography is covered in depth in the Comp 121 textbook. You can also check our social bookmarking site for loads of references online.

NOTE:

1. Refer to MLA handbook for how to cite sources - examples may be dated and
2. Double space everything.
3. Examples for visual reference - not arbiter of accuracy.
4. click on images of samples to enlarge.
5. Like everything else - it needs a heading. Don't trust the samples tho - too many are wrong - and that's just evil.
6. MLA handbook free online here. How to cite a work in an anthology (many English textbooks are anthologies) page 16, Sample Student Paper on page 40 (see this for heading format and page # placement).
   

Secrets of other teachers.

Tweed, a blog by the Chronicle of Education, has an interesting example of teachers who should know better having no privacy settings and posting inappropriate (?) comments on Facebook.

This isn't how I grade because a) I don't drink beer when I grade (tho I abuse coffee), and b) every paper gets read about 3 times; however, what the third comment down says about how - by the last 10 papers - if students use the right format and write coherently - they get an "A" does resonate. I suspect it's true of MANY teachers - and that's why up to 10% of a paper grade goes for MLA format INCLUDING/ ESPECIALLY THE HEADING and page #'s.

If you get an "A" in my class you learn to work the academic system - how to play the college game. And format is part of the objectives for all comp classes. AND it is SO EASY!

What I'm learning Re: SRTOL Papers - citing sources

I've only read a handful of papers. 1/2 have been amazing, and half have been ... uninspiring but generally ok. That's not too bad. Some advice, tips or clarifications for you-all.

In text quotations
Re: block quotations. Only one person's followed MLA so far. I notice Purdue's OWL and several other sources get it WRONG. Page 7 of the PDF Norton provides free online re: MLA format says:

When quoting more than three lines of poetry, more than four lines of prose, or dialogue from a drama, set off the quotation from the rest of your text, indenting it one inch (or ten spaces) from the left margin. Do not use quotation marks. Place any parenthetical documentation after the final punctuation. [emphasis mine]

See also the sample paper page 5 on pdf page 46.

Also:

• every source quoted or used to support an argument should show up in the works page. Even when you quote media such as: songs, films, TV, etc.
  
• if you quote something, there needs to be and immediate (or ajacent) indication of where to find citation info on the works page. Usually this is the author's last name.
  
• when quoting, include page #'s to help readers find the original quote. This is essential if quoting from a book, or database that uses PDF's with page #'s, or a periodical or anything that provides page #'s. Assume the reader will track down your quote, and make it easy. You may have to go back yourself.

Works Consulted info isn't just for your reader - it can help you track down your source again when you lose a draft, print out, whatever. That's why I work on / update the works page every time I find a new source. Just heard a sad story of a great source lost forever. I've been there. Work on your bib page from the beginning and keep it up to date.

Most Basic MLA format.

It starts with the heading (yourname/prof's name/class name/date) followed by the title - always a title then the body: all double-spaced with no extra hard returns (empty lines) stuck anywhere. Look at the sample student paper on page 41 on the free Norton MLA guide. It's real easy to spot any visual anomolies like 1.5 line spacing and non-standard fonts / point sizes/ margins. Margins should be 1 inch on each side and on the top - which is standard in every word processor program I know.

Book titles get italics - no longer do they get underlined. The underlining is a throwback to the days of typewriters. Underlining a title would be like using the expression "carbon copy" or "cc" when sending a duplicate message to someone. It wouldn't make sense today ;) Titles of short stories/ poems/ chapters in books get quotes around them.

Every page with the possible exception of the first page gets the author's last name and page # in the top right-hand corner.

Keeping things uniform makes my reading easier. When I read it's like I'm running a marathon and the format of student papers is the shoes they give me to wear. Cowboy boots are great shoes and in no way of less quality or inferior to running shoes - unless you have a marathon to run. Standard MLA format performs like top-of-the line running shoes.

Nobody expects one pair of shoes to serve every need. Don't expect one format or writing style to serve every communication purpose either.

Thanks.

Inspiration from Animation

The Venture Brothers series has long been a favorite because of its wit, deft skills with parody, and impressive ability to work on several levels at once. It decided the subject of this semester's Natural Narrative.

Episode 45 (?) entitled "Self-Medication" has perhaps 2 plots - the main being:

Dr. Venture attends a group therapy session for former boy adventurers, but a strange death causes the patients to fall back into their old mystery-solving habits.

The boy adventurers are clever parodies of classic action cartoon syndications from a golden age of animation prior to the 80's - when art, story and character development in cartoons were scrapped in favor of extended toy marketing campaigns and banal politically correct bore-a-thons.

But it was the murder weapon that triggered a flash-back and inspired my next Natural Narrative. The name, description, and dialogue about the "Vietnamese 2-step viper" showed an amazing insight and knowledge about southeast Asia (as did the reference to Thailand, boy-girls and the modern sex-tourist/slave trade - but that's in the sub-plot. That kinda thing happens here too). The viper is, like the boy adventurers, real but/and legendary.

Just as "Lance Hale" the mockery of the assertive Hardy Boy series (written by another Dixon) ridicules and disputes the existence of the snake that just killed their therapist - as western experts who haven't lived in southeast Asia denigrate the Bamboo Viper. My knowledge of the snake came from lurid fiction, the legends of the locals who lived on my mountain in JuDong, and some close and physical contact.

The story of evil amah (wikipedia may have it wrong - I like "Grandmother" as an honorific as a better translation) who demanded I kill the viper pictured may be a better story than either the 7.6 Richter-scale 921 earth quake story (powerful - tho perhaps a downer) or the time I posed as a roadie to sneak into a sold out psychobilly show and hung out with The Reverend Horton Heat. Good fun - but questionably relevant; both stories I've told students in the past. I haven't written or told this story yet.

Will post outline of Viper story soon - but it will require an intense amount of orientation (pardon the puns) - and digressions into the intense ethnicity of my jungle neighborhood (Hakka and Aboriginal), other venomous encounters (krait, cobra and an insect that may not have an English name - but it's nasty) and perhaps unpopular history of the occupation and abuse of Taiwan by Japan.

FYI: Venture Bros. aired at 11pm Sunday Jan. 17th on Adult Swim - on the Cartoon Network. Gotta look up MLA for documentation.

Why some Journal Dates get Parenthesis (and some dont')

Someone asked why some periodicals (ie magazines or journals) put the year in parenthesis and some did not. Good question. I looked into that. Page 22 of the pdf notes:

DATES: Abbreviate the names of months except for May, June, or July:
Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec. Journals paginated
by volume or issue call only for the year (in parentheses). [emphasis mine]

It has to do with how periodicals are published. Some may not record exact month, but rather record volume or issue numbers. For those put the year in parenthesis.

Can anyone further clarify this issue? Please do in the comments.

Images in this post take from the free Norton online 2009 update to MLA documentation.

Research resources.

I now share research with students via JCCC library's electronic course reserve. Just go to the Billington Library homepage, then click the "course reserve search" link indicated by the red arrow in the top image to the right (click either image to enlarge).

It will open up a new page. Find the Instructor scroll down menu (indicated in figure 2 by the yellow arrow) and find my name.

When citing research refer to the 2009 MLA documentation (available free online in pdf if you don't have the handbook with you. See also our social bookmarking page on MLA, and previous posts). I find the sample paper particularly useful. Scroll

MLA documentation

Hopefully you've checked out what I've posted before on documentation in general. It looks like people are doing google searches for research - even though we found great research in the library using the database. I'm seeing sources that don't impress me and don't lend anyone credibility. Anyone can get a web site and say anything. If you want to do a web search use Google Scholar. It provides much better sources. Best bet -though - is the library database.

Norton has some resources on how to document sources in MLA format. they even provide a free PDF of the MLA updates - and IT CONTAINS A SAMPLE PAPER! (go to page 40). It's amazing how much I can tell from just a superficial glance at the physical format of a paper. Look at a sample paper.

I also recommend Citation Machine. Click MLA and follow directions.

We should all cite the 4 C's statement that we are responding to. You can find it several places. I put a phrase from the statement in quotes and entered it in Google Scholar. One site quoted it in its entirety - it's full text through JSTOR. I took info from that page and entered it into citation machine and voila!

Gilyard, Keith. "African American Contributions to Composition Studies." National Council of Teachers of English. 50.4 (1999): 639. Web.

It doesn't have the hanging indent - which is tough in electronic formats like blogs, web pages, etc. but otherwise it's solid. Notice you don't need or want "volume" or "Vol." or "page" ... if everything is in the right place I know the volume 50, the number is 4 and the page is 639.