Hamilton A
Brief Guide to Documentation and Works Cited
Most
of the essay writing that you will do for this course will be from primary
sources from the book, essay, or
story that we are reading. To
complete some writing assignments, you may go to secondary sources such as critical or historical material that you
find in a library or bookstore.
When you are writing from sources, careful
documentation is important because individuals who express ideas are entitled
to credit for those ideas. When
you use a primary source in your
essay, it is important to help your readers know what is a direct quotation,
paraphrase or summary from the text that you are discussing. If you are deliberate about your
documentation, you can not be faulted for confusing your reader.
Deciding what to
document?
When you begin to write an
essay where documentation is needed, use the following guidelines:
1. Document every quotation
2. Document any statistics, diagrams,
charts, or pictures.
3. Document all ideas, opinions, facts,
theories, and information that cannot be considered
common knowledge to your
audience. The term common knowledge means general information that is
known by a large number of people
within a community. If the term common
knowledge is a problem for you,
use these guidelines:
¥If
several sources list the same fact or idea, you may assume this is common
knowledge.
¥If
you were aware of the fact or idea before reading the material, then you can
assume it is common knowledge. One
exception might be if the fact or idea is common knowledge because of your
cultural background, you would need to document it for people of a different
cultural background.
¥If
you have prior knowledge of something from previous reading or studying, but
you don't know the exact source, then it is best to make a footnote explaining
the general source of that information.
Deciding
how to document or incorporate
source material into your essay.
Once
you know whether your paper will need formal documentation, then you will want
to incorporate the quotations, paraphrases, and summaries into your writing to
make the best use of that support. The MLA(Modern Language Association) form is
called parenthetical documentation because it uses the author's name with page
numbers in parenthesis as close to the citation as possible. Even though the rules may seem
arbitrary, it is important to incorporate documentation so the flow of reading
is not interrupted by the use of another writer's words or ideas. It is best to introduce the author's
and the titles as early in the paper as possible. Unless you are talking about two works by the same author,
you can continue to refer to the author by last name in the rest of your
paper. If you use more than one
work by the same author, then you will need to put the title of the work and
the page number in the parenthesis.
How
to incorporate quotations.
When
you decide that a direct quotation from the text will offer the strongest
evidence for your point, then be sure to place it within a context so your
readers understand its significance in your overall discussion or analysis.
Using Signal Phrases:
1. Introduce or write a lead in to the
quotation so readers know
where
the quotation is from and why it is important. The following examples are taken from Marvin Magalaner's essay
about Love Medicine called
"Of Cars, Time,
and the River" reprinted in Emerging Voices: Readings in the American Experience by Janet Madden and Sara M. Blake. In this first one Magalaner
is
exploring the different voices or the various narrators in Erdrich's novel.
Example: In Love
Medicine, on the contrary, we flow
from the polished musings of Marie Kashpaw as she visits the dying Sister Leopolda to the jarring teen
lingo of Lipsha Morrisey. In
Marie's words: "I sat with
her a long while in silence. The earth so mild and deep. By spring she would be placed there,
alone, and there was no rescue.
There was nothing I could do after hating her all these years" (122). And Lipsha's: "I never really done much with my life, I suppose. I never had a television" (189).
2. Comment on a quotation after you
include it, so the reader
understands
its connection to other points in the paper.
3. Insert ellipses (space periods . . .)
if you delete anything
from
the original quotation. Use four
periods if the original ends
in
a period, otherwise use three for omitted words.
4. Use brackets [ ] to add words to or to
substitute for or explain
words
in the original quotation.
5. Indent a quotation of four lines or
forty words or more. Do not use
quotation marks and put the period
at the end before the parenthesis with the page number. Never use the word or abbreviation for page in your
citations. Double space throughout or use one extra space before
and after a blocked indented quotation.
Example:
The most famous Indian on
the reservation is the fugitive Gerry Nanapush. His son Lipsha describes him as "Gerry Nanapush, famous
politicking hero, dangerous armed criminal, judo expert, escape artist,
charismatic member of the American Indian Movement, and smoker of many pipes of
kinnikinnick in the most radical groups. . . . That was . . . Dad"
(248). Gerry has complete
disregard for the law, believing instead in a personal system of justice. His initial conflict, a barroom brawl
with a white cowboy, leads to his incarceration and education in the ways of
the criminal:
He
admitted it [prison] had done him some good when he was younger, hadn't
known how to be a criminal, and so had taken lesson from professionals. Now that he knew all there was to know,
however, he couldn't
see the point of staying and taking the same lessons over and over. (161)
Gerry's political activism
on the Pine Ridge Reservation leads to the murder of a federal agent. He eventually flees to Canada with the
help of his son, Lipsha, an exile that reunites him with his girlfriend and
young daughter.
Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas and not
giving them credit. If you don't
document your sources, especially those other than primary sources being used
in a class, you are liable for penalties
ranging from a failing grade to expulsion from school. Some famous political leaders have all
but lost reputations or careers because of past histories of writing that was
plagiarized. (See the policy of
the English department at NSCC)
Paraphrase is using a passage from the original but rephrasing
it into your own words. In adjusting
the author's words, you can arrange word order, turn longer sentences into
shorter ones, make two sentences out of one, or select only key ideas from a
longer sentence or passage. Use
the following steps:
1. Make sure you understand any unfamiliar
words or concepts in the text.
2. Think about what the author is trying
to say.
3. Use one of the techniques to rephrase
the passage:
a. Cover up the section of the text and
write the idea from memory.
b. Take notes on the passage and rephrase
from your notes.
c. Rewrite the passage word by word using
synonyms for some words
and
making sure the result makes sense.
Revise your paraphrase for
tone
and check the meaning.
4. Integrate the paraphrase into your own
sentences in your essay.
Examples:
Original
Passage:
"
As has been said, the most pervasive image in Love Medicine is unquestionable water, in its numerous
manifestations. The paramount
concern with water leads in turn to several associated though subsidiary motifs
involving the
relationships of her
characters to water." --Marvin Magalaner, from Emerging Voices page 528-9.
Direct
Quotation:
In
his article reprinted in Emerging Voices, Marvin Magalaner says that
"the most pervasive image in Love Medicine is unquestionable water" (528).
Paraphrase:
According
to Marvin Magalaner in his critical essay reprinted in Emerging Voices water is the most prominent symbol used by Louise
Erdrich in Love Medicine
(528).
Paraphrase
and Quotation:
According
to Magalaner, Louise Erdrich uses water images throughout Love Medicine and this "concern with water leads in turn to
several associated though subsidiary motifs involving the relationship of her
characters to water" (528).
Works Cited (Bibliography)
The
MLA Handbook recommends that the bibliographic information be placed at the end
of an essay on a separate sheet of paper.
It is called the Works Cited page.
In general, you are supposed to double space, start the first line at
the margin and indent the second line five spaces (hanging indentation), put
the author's last name first, followed by a comma and then the first name,
followed by a period. The list
should be in alphabetical order.
If there is no author, alphabetize using the first important word of the
title.
The
reason for this page is so a reader of your paper can look quickly at this last
page and see a list of the sources that you documented in your paper. The most common sources for your
writing will be books and periodicals.
Many handbooks of English and the MLA Handbook itself list the form to
use for other sources. Note the
indentation, capitalization, and punctuation and follow it carefully.
MLA General Form: Books
¥ author's name (if there is one), last name first. If there is more than one author, put the first name first for
second and third authors.
¥ book title, underlined.
Use a capital for all words, except prepositions, conjunctions, and articles
unless a, an, or the appears as the first word of a title.
¥ city of publication ( and state if the city is not well known)
¥ publisher, shortened form. (Use Harcourt for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.)
¥ year of publication
MLA General Form: Articles in Periodicals
¥ author's
name (if there is one), last name first; for additional authors
put first name
first
¥ title of the article, within quotation marks
¥ name
of the periodical, underlined
¥ volume
number (for a scholarly journal)
¥ date
- for weekly magazines and newspaper
give the full date, for monthly
magazines
give the month or season and year; for scholarly journals give the
volume
number and the year (in parentheses)
¥ page
numbers of the entire article unless
it isn't printed on consecutive pages,
then use the plus sign.
MLA Form for article from a
Web Pages
Example:
Works
Cited
Coltelli, Laura. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of
Nebraska Press, 1990.
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine.
New York: Bantam, 1984.
Erdrich, Louise. ÒSatan: Highjacker
of the Planet.Ó The Atlantic
Monthly. Vol. 280 August 1997. 64-68.
20 Nov. 2003
<http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97aug/erdrich.htm>
Magalaner, Marvin. "Of Cars, Time, and the River." Rpt. in Emerging Voices: Reading
in
the American Experience. Janet
Madden and Sara M. Blake. New
York: Harcourt, 1993.