Fine Tuning the Paper

Transitions

and

Quotes

Transitions

Using transition words are very helpful.

Sometimes you need a transition paragraph to hook two ideas/parts of a paper together.

Transitions

Example:

While the definition of puppy mills seems very clear, it has been difficult for them to be shut down for the welfare of the animals. Until now, many solutions have been proposed. The answer to weeding out these monstrous operations can be found in licensing and patrolling farms where puppies are born.

PART ONE: WHAT IS A PUPPY MILL?

PART TWO: How I will get rid of puppy mills...

Transitions

Example:

The answer to reduction and finally banning puppy mills is not complicated. However, there is much the public can do to help stop the problem. Without a market for puppies, the mills can not survive.

PART THREE: How people can help me...

PART TWO: How I will get rid of puppy mills...

Using the sources

STEP ONE

• Set up the information– Who– What– When– Where– Why– Or how

Using the sources

STEP TWO

• Use the Information– Indirect Quote:

• put it in your own words; paraphrase it

– Direct: • Means copying word for word and using “ ” marks• Use if: You cannot paraphrase the information

More impact will be added by quoting

Using the sources

STEP THREE

• Explain how the information helps your point or how it relates to what you are saying

Example• Source information

“But Pooh, I am such a very small creature. I don’t think I can handle a tough job like that” (Milne 24). Piglet speaking to Pooh...

SET UP INFO

A.A. Milne creates a male character that goes against everything society thinks a man should be. In “Piglet’s Big Dilemma,” Piglet is given a task that only he can do but refuses to believe in himself, “But Pooh, I am such a very small creature. I don’t think I can handle a tough job like that” (Milne 24). This statement shows how unsure of his abilities Piglet really is. Use Source EXPLAIN

Using Sources

1. Set up the information

2. Use information

3. Explain information

What did the expert do?

• For Direct Quotes instead of always using “said” try:

According to _____,____states,____stated,____remarked,____found that -----____commented,

How to insert the information

• AUTHOR’S NAME IN THE TEXT pp. 240-1

– Tannen has argued this point (178-85).

– Others, like Jakobson and Waugh (210-15), hold the opposite point of view.

– It may be true, as Robertson maintains, that “in the appreciation of medieval art the attitude of the observer is of primary importance…” (136).

AUTHOR’S NAME IN REFERENCE p. 240-1

• This point has already been argued (Tannen 178-85).

• Others hold the opposite point of view (Jakobson and Waugh 210-15).

• It may be true that “in the appreciation of medieval art the attitude of the observer is of primary importance. . .” (Robertson 136).

TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR p. 251

Place a comma after the author’s name, list the title of the work and the page.

• In the past, this type of behavior was considered pathological (Frye, Double Vision 85).

If you want to place the author’s name in the text, place the name of the work and page number in parentheses.

• According to Frye, this type of behavior was considered pathological (Double Vision 85).

CORPORATE AUTHORS p. 250

Use the author’s name followed by a page reference. Try to use the author’s name in the text so that some of the name can be abbreviated in the parentheses.

•• According to a study sponsored by the National

Research Council, the population of China around 1990 was increasing by more than fifteen million annually (15).

• By 1992, it was apparent that the American health care system, though impressive in many ways, needed “to be fixed an perhaps radically modified” (Public Agenda Foundation 4).

REFERENCE AFTER QUOTATIONp. 241

Parenthetical reference comes before the punctuation mark that concludes the sentence, clause, or phrase containing the borrowed material.

•• In his Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin states

that he prepared a list of thirteen virtues (135-37).

• In the late Renaissance, Machiavelli contended that human beings were by nature “ungrateful” and “mutable” (1240), and Montaigne thought them “miserable and puny” (1343).

If the quotation is set off from the text, type a space after the concluding punctuation mark and insert the

parenthetical reference.

John K. Mahon adds a further insight to our understanding of the War of 1812:

Financing the war was very difficult at the time. Baring Brothers, a banking firm of the enemy country, handled routine accounts for the United States overseas, but the firm would take on no loans. The loans were in the end absorbed by wealthy Americans at great hazard –also, as it turned out, at great profit to them. (385)

VOLUME AND PAGE NUMBERS OF MULTIVOLUME WORK p. 247

If you use the author’s name in the reference, list the volume number followed by a colon and the page number.

• The anthology by Lauter and his coeditors contains both Stowe’s “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl” (1: 2530-38) and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (2: 606-19).

• Between the years 1945 and 1972, the political-party system in the United States underwent profound changes (Schlesinger, vol. 4).

WORKS WITH NO AUTHORp. 248

Place the title of the work in parentheses

• A presidential commission reported in 1970 that recent campus protest had focused on “racial injustice, war, and the university itself” (Report 3).

ELECTRONIC SOURCES A SOURCE WITH AN AUTHORIf you are using a source with an author, but do not have a page number from a pdf file, you can denote the paragraph in which you found the information.

• Alberta Resa’s “Magician Within” discusses the possibility of humans possessing a power source that can affect the external world (par. 5).

A SOURCE WITH NO AUTHOR p.247-49If you are using a source with no author add the

title to the parentheses.• In Fresco painting, “the pigments are completely

fused with a damp plaster ground to become an integral part of the wall surface” (“Fresco Painting”).

TWO OR MORE WORKS WITH THE SAME TITLE AND NO AUTHOR p.247-49

If you are using two or more sources with no author and the same title, find the publication fact that distinguishes the works in the works cited entry and add it to the parentheses.

• In winter the snowy owl feeds primarily on small rodents (“Snowy Owl,” Hinterland), but in spring it also feeds on the eggs of much larger waterfowl, such as geese ands swans (“Snowy Owl,” Arctic).

Works Cited• “Snowy Owl.” Artic Studies Center. 2002 Natl. Museum

of Natural History of the Smithsonian Inst. 8 Aug 2002 <http://www.mnh.si.edu/artic/html/owl.html>.

• In studying the influence of Latin American, African, and Asian music on modern American composers, music historians tend to discuss such figures as Aaron Copeland, George Gershwin, Henry Cowell, Alan Hovhaness, and John Cage (Brindlde; Griffiths 104-39; Hitchcock 173-98). They usually overlook Duke Ellington, whom Gunther Schuller rightly calls “one of America’s great composers” (318), probably because they are familiar only with Ellington’s popular pieces, like “Sophisticated Lady,” “Mood Indigo,” and “Solitude.” Still little known are the many ambitious orchestral suites Ellington composed, several of which, such as Black, Brown, and Beige (originally entitled The African Suite), The Liberian Suite, The Far East Suite, The Latin American Suite, and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, explore his impressions of the people, places, and music of other countries.

40 words, indent quotation

• Not all music critics, however, have ignored Ellington’s excursions into longer musical forms. Raymond Horricks compared him with Ravel, Delius, and Debussy:

The continually enquiring mind of Ellington . . . has sought to extend steadily the imaginative boundaries of the musical form on which it subsists.. . . . Ellington since the mid-1930s has been engaged upon extending both the imagery and the formal construction of written jazz. (122-23)

When in doubt...

• ASK = WIN

• Look at your MLA Documentation Sheet for examples first.

• Then, ask me.

• You CAN do this. Relax. You are on the home stretch.

ONTO THE ROUGH DRAFT