eBall Point: Writing Program Handbook · eBall Point Since 2000, Ball Point has been published in this easier toupdate electronic format. If you have ideas concerning the content

e­Ball Point: Writing Program Handbook University Core Curriculum

Quick Links: Blackboard Documenting Sources Grammar The Library Links to Resources Paragraph Writing Parts of an Essay Parts of Speech Plagiarism Punctuation Rhetorical Situation Sentence Writing Style The Writing Center Timed Writing Tips For Success

e­Ball Point Since 2000, Ball Point has been published in this easier­ to­update electronic format. If you have ideas concerning the content and/or form of

The Writing Program: Philosophy & Policies 1. Introduction 2. Writing Program Philosophy 3. Accessing the Ball State Writing Program 4. Writing Program Policies

The Writing Program: Philosophy in Action 1. Writing and Reading are Rhetorical 2. Writing and Reading Involve Inquiry 3. Writing and Reading Share Visual Elements 4. Writing and Reading can be Taught and Learned 5. The Role of Reflection on Belief and Action

The Writing Process 1. Invention: Generating Ideas 2. Drafting 3. Organizing 4. Revising 5. Editing or Proofreading

Research 1. A Rhetorical Approach to Research 2. The Research Process 3. Formalized Curiosity: Different Ways to Research 4. Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting 5. Incorporating Quotes 6. Formatting Papers

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Link to the Policy Acknowledgement

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e­Ball Point, please contact the Writing Program Office, where your comments will be collected and considered during the next round of updates and changes.

Editor, 23 rd Edition Claire Lutkewitte

Director of the Writing Program Michael Donnelly

Authors Carole Clark Papper, Joel English, Jamie Miles, Greg Siering, Fred Johnson, Joanne Nystrom Janssen, Leo Huisman, Kristie Sealy Fleckenstein, others thanked below

Dedication With gratitude and affection, we would like to dedicate this book to Karen Taylor, the heart and soul of the Ball State University Writing Program from the beginning.

Acknowledgements Since its inception more than twenty years ago, the Writing Program has continually evolved in order to better serve our students. e­Ball Point represents the cumulative effort of all those years and reflects the contributions made by former Writing Program Directors,

Documenting Sources

1. Standard Documentation Styles 2. In­Text Citation 3. Sample In­Text Citation 4. Works Cited 5. Sample Works Cited Entries

Parts of an Essay 1. Titles 2. Beginnings, or Introductory Paragraphs 3. Thesis Statements 4. Body Paragraphs 5. Topic Sentences 6. Deciding When to Break Paragraphs 7. Conclusion Paragraphs

A Rhetoric of Style 1. Understanding the Sentence 2. Varying Sentence Length and Structure 3. Emphasizing Main Ideas 4. Writing Concisely 5. Taking Advantage of Parallelism 6. Conclusion: Remembering Rhetoric

A Rhetorical Approach to Common Errors 1. Run­on Sentences and Comma Splices 2. Sentence Fragments 3. Weak Be Verbs 4. Passive Voice 5. Informal Diction 6. Indefinite Use of You 7. Gender­Biased Pronouns

Revisiting the Parts of Speech 1. Nouns and Pronouns 2. Verbs 3. Adjectives, Adverbs, and Prepositions

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their staffs, and the faculty and students of the Writing Program. In particular, the authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Tom Koontz, Carole Clark Papper, Regina St. John, Carol Schaub Chalk, Janalee Shaw, Karen Taylor, Kara Renie, Greg Siering, Gwen Vickery, Joel English, Kurt Bullock, Jamie Miles, Jeff White, Rich Rice, Fred Johnson, Jenn Moulton, John Dobelbower, Joanne Nystrom Janssen, Kristie Sealy Fleckenstein, Leo Huisman, and Melissa Muth (Bracken Library Instructional Services) for contributing text, information, or editing skills to e Ball Point.

4. Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases 5. Interjections

Understanding Punctuation and Mechanics 1. Commas 2. Semicolons 3. Colons 4. Apostrophes 5. Quotation Marks 6. Dashes, Parentheses, and Brackets 7. Capitalization 8. Italics 9. Hyphens 10.Abbreviations 11.Numbers

Timed Writing Strategies 1. How Do I Prepare? 2. How Do I Manage My Time? 3. What Do Instructors Want? 4. Ten Tricks for Taking an Essay Test

Tips for Success 1. Make Time for Success 2. Prepare for Class; Participate in Class 3. Listen Closely to the Assignment 4. Write About What Interests You 5. Think Critically

Links to Resources: On­Campus and Online 1. Campus Resources 2. Technology Resources

Sample Essays

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The Writing Program: Philosophy & Policies

Introduction

Welcome to e­Ball Point, the Ball State University Writing Program handbook. e­Ball Point contains a detailed explanation of the Writing Program’s Philosophy and important information about Writing Program policies along with many writing­related resources that will help you succeed in your first­year writing classes.

Chapter 1 will introduce you to the Writing Program and acquaint you with its philosophy, and its policies concerning class attendance, in­class behavior, the return of your work, course grades, course withdrawal, grade appeals, and plagiarism. Because it is essential that you read and understand these policies, you will be required to sign a Policy Acknowledgement Sheet and turn it in to your instructor. Chapter 2 explains the ways the philosophy is put into action through the Writing Program courses. Chapter 3 explores a rhetorical approach to the writing process. Chapter 4 addresses research as inquiry. Chapter 5 explains the use of sources and other details for research documentation. Chapter 6 deals with the parts of an essay. Chapter 7 discusses a rhetorical approach to style. Chapter 8 discusses a rhetorical approach to common errors. Chapters 9 & 10 explain the mechanics of writing, including parts of speech and punctuation. Chapter 11 explores a specific writing situation: timed writings. Chapter 12 offers tips for success in the writing program. Chapter 13 provides a compilation of links that can help you in your writing and your writing courses.

Writing Program Philosophy

The Writing Program: Central to the Core Curriculum The Writing Program includes the first­year composition courses required of all BSU students: English 101/102 or 103, and 104 or 114. Formally, the Writing Program is the Ball State University Core Curriculum Writing Program. While knowing the full title may not be essential, understanding what it means could be crucial to your university experience. Ball State is committed to the liberal arts, a tradition and philosophy of learning as old as ancient Greece, built on the belief that humans are complex beings whose mental abilities can be trained and improved. Through education, students may develop their powers of observation, calculation, imagination, logic, communication, and more. Moreover, every one of these powers connects to

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the others, so that imagination and communication are essential to the least of and the greatest among scientists, just as observation and calculation are essential to the least of and the greatest among novelists. By cultivating intellectual freedom, social responsibility, and clear and creative thinking, a liberal arts education at its best should not only make students more effective in their areas of work and study but also make them better citizens of the world.

At Ball State, this liberal arts philosophy serves as the foundation of the Core Curriculum Program. The Writing Program, which teaches vital reading, thinking, and writing processes needed both in the University and in your life after higher education, serves as a central element of the Core Curriculum. This liberal arts philosophy is evident in the foundational beliefs about writing and reading that anchor the Writing Program classes.

Foundational Beliefs We believe that achieving excellence in writing and reading serves you in four ways:

• Professionally, by forwarding your career goals and aspirations, • Democratically, by enhancing your citizenship and participation in the public sphere, • Critically, by fostering your development as thoughtful and reflective

consumers/producers of cultural products (both text­based and image­based), and • Personally, by nurturing insights into the connections among self, others, and

environment essential for self­actualization and aware everyday living.

Your experiences in Writing Program classes are designed to forward those goals, providing you with the learning necessary for you to succeed in your chosen career, involve yourself in the civic sphere (from neighborhood to national politics), assess and evaluate cultural pressures and products, and deepen your sense of yourself and your connection to the physical and social world around you.

Two central assumptions about reading and writing ground our Writing Program. The first is that writing and reading are tightly integrated, so the best way to teach one is to foster excellence in the other. Both language processes involve an array of thinking activities (questioning, inferring, connecting, planning, and so forth), and both involve creating a context as well as working with an evolving text. Because they are so tightly integrated, learning to become a better reader helps you become a better writer, and vice versa. Reading broadens your exposure to the strategies and structures available to writers, and also increases your experiences of constructing meaning with texts. Becoming a better writer makes you a better reader; when you struggle with decisions as a writer, you become more proficient at discovering similar decisions in the texts you read. Thus, reading and writing complement each other.

The second assumption is that both language processes are rhetorical, by which we mean that writing and reading are conscious attempts to use language to change the attitudes or actions of those being addressed. In English 103, that use of language is presented as persuasion. You will have opportunities through writing and through reading to experience the way writers can and do use language to persuade an audience. You will experience the ways that you can use writing and reading to change your social reality. You will learn to use language to get things done in the world.

The emphasis throughout the Writing Program classes is on thinking, reading, and writing rhetorically. The creation of a purposeful exchange of language requires that we draw on our

experiences in and of the world; we all have life experiences that form who we are, and we all have experienced things that we wished we could, or still hope to change. Such a rhetorical use of language can enable you to transform your longing for a prosperous place in that world, and your desire for a compassionate, just, and equitable world into action. Your Writing Program classes are designed to enable you to become participants in, and contributors to, personal and social humane living.

We also believe that the reciprocal and rhetorical processes of writing and reading are:

• Constructive, involving complex thinking and emotional engagement, • Social, nested in a matrix of human and cultural relationships, • Technological, tied to a medium of production (both digital and analog), • Personal, lodged in the individual’s experiences with life and language, and • Knowledge­making, intertwined with the human desire to know and to share that

knowing.

As a result of these beliefs, you can expect classroom experiences that emphasize the thinking and decision­making that you do as a writer and reader. You can expect activities that emphasize the social aspect of writing and reading where your choices about what to say are linked to the audience you wish to address. You can also expect activities that draw on the rich experiences you bring with you into the classroom, both with life and with language. Finally, you can expect experiences with writing and reading that engage your curiosity, feed it, and provide opportunities to share your new knowledge with others.

These beliefs structure the Writing Program classes and its pedagogy. Thus, writing and reading are taught:

• Collaboratively, through discussion, shared tasks, and opportunities for multiple feedback, etc.,

• Reciprocally, by writing in response to reading, incorporating what you have read into what you write, and by gaining deeper insights into reading as a result of what you have written,

• Reflectively, through deliberate attention to what, why, and how we write and read, • Systematically, through a careful layering of reading, writing, analysis, critique,

synthesis, and evaluation, • Humanely, through a sensitivity to personal lives and language experiences, and • Rhetorically, through a focus on the decisions writers and readers make as they fashion

meaning for a specific purpose, need, and audience.

As writers and readers ourselves, we realize that writing can be difficult; therefore, we want to help you experience the fruits of that labor: the deep satisfaction (and practical result) that comes from learning to handle language effectively. Because students develop their writing skills best when working closely with other writers, the Writing Program limits courses to 25 students to make them more interactive and therefore more effective. Your writing courses may be among the smallest and most personal courses you take during your first year, and your peers and professors in these courses may well be among those who know and appreciate you the most.

Take advantage of this opportunity. Whether you are a beginner or advanced writer, working closely with other writers in such an environment offers you the chance to experiment with and

build onto your skills in a safe, supportive, and personalized environment. The Writing Program courses will probably be your last chance to focus specifically on these foundational skills while benefiting from an instructor and a group of peers concerned mainly with making you a better reader, a better thinker, and a better writer.

Accessing the Ball State Writing Program

The Writing Program Office The Writing Program Office is in Robert Bell 2115, on the second floor, just down the hall from the English Department office. We can be reached by phone at 285­8370.

The Writing Program Online http://www.bsu.edu/english/writingprogram

The Writing Program as a Resource: Responding to Problems Sometimes classroom circumstances may hinder your learning. You may be distracted by the disruptive, irresponsible, or disrespectful classroom behaviors of other students. You may feel that an instructor treats you unfairly in some way. You may have difficulty understanding or accepting an instructor’s grading or teaching practices.

If you are having a serious problem with the teaching and learning situation in your Writing Program classroom, talk with your instructor immediately. Have a talk after class, stop by during your instructor’s office hours, or set up a meeting at a convenient time for both of you. Writing Program classes are kept small in part so your instructor can address your individual needs and find ways to make your Writing Program experience as successful as possible. Many classroom problems have quick and simple solutions that can save you weeks of frustration. If you are troubled by the classroom atmosphere or practices, you and your instructor may be able to work out a personalized solution to your problem. If you are concerned about fairness in grading, your instructor may be able to help you understand his or her scoring philosophy and practices. If you are struggling to meet an instructor’s expectations, the instructor may be able to give you important tips about how to succeed in the classroom.

Sometimes, however, a conversation with an instructor may not adequately resolve the problem. While the Writing Program staff supports faculty in their teaching efforts, it also supports you as a learner. If anything is keeping you from learning and developing as a writer, then our office wants, where we reasonably can do so, to eliminate the obstacle. If you feel that your good­faith efforts to resolve a problem with your instructor have failed, then you should visit the Writing Program Office as soon as possible to talk with the Director, who can act as a mediator and offer further guidance, support, and insight.

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Writing Program Policies

What you should do: • Read these policies carefully. • Print and sign the Policy Acknowledgment Sheet. • Turn the signed Policy Acknowledgment Sheet in to your instructor.

To promote high quality teaching and learning, the Writing Program has developed an important set of policies that apply in every Writing Program classroom. These policies will explain the expectations for class attendance (and the consequences for missing classes), the minimum final grade you must achieve in order to move on to the next Writing Program course (a “C”), and how the Writing Program defines and handles plagiarism. Because it is so important for you to know and understand these policies, you may be required to sign a Policy Acknowledgement Sheet and turn it in to your instructor.

Writing Program Attendance Policy All University and English Department courses require regular attendance by teachers and students, but it is especially important in Writing Program courses; the process of learning to write demands the creation of a strong community of supportive writers and learners. Much of the work that occurs in a writing class—from the initial creation and sharing of thoughts to the final polishing and evaluation of ideas—depends on daily interaction among the members of that community.

Since much of the writing and revising happens in the classroom, absences significantly reduce learning opportunities. Therefore, students who exceed the allowable number of absences will have their grades lowered accordingly. Each instructor will determine the number of allowed absences before the instructor lowers a student’s grade and will announce the policy in the class syllabus. You should be sure to read your syllabus and understand the policy for your class.

However, no matter who your instructor may be or how many absences are allowed before your final grade is lowered, the Writing Program mandates that a pattern of unexcused absences amounting to more than 20% of the classroom learning hours in a course will automatically result in a failing grade. To determine this number of absences for your class, multiply the number of class meetings by .2. For example, in a course meeting twice a week over fifteen weeks (not counting vacations such as Spring Break), for a total of thirty meetings, the formula (.2 x 30 = 6) tells you that after your sixth absence, you will receive a failing grade. Thus, only six absences can be allowed.

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Student Excused Absences Contacting your instructor to say you will miss class does not automatically excuse an absence. Legitimate excused absences include those resulting from illness, the death of a family member, a university field trip, or some other required academic business that cannot be rescheduled. More specific policies will vary from class to class; ask your instructor when you’re unsure whether an absence can be excused.

Faculty Absences If you think that your instructor has had an excessive number of absences, please see the Director of the Writing Program. Faculty absences are addressed by the Director of the Writing Program or the Assistant Chairperson of the Department in accordance with departmental policies.

Classroom Behavior/Personal Conduct Policy In order to create the best possible environment for teaching and learning, Ball State and the Writing Program aim to cultivate cooperation and mutual respect in the classroom. Accordingly, both students and instructors are required by the University to behave in ways consistent with good citizenship and the needs of the learning community. Students and instructors should interact politely and professionally, observing the rules of common courtesy. Since so much class­connected activity occurs through the medium of the computer, these rules of courtesy include activities that occur online.

Instructors must follow the Writing Program curriculum, treat each student with fairness and respect, and help all class members to improve their writing skills. Students must comply with class requirements—attend regularly, complete assignments according to guidelines, and participate in class activities and discussion.

Student misbehavior may result in denial of classroom admission at the instructor’s request. In some cases, misbehavior may result in dismissal from the course or even from the university. (For more information, see Ball State’s Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities). Misbehavior by a faculty member should be reported to the Director of the Writing Program, who will take appropriate action.

Returning and Saving Student Writing The Writing Program encourages you to think of yourself as the skilled author of your own work. Your original written works belong to you, just as all manuscripts belong to their authors. Thus, instructors should return most written work to you by the end of the course for which it was produced. Any paper kept beyond that time must be available in the instructor’s office no later than the first week of the next term. If you do not claim your manuscripts within the first four weeks of the next term, then the instructor may dispose of them. Instructors may, if they wish, keep a copy of a student’s writing beyond that time.

It is your responsibility to keep a record of your work. If possible, always save a copy of the work you’ve turned in to your instructor, and keep all graded work at least until the end of the course. (In the case of a grade dispute, reviewing a manuscript may be necessary to determine whether it was graded fairly.)

Grading System, Minimum Final Grade, and Repeating a Writing Program Course The University reports and records grades using the plus/minus letter system as outlined below:

A = 4.000 B = 3.000 C = 2.000 D = 1.000 A­ = 3.667 B­ = 2.667 C­ = 1.667 D­ = 0.667 B+ = 3.333 C+ = 2.333 D+ = 1.333 F = 0.000

In order to fulfill the University’s Core Curriculum requirement in Writing Program courses, you must earn a minimum grade of C; a grade of C­ is not considered acceptable. You may repeat a Writing Program course as many times as necessary to meet the requirement, but

• The first and all other grades will show on the transcript, • All grades except the first will be used to compute the GPA, • A grade of W will not replace a previous grade, and • Course credit hours apply only once to graduation requirements.

When determining a student’s grade for the course, the composition instructor must decide whether the student’s writing skills are adequate to undertake the work required in the next course. This means that for a student to receive credit in 103, he or she must be ready to write at the level required at the beginning of 104. And, at the end of 104, the student must be able to write at the level required for advanced courses in a major. Therefore, if a student is not ready at the end of a Writing Program course to write at entry level for the next course, then that student must be given a grade of C­ or below. On a more positive note, this means that a student who earns a C or above can feel confident about being able to write well enough to communicate successfully at the next level.

Grading Rubric The following rubric is used in all Writing Program courses to ensure consistency when assigning grades to student essays.

A = Superior Convincingly and ardently communicates a noteworthy idea to an audience through sophisticated use of rhetorical strategies.

• Thesis/focus—demonstrates an awareness of audience, is sophisticated, and is clearly established and maintained throughout.

• Organization—has a clear sense of logical order appropriate to the content and the thesis.

• Development—demonstrates critical thinking that is clear, insightful, in depth, and relevant to the topic.

• Syntax and Diction—uses sophisticated language that engages the reader; manipulates sentence length to enhance the total effect of the essay; uses precise language that expresses complex ideas clearly.

• Format and Design—fully integrates elements of design to best serve rhetorical purpose.

• Research (if applicable)—uses sources effectively and documents sources accurately.

• Mechanics—contains very few errors of spelling, grammar, paragraphing or manuscript format.

B = Strong Effectively conveys an insightful idea to an audience through consistent and controlled use of rhetorical strategies.

• Thesis/focus—is intelligent, clearly established, and consistently addressed throughout.

• Organization—is logical, clear, and controlled. • Development—demonstrates critical thinking that is more than adequate, with

significant detail; may show depth in thinking and research. • Syntax and Diction—demonstrates knowledge of and skill with complex and

varied sentence constructions and vocabulary. • Format and Design—consistently contributes to the persuasive aims of the

assignment. • Research (if applicable)—uses sources effectively and documents accurately. • Mechanics—may contain errors, but these errors do not interfere with the

essay’s overall effectiveness.

C = Competent Communicates an idea, but does not consistently address the needs of its audience.

• Thesis/focus—has a central idea that is conventional or general. • Organization—the essay’s organization is choppy and may, at times, be difficult

to follow. • Development—demonstrates limited critical thinking and limited knowledge of

the subject. • Syntax and Diction—demonstrates competency with language use, but

sentence constructions and vocabulary may be limited or repetitive. • Format and Design—unevenly incorporates elements of design to aid its

argument • Research (if applicable)—lacks sufficient research for the topic, poorly

incorporates sources, or fails to document accurately • Mechanics—contains multiple errors that hinder the essay’s readability.

D = Inadequate Ineffectively communicates its idea to its intended audience.

• Thesis/focus—is superficial and inconsistently addressed; reveals limited awareness of audience

• Organization—reveals no apparent strategy and lapses in focus and logic. • Development—displays little knowledge of the subject, does not form

conclusions, or fails to exhibit critical thinking or clear reasoning. • Syntax and Diction—contains repetitive, incorrect, or ineffective sentence

structure; displays a limited vocabulary. • Format and Design—bears little relevance to the assignment’s rhetorical

purpose or guidelines. • Research (if applicable)—lacks sufficient research for the topic, poorly

incorporates sources, or fails to document sources accurately. • Mechanics—contains many errors that garble the meaning or intent.

F = Incompetent Fails to present its ideas to the audience and does not meet some or all of the criteria for the assignment.

• Thesis/focus—lacks a central idea; has no awareness, or limited awareness, its audience and purpose.

• Organization—is random and without focus or logic. • Development— displays little or no knowledge of the subject, does not form

conclusions, or fails to exhibit critical thinking or clear reasoning • Syntax and Diction— fails to demonstrate competency with language use;

sentence constructions and vocabulary may be inappropriate, facile, or incoherent.

• Format and Design—makes no attempt to use the elements of design to help persuade its audiences

• Research (if applicable)—fails to include sufficient sources for topic, incorporates irrelevant or inadequate sources, or plagiarizes.

• Mechanics—contains serious and multiple errors that seriously hinder the reading of the paper.

Course Withdrawal As explained in detail above, you may repeat a Writing Program course as many times as necessary in order to meet the minimum grade requirement. However, you may withdraw only once from any particular Writing Program course (101/102, 103, 104, 114), except with special approval from the Chair of the Department of English. You may view course withdrawal dates here by clicking on the appropriate semester’s link.

Grade Appeals Occasionally students disagree with the grades they receive in Writing Program courses, but only rarely does such a disagreement result in a formal appeal of the grade. If you strongly disagree with a grade and wish to dispute it, contact the Director of the Writing Program immediately.

Grade disputes should be brought to the instructor’s and the Director’s attention within ten (10) school days after the start of the next academic term (fall, spring, or summer) following the semester or summer session in which the grade was given. The Director will seek to mediate between the teacher and student and will issue a written opinion to them about how the dispute should be resolved. Since the Writing Program Office does not collect and store student work, students are responsible for producing graded copies of any work in question.

If a student remains unsatisfied after this initial “complaint” stage, the appeal may be carried to the English Department Office for a hearing by the Department Chair or a designated assistant, and by the English Department Review Board. If the student and the English Department Review Board cannot reach agreement, then the student must begin the formal resolution phase of the appeal by contacting the Office of the Dean of Students within ten (10) school days after the final response is received. Complete guidelines regarding the grade appeal process are given in the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities, Section VI, paragraph C.

Plagiarism: Definition A writer plagiarizes when he or she uses someone else’s writing or ideas but does not give that person (or group of people) credit. To intentionally plagiarize is to steal and lie, pure and simple.

Unintentionally failing to cite the use of someone else’s language, research, or thought is an equally serious form of intellectual theft and dishonesty, albeit one that results from irresponsibility or ignorance rather than from premeditated malice. In the Writing Program you should learn how to avoid even accidental plagiarism. At Ball State, plagiarism can result in a failing grade and potentially lead to further disciplinary action by the University. Beyond Ball State, plagiarism can cost a person’s job and professional reputation.

Avoid plagiarism by establishing solid academic writing habits. Begin by learning how to condense the content and meaning of other people’s writing into your own words, summarizing and paraphrasing their thoughts and ideas. Remember that though your condensed version is a piece of original writing by you, the content was found somewhere else. You must cite that source, giving its writer credit for his or her contribution to your work.

Once you have learned the difference between your own language and language based on other writing, you need to know how to use a conventional system of documentation for tracking and noting source information. In the Writing Program, informal documentation—useful in forms of writing ranging from journalism to inter­office memos—is usually taught and expected in ENG 101/102 and 103 assignments. Competence in using formal documentation is stressed in ENG 104.

Basic guidelines for documenting others’ ideas in all academic writing include the following:

1. Whenever you use the ideas, words, phrases, or statements of another writer, you must give credit to the original writer. This rule applies to any writing situation with the possible exception of an essay examination, in which students are expected to echo the thinking and statements of their textbook or instructor. In essays and reference papers there are no exceptions. What you recognize as someone else’s writing or thinking must be credited to that other person.

2. When you want to include the exact words from another source, you must use quotation marks to enclose the borrowed material in addition to citing the source. A writer may not omit a word or two from the original statement and call it his or her own. (If only a word or two needs to be changed, there are methods for indicating such changes within the required quotation marks.) Merely tinkering with another writer’s work does not make it your own work. When you only change one or a few words or phrases, you are still borrowing that writer’s arrangement of material, presentation of ideas, or construction of sentences. You must give proper credit to the original writer.

Thus, two major principles govern the use of someone else’s writing or ideas in your work: Always give specific credit in your text to any sources from which you draw information, ideas, or wording; and always use quotation marks around the words, however few or many, of another writer. For more information about plagiarism, including examples and more tips for avoiding it, consult a writing handbook or speak to your instructor.

Plagiarism: Policies Papers that require documentation are designed to help you learn to properly document sources. As a learner, you may make errors in your documentation, and the English Department recognizes and understands that fact. In cases of plagiarism, your intention is fundamentally important, and your instructors, to the best of their abilities, ought to take your intentions into account. Some plagiarism is clearly accidental and may be treated as such. However, if you have received ample instruction and warning about the essentials of documentation, any plagiarism that follows may be judged as intentional and therefore as an act of academic dishonesty.

The handling of cases of alleged plagiarism falls under the University’s guidelines on Academic Dishonesty in the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities, Section VII, “Student Academic Ethics Policy.” Both instructors and students should be familiar with these policies, which have changed in the 2008­2009 academic year. In brief, these policies say that instructors who suspect academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, should discuss the matter informally with the student(s) concerned within five (5) school days after the instructor becomes aware of the circumstances in question. If the instructor concludes that no unethical behavior occurred, the matter is closed. If the student(s) admits the dishonesty, he, she, or they must sign a written statement to that effect within five (5) days of the conference. If both student(s) and instructor agree on sanctions or punishment, a copy of the admission of guilt and description of the punishment must be forwarded to the Provost’s designee, and the matter will normally be closed; both student(s) and instructor must sign these documents. If the student(s) and the instructor cannot agree, however, the instructor has the option of either dropping the matter or informing the student(s) in writing within five (5) school days after the conference that he or she is proceeding with the formal resolution process. The subsequent steps and procedures are outlined in detail in Section VII, paragraphs under 7.4, of the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities.

Advance to Chapter 2

The Writing Program: Philosophy in Action

Starting with the 2005­2006 academic year, Ball State University’s Writing Program instituted revised course goals that were reflected in new master syllabuses for English, 101­102, 103, 104, and 114. The Writing Program made these changes in order to:

• Emphasize the rhetorical nature of writing and reading, • Emphasize the importance of inquiry, • Increase unity and coherence among courses, • Respond to the increasing ease of, and need for, incorporating visual elements into

writing, and to • Better serve the goals of the Undergraduate Core Curriculum

As we explained at the beginning of Chapter One, certain beliefs about reading and writing ground the Writing Program. Briefly, we explained that reading and writing are reciprocal language activities; both are rhetorical in nature: that is, they both involve on some level a writer who desires to affect a reader in some way. Given these beliefs, we have crafted a two­ semester reading­writing experience that begins in the first semester with the rhetorical nature of writing and extends that knowledge in the second semester through a sustained focus on human inquiry. English 101­102, 103, English 104, and English 114 are taught in a systematic and sequential manner that encourages you to develop your own unique ways of writing and reading. In the following sections, we connect what we believe about writing to the specific goals of the Writing Program as they are laid out in the master syllabuses.

We designed the two­semester writing reading experience to enact four core beliefs :

• Writing and reading are rhetorical • Writing and reading involve inquiry • Writing and reading share visual elements • Writing and reading can be taught and learned

Writing and Reading Are Rhetorical

The Rhetorical Situation Writing and reading always contain some rhetorical element, which we described in the first chapter as language activities designed to bring about some change in the world, from sharing an experience to persuading another person to act in a particular way. Any time we make a

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claim and support that claim, we are engaging in rhetoric. In his landmark essay “The Rhetorical Situation” Lloyd Bitzer explains rhetoric as follows: “In short, rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.” Creating language to change reality involves six elements: exigence, audience, language and image of the text, writer, context, and medium.

Exigence is the drive, the desire, to change something specific. This involves our personal involvement in, experience with, and recognition of, a state of affairs that needs to be changed and can be changed through language.

Audience involves the people whom the writer wishes to change. These people bring to the writer’s message an array of beliefs, values, knowledge, and experiences that they draw on as readers to construct meaning. Through the medium of the text, the writer seeks to connect with the audience so that they will share the same vision of reality.

Language and Image of the Text consist of the information, arguments, reasons, evidence, data, structure, and physical design that the writer constructs, with sensitivity to both message and audience, to effect the change he or she envisions.

Writer is comprised of two layers: the actual physical individual who sits in front of the keyboard or holds the pen and the textual person created by the writer who takes shape by means of the language.

Context is made up of three elements: the current problem situation which the writer believes needs to be changed, the situation within which the audience reads the language created by the writer, and the overarching cultural situation that leads the writer to identify one problem (rather than another), one audience (rather than another), and negotiate with that audience through language to create a different social reality.

Medium is the means by which the writer seeks to shape and distribute his or her message. This includes language (style, register, dialect, conventions, and so forth), images, and design. It also includes the mode of dissemination, such as print, electronic, or oral outlets.

Although we focus on writing in the above description, reading is equally rhetorical, whether we are reading for pleasure, information, or a combination of both. Reading always involves an exigence (a desire that leads us to one text and not another), an audience (of which we may or may not be a member), the language and image of the text (that serves as our blueprint for meaning), and a writer (who lurks beyond and within the text), as well as a context, and a medium. Reading involves the mediation of thought and action just as writing does.

In writing and reading, a writer makes decisions concerning each of these elements, constructing an essay or an interpretation of a text that bests achieves his or her goals. Our first­semester class, English 103, focuses on engaging students in multiple opportunities for making these decisions.

Action: Rhetoric in the Classroom Your Writing Program classes are designed to emphasize the rhetorical nature of writing and reading: English 103 introduces students to the fundamentals of rhetoric, and English 104 applies those fundamentals to the research process. Both classes work from the assumption that student writing involves the creation of new knowledge, so your instructor knows that you have something original to say, and she or he will push you to say it well.

Since each rhetorical situation is different, your Writing Program classes have been designed to expose you to a wide variety of situations. This breadth and depth of experience will encourage you to identify the similarities and the differences between writings and to consider the variety of choices available to writers in different situations. You will also have the opportunity to reflect on the ways that the elements of the rhetorical situation limit a writer’s choices and options. You will interact with, and respond to, exigence. In your reading assignments, your informal writing assignments, and your writing projects you will discuss the situations that call for writing, and explore how effectively writers, including your classmates and yourself, respond to particular situations. You will encounter and participate in creating a variety of texts, with various designs, purposes, audiences, and media. You will compose original texts that respond to diverse rhetorical situations.

Persuasion is a key element of English 103. Your writing will, as Bitzer explains, alter reality. Language that changes audiences and realities is more commonly understood as persuasion. In English 103 you will read persuasive writings and compose persuasive texts. You will see the ways that persuasion is integral to human communication, and you will—we hope—be persuaded to persuade.

Each writing class represents a unique situation. Each instructor configures his or her class according to individual strengths, and each section of English 103 consists of a different array of students. The combination of instructor vision and a unique array of students coalesces to create a unique situation in every class. However, even with these exciting and productive differences, each class also is similar to every other English 103 class because each class adheres to a common set of core experiences based on a shared master syllabus. Your instructor will include elements from the master syllabus in his or her individual syllabus, which means that all English 103 classes will have certain common experiences uniquely configured by individual situations.

According to the master syllabus, every student in English 103 will complete four or more writing projects, approximately three to four pages each, that address different rhetorical situations. Every student will also complete various informal writing assignments such as journals, reading reflections, and in­class writings or smaller pieces that lead to the major writing assignments. Finally, every student in English 103 will participate in reading assignments for discussion, analysis, and response.

Writing and Reading Involve Inquiry

Inquiry Although not a specific element of the rhetorical situation, inquiry is central to rhetoric, for it is through systematic investigation and exploration that a writer­reader understands his or her exigence, the peculiarities of audience, and the materials necessary to create an effective message. As Aristotle explained more than 2,500 years ago, rhetoric is the art of finding the available means of persuasion, which means that successful writing and reading require inquiry. However, inquiry is also an end in itself. By that, we mean that sometimes we write to create new knowledge.

The second semester of our two­semester writing and reading experience extends the rhetorical foundations to the specific processes of inquiry. Inquiry is essential to life within the university and to life after the university experience. It is integral to our personal, professional, and civic well being.

We believe that inquiry consists of systematic and creative exploration of a phenomenon. It involves multiple perspectives with a diverse array of questions, data collection strategies, and analytical tools. Whenever you engage in inquiry, you also connect your current question to the work that others have done before, to the conversation that other people are having about your question. Thus, your inquiry is tied to accepted knowledge. At the same time, it builds on that knowledge to create something new that invites others to think in new ways.

In addition, the process of inquiry is always rhetorical. How you research—the questions you ask, the methods you use to collect and analyze data—is linked to what you want to research and what others have already discovered. The kind of inquiry you conduct is tied to the phenomenon of study as well as to the audience with whom you, as a writer, wish to share your insights. Thus, inquiry is always organized by the perspectives, methods, setting, and beliefs of a particular community. That community also influences how you report the results of your research, which means that writing about your research requires you to return to the rhetorical decision making processes that you honed in English 103.

Action: Inquiry in the Classroom English 104 is designed to guide you through the systematic investigation and exploration that will enable you to understand your exigence, your audience, and your context, as well as your choices in the use of language and image, the medium and the materials necessary to create an effective message. Ultimately, you will complete four research projects that culminate in written reports.

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Your instructor will design experiences for you that help you identify a phenomenon, (such as the behavior of middle schoolers at school­sponsored dances), evolve a question (such as, what strategies do middle schoolers use to make contact with a member of the opposite sex), determine a means to gather data that will help answer the question (attending, observing, and taking detailed field notes of a group of students at a middle school dance), determine the best way to organize and analyze that data, and create a written and visually persuasive answer to the initiating question.

Part of this experience involves not only reading what other people have discovered about your specific question but also reading what other people have discovered in different kinds of inquiry. That is, what do we already know about middle schooler mating rituals, and what options are available for exploring and presenting this type of question? So reading is a critical component of the inquiry process, just as participating in primary data collection is.

Finally, you will experience a range of inquiry situations, exploring the different questions and research methods. The common feature of your experiences is the systematic and rhetorical nature of your inquiry processes.

Writing and Reading Share Visual Elements

The Integration of the Image and Text An important element of our two­semester experience is the focus on the visual. By the visual we mean that loose category of experiences that include graphic images (cartoons, text design, advertisements, film, and so forth), three­dimensional images (sculpture, architecture, urban planning, performance art), and verbal images (linguistic description, metaphors, similes, etc.).

We have a two­part rationale for our focus on the visual. First, we live in an increasingly visual age. Although a visual element is typical of all Western history, it is especially dominant on the cusp of the twenty­first century when medical technologies penetrate and present images of the inner workings of the body and astronomical technologies penetrate and send to Earth images of the outer workings of space. We are bombarded by images that we both create and consume. Acting and thinking for yourself, rather than merely responding to the stimuli around you, requires learning to recognize, critique, evaluate, and contribute to that stream of images around you.

Second, language use has always had a visual component even in the pre­literate eras when orality was the rule. A speaker was always seen, and part of the speaker’s effectiveness was the way in which he (and occasionally she) was visually present. In the current era when we move easily from print to website, we are more than ever struck by the importance of design in language. Thus, an important part of becoming an effective writer and reader is learning to recognize and integrate visual elements in writing.

In fact, we believe that all texts have the potential to be visual, even the conventional academic essay, which traditionally has few obvious visual elements. While you might say that it is only a

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verbal text, since it is just words on a page, those words are arranged on the page in a particular way. The margins on the top, bottom and sides of the essay serve a visual function. They make reading easier—if the print started at the extreme right­hand edge it would be more difficult to read. In addition to reading, visual arrangements such as margins serve a practical function: when it comes to printing—if the paper were out of alignment by just a centimeter, it would be easy to miss letters and misunderstand the text. Other visual elements of a “traditional” essay include paragraphs, which also serve to make texts easier to read and understand. Spacing between lines and after punctuation marks also contributes to the visual aspects of an essay. In some academic situations, these visual elements are tightly regulated. For example, the MLA Style Sheet requires 1” margins all the way around, double­spacing throughout, page numbers, and a header with the title of the essay. However, Microsoft Word sets the margins, by default, at 1.5” all the way around, so a student writing for an instructor who expects MLA Style will need to adjust her or his computer settings.

With the writing technologies available today, you can easily expand the visual choices beyond the formatting, by including visuals in the form of pictures and graphics, or by creating a text that is web­based or digital. In such presentations, the visual elements claim more attention, in part because of color and size, and in part because such additions are relatively new to academic discourse.

By acknowledging the importance of the visual in all texts, we admit the importance of design in all of our texts. Design is often regarded as belonging to the areas of fashion, architecture or graphics; design is more often aligned with the disciplines of the artistic than with the disciplines of language. But there are many reasons to adjust our thinking and to consider rhetoric in terms of design. As was hinted at above, much of the increased influence of visual arises from what the technology makes possible. Things that can be done with technology eventually become expected as that which should be done. There was a time when turning in a rough draft or a daily assignment as a handwritten copy was perfectly acceptable. Nowadays, the availability of computers and laser printers makes the production of printed copies so easy that even rough drafts are expected to be presented in print, and the visual appeal, or document design, of even these first steps of writing can influence how you continue and how your initial audience conceives of your direction in the document. Mike Palmquist highlights this factor at the end of his introduction to Designing Writing: A Practical Guide:

A key concept running through Designing Writing is that document design isn’t something that is applied to a document only after it is written. Instead it is something you should consider throughout your composing process, from your first attempts to generate ideas for a topic to your final efforts to edit your draft. By thinking visually—that is, by thinking as a document designer—you can create documents that are more effective and usable than those that rely on words alone. (2)

Design choices—as with all choices made in your writing—must be made in a rhetorical perspective. All writing (and all image) exists in a context, in a particular situation. So as you compose, consider how changes in design will affect your text and your audience.

Action: Word and Image in the Classroom Since all of your texts will have visual elements, the question to ask is not “if” you will use them, but “how much?” and “what kind?” As with all choices that are made in writing, the answers to these questions will arise out of the rhetorical situation.

All Writing Program Courses have been designed to respond to the reality of an increasingly visual age. Your classes will enable you to navigate the intersections of verbal and visual. You might explore the connection between word and image by analyzing advertisements, film, illustrations, comics, or other verbal and visual texts. You might engage in creating your own advertisements, comics, illustrations, etc. Or, your instructor might invite you to create your own websites and PowerPoints in connection to a written project. You may also be asked to write, read, and analyze texts that include pictures or graphics. You will certainly be encouraged to consider the visual elements of the texts you encounter each day and to reflect on the effect this might have on audiences and even on academic texts.

You will be expected to design text in visually appealing and perhaps unconventional ways. One element of critical, original thinking is exploring the various ways it is possible to present a text. In some cases using non­standard fonts and formatting in your text demonstrates an ability to use the available tools, while merely sticking to the default settings reflects an unimaginative and uncritical use of the available technology. As always, the choices you make will be influenced by your situation. In some situations using a standard text and presentation demonstrates a conscious awareness of audience and context. Your Writing Program courses will provide opportunities for you to interact with and explore a wide variety of visual and textual representations, and you will be invited to make composition choices using an integration of visual and verbal arguments.

Writing and Reading Can Be Taught and Learned

The Teaching and Learning Situation Some people say that the best way to learn how to write is to write. However, to write well, more is needed than just repeated writing. What is needed is repeated writing in response to feedback. This is why the content and format of the master syllabus insists on writing pedagogy that includes peer feedback, self­reflection, instructor’s written comments, and teacher­student conferences. To a certain extent, this looping feedback involving self, classmates, and instructor means that writing is always collaborative in some way. In addition, because the rhetorical situation always assumes an audience, the best place to experiment with and practice our writing is in the presence of other writers.

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You can learn to write. This simple belief undergirds everything we do in the Writing Program. Some people have the mistaken notion that the ability to write well is something you are born with, so you either have it, or you don’t. But writing is an ability that everyone can learn to do well with training and practice. Your instructor and the entire Writing Program are here to help you acquire that ability.

Action: Teaching and Learning in the Classroom Writing Program courses have been designed to do more than create assignments. Since you cannot learn to write merely through repetition, your Writing Program courses are places to discuss, analyze, and respond to texts. You also cannot learn to read and write by listening to someone lecture you on writing and reading. You learn by engaging in those activities and by talking about your discoveries with other readers and writers. You will discuss, analyze, and respond to a wide variety of visual and verbal texts from a wide variety of sources, including your own texts and those of your classmates. Your texts and those of your classmates will be discussed, analyzed and responded to in various stages and drafts because the changes you make along the way will have varying effects on your audience. You will work together to understand the implications of that variety.

Due to the necessity of interacting with others during the writing process, we place a high value on attendance in the Writing Program. Since writing and reading are learned through participation and conversation with others, you cannot learn if you are not present. Unlike a lecture format where you might be able to get the notes from others, when you are absent from your writing class you lose the opportunity to participate (thus learn) AND you deprive your classmates of the value of your feedback. So they lose an opportunity to learn from you. This is also why we place a premium on workshopping in class. Students work together on their writing­ reading projects, generating insights together that might have been impossible alone. Again, you can’t engage in—thus learn from—such workshopping activities unless you are present.

Your instructor will actively participate in and guide the peer interaction. Your instructor will also provide timely written feedback on your drafts, in addition to verbal discussion of your writing in and out of class. In this way your writing will improve through participation in a matrix of social relationships, involving peers and instructor, and you will be able to achieve the goals of each of your Writing Program courses.

The Role of Reflection on Belief and Action

Another element of a successful writing class that warrants explicit attention here is reflection. A portion of the goals and tasks in your writing class will include reflecting on your writing, your writing process, your thinking process, and your learning, as well as on the progress of your specific writing projects. As a writer you are a part of, and a participant in, the rhetorical situation. The writer exists as the person behind the keyboard, but also as a textual entity that takes shape as a result of your use of language. Becoming aware of yourself as a writer, a student, and a textual construction is necessary and beneficial to improving your writing.

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While reflection is not explicitly a part of the rhetorical situation, active reflection enables you to understand the situation. In addition to your role as writer, your Writing Program courses will also encourage you to reflect on your relationship with diverse audiences and on the ways your participation affects the context of writing. Exigence arises from your desire to change something, but you and your writing will benefit from realizations of what impulses lay behind that desire.

Reflection is also a form of inquiry; you pause to examine your place in the world and in the particular situation. This means that your writing instructor may, in addition to asking what you plan to write about, also ask you to consider why you want to write about that topic. Sometimes this type of self­inquiry is beneficial in itself because self­awareness is an important element of mature thinking. But reflection may also provide more immediate results of helping you to shape your argument or helping you to approach the issue from a new angle.

Your instructor will also ask you to reflect on your writing process. As with any new skill, the more you understand the way you do things, the more likely you are to improve. When you understand what works and what does not, you can make adjustments and improvements. An unreflective person is simply left with “something doesn’t work,” but is unable to isolate the benefits and drawbacks of the current process compared to other available options. You, as a writer in the Writing Program, will be constantly encouraged to reflect on your learning, writing, reading, and thinking processes so that you can improve and develop the ability to take responsibility for your own learning, writing, reading, and thinking.

The Writing Process

All writing begins with an urge to say something, a need to communicate, a desire to reach out to another person and/or group of people; this is what Lloyd Bitzer refers to as exigence. Although the academic setting may make it appear that writing starts with an assignment, exigencies lie dormant within you. A writing assignment offers you an invitation to explore your world and your ideas to find the things about which you have something to say.

So your writing will often begin with an inchoate need or desire to say something. The process of moving from this vaguely defined idea to a clearly articulated, and persuasive, text involves much thought, some false starts, and some very satisfying results. The paths, procedures, products, detours and refinements that you experience on your way from a sometimes vague “something” to a product that you are ready to share with your audience will be different for each writing opportunity, and each writer, because each rhetorical situation is different. In the midst of that variety and change, however, you will experience some processes that are common to all writing. These common activities include generating ideas, planning strategies, organizing information, and revising text. Writing may seem uncontained and unexplainable at times, but common elements give us the opportunity to talk about (and learn) writing as a process.

Not only is writing a process, but it is a recursive process. This means that writers return to the activities in the process over and over again. You may begin by generating ideas, which you then organize and begin to set down in words and sentences. However, in the middle of creating a draft, you may discover that you have to return and generate more ideas. Also, as you generate ideas, you may discover that you revise your thinking about those ideas. In a real writing situation a writer will return to generating ideas again and again as the writing develops, just as the writer will compose multiple drafts, and will revise repeatedly. So the process is not linear. Keep this in mind as you continue reading.

Below are five steps common to the writing process. Remember, even though the presentation below seems linear (as if one step always follows the other), it is more accurate to think of them as dance steps: they are spots on the floor that you return to again and again.

Note: One of the most valuable writing abilities you can acquire is to become aware of your own writing process. The Writing Program and your instructor invite you to experiment with the processes presented below. Compare them with how you have done things in the past. See what happens when you try something new. Your writing classes are places to experiment and explore. Pay attention to yourself, to your process, and to your writing. Knowing how you think and how you work will be one of the most important skills you will attain during your college years.

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Invention: Generating Ideas

One part of the writing process involves generating ideas. Sometimes you generate ideas when you are searching for what it is you want to write about. Other times you have a general idea, but you need to explore all the angles and possibilities. And, at other times, you have a section of a writing that needs to be explained further or seems to be missing something. All of these problems can be addressed through creating and discovering new ideas. In classical rhetoric, this aspect of writing is called invention: finding the available means of persuasion. This means that when you generate ideas you move back and forth between what you might want to say— your “felt sense” of a topic—and what you want your readers to believe or do. So discovering new ideas requires a focus on your topic, vague though it might be, and a focus on your evolving sense of your readers.

Below are a few strategies that experienced writers have recommended as tools for generating and/or exploring ideas. These strategies encourage you to approach the topic without restraint so that your ideas are free to come to the surface. They also tend to focus on quantity of ideas over quality, because you can always discard useless ideas later. Different idea­generating strategies work for different people, so you will want to experiment with the following techniques for exploring your topic to discover what is most effective for you. Keep the others in mind, though, because different situations demand different tools, and for some projects you will want to try something other than the usual.

Brainstorming You have probably seen an example of a brainstorming session on a television program or in groups you have participated in. The basic technique is that everyone in the group throws out ideas about a topic. One idea often leads to another, and the most basic rule is that there is no bad idea; just blurt out whatever comes to mind. Brainstorming works because it offers a chance to get ideas out without having to explain or understand them fully. Some ideas that seem a little crazy at first are actually very useful once you get them out and can take a closer look at them.

Brainstorming is often done in a group, but you can do it alone as well. Just take a writing tool and jot down, or type in, everything that comes to mind about a topic. Don’t edit your thoughts; don’t analyze them. Just write down everything that comes to mind. Allow one idea to lead to another. After you have spent 10 minutes or so listing your ideas, go back and analyze the results. As you look at your list, consider what ideas you really like; consider whether there are any patterns in what you have jotted down. Does anything surprise you? Sometimes a brainstorming session will give you something that you can draft about. Other times it will lead you to a new question, to a new way of asking the question, or to a gap in your knowledge that invites further inquiry or research. Sometimes you will want to take one or two of the ideas or patterns that came up in the first session and brainstorm again to see where else your ideas lead.

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Freewriting Freewriting involves 5­10 minutes of constant, uncensored, writing usually resulting in a paragraph­like collection of sentences, or more likely, a big blob of words strung together.

• Constant writing means that you do not allow yourself to stop. Set a time and write for that time without stopping. If you don’t know what to write just repeat: “I don’t know what to write” as many times as it takes before other ideas come to your mind. Often, forcing ourselves to write in this way releases ideas that we did not know we had.

• Uncensored writing means that spelling and punctuation don’t matter, and don’t worry about getting the “right” word, either. Just write what comes to mind and keep writing.

Often students have been so firmly trained to write correctly, that they don’t allow ideas to flow without editing them, which can smother some really good ideas. Freewriting invites you to turn off the censors, and just write.

Clustering and Word Association Writers need to see the ways that ideas are connected. One way to do this is to take some of the ideas or words for your topic and write them out on a piece of paper. You might take the results of some brainstorming, or you may start with some new ideas here. Once you have some ideas on the page, draw arrows or lines between the ideas that are connected; also jot down reminders for yourself about the connections you see. After identifying the connections between the words and ideas you already have, do a mini­brainstorm in the form of word association: what do particular words or ideas make you think of? After you have added words and ideas to your existing clusters, look again for connections, and consider making new clusters. As you do this, pay attention to any patterns that emerge; the patterns and repetitions will help you see more clearly where you want to explore more, and where you have something you really want to say.

Asking Questions Asking questions can help you look at all aspects of a subject to make sure you haven’t overlooked an important fact or perspective. One questioning method involves using six questions that journalists often ask themselves as they write articles: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Adapt these questions to your topic. For example your “who” questions might be: “Who is involved?” “Who will benefit?” or “Who did it?” Your “what” questions might be: “What is happening here?” or “What is the cause?” Depending on your topic, take each of these question words, apply them to your topic, and see what you come up with.

Another approach is to make a list of the questions you have about the topic. This strategy is often effective if you don’t know very much about the topic you would like to write about. Asking questions can help you discover what intrigues you about the topic, and can give you a starting place for your research. This also helps effectively narrow a topic, because instead of feeling like you need to research and write about all of its aspects, you can focus on finding answers to one or two of the questions that fascinate you most. This also works when you are considering your topic from your reader’s point of view. Imagine what questions your reader might have before or during a reading of your paper. Then ask yourself how successfully you answer them and what you might do to answer them more completely.

Keeping a Journal A journal can be another effective tool for gaining a deeper understanding of what you think. In addition to being good writing practice (and just like athletes do, writers need regular practice to build and maintain their skills), writing regularly can help you tease out an idea that you have, but are not quite able to get a handle on. Writing repeatedly over time, often in different moods and situations, even when you do not really feel like writing, can give you a different perspective on ideas and show you new ways of understanding.

Talking Sometimes the best way to explore an idea is to kick it around with friends and family. You don’t even have to tell them it is for an English class, if you don’t want to. Just bring up the topic and listen for the unique viewpoints different people have on it. For those people who tend to process ideas verbally, talking with someone else can be an important step in the writing process. Talking may help you discover what interests or confuses you about a topic. If part of your writing includes narrative, telling the story to a friend can help you see firsthand how an audience receives the narrative and remind you of crucial details needed to make the story complete. If you’re developing an argument, a conversation with a professor may help you see holes in your argument, reveal additional supporting information, and bring to mind counterarguments you will need to address. Conversation is an important part of writing; it is a way to develop and refine your ideas and it will give you insights about how to present those ideas. One measure of a good piece of writing is whether or not it gets people talking.

Drafting

You will write many drafts on your way to your finished product. All writers, including published writers, complete multiple drafts before they reach the finished product. While this might seem like a lot of work, it actually makes the work easier, as well as better, because you don’t have to get everything “right” the first time out. By reminding yourself that the beginning is just a first, or “rough,” draft you free yourself from trying to write the perfect paper. When you write a rough

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draft you can leave an idea incomplete to chase down a new idea. You can just make a note to yourself about the general direction you want to go (i.e. “Add something about…”) and then move on to the next section. Allowing yourself to move on to something else when you get stuck can make writing more fun and less like pulling teeth. In addition, by seeing your work as evolving, you can change your intended audience, focus, and goal; you can use writing for discovery.

Writing a rough draft invites you to experiment with ideas. Often writers don’t really know what they think about a topic until they start writing about it, so you may discover ideas you didn’t know you had. Sometimes this discovery process can be frustrating, such as when you discover that what seemed like a good idea actually lacks substance. On the other hand, by giving yourself permission to explore rather than to correct, you open yourself up to new insights, new discoveries, and sophisticated thinking. While this might occasionally be a frustrating process, by revising in waves you have the opportunity to transform an exploration into a finished product you can be proud of.

The unfinished aspect of the rough draft also allows you to write sections of an essay out of order if you want. Perhaps you have all the information for the second section of your paper. You can write a draft of that section at a time when it is convenient for you to write, even though you have to do more research or more planning for the first section. You can then work on the transitions between the sections in the second or third draft.

Drafting Tips: • Try to write under comfortable conditions. Consider whether you like background noise

or complete silence, and whether you write better in the morning or at night. • Try to write for chunks of at least 30 minutes at a time, because too many starts and

stops can interrupt the flow of ideas. • Give yourself freedom as you write your rough draft. You don’t have to write the sections

in the order you will finally place them, and you don’t have to write smooth sentences. The goal is merely to place the ideas on the page, so you can perfect them later.

Organizing

Determining the progression of sentences and paragraphs in an essay is one of the most difficult and most important parts of writing. Ideas and words do not naturally cohere. Instead, coherence—the sense that ideas unfold in a logical fashion—is something that writers and readers create. For instance, composition theorist Kenneth Burke says that our experience of coherence when we read is the result of what he calls the arousing and fulfilling of desires. When we write, a word, a sentence, or a paragraph raises an expectation in the reader that a particular word, sentence, or paragraph should come next. When that expectation is satisfied, then the reader perceives an essay as organized. Thus, how you arrange the parts of your

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essay affects how your audience will perceive and understand what you have to say.

This means that you should carefully consider what effect a particular organization will have on your readers. Rather than decide in advance that you will employ a particular organizational strategy—such as general to specific or comparison/contrast—you begin with what Chaim Perelman and Lucie Obrechts­Tyteca call the “point of adherence”—the point of agreement— between you and your readers. Then you determine your “point of change”—where you want your reader at the end of the essay: what precisely do you want them to believe, think, or do by the time they finish your last paragraph? With these two points as a reference, you figure out what expectations you need to arouse and satisfy to move from your point of adherence to your point of change.

Of course, you will have to experiment, get feedback, change your mind, and re­draft, which is all part of the writing process. But, as you gain a better sense of your point and your readers’ needs, you become aware of connections in and among your topic and ideas. Sometimes those connections lead you to place ideas or sections next to each other, but sometimes your audience will benefit from more information in between in order to understand the connection that seems clear to you. At other times, what first occurred to you about your topic is really what needs to come second, or third, or last, again depending on your audience and your rhetorical goals.

Just like drafting, and sometimes as a part of the drafting process, organization can be experimental. One of the benefits of computer technology is the ease with which we can move blocks of text around in our writing. Use that to your advantage. For example, try using the “save as” function in Word to save an experimental draft of your essay that you can play with. Then see what happens when you rearrange paragraphs and ideas. Every choice affects the rest of the paper; pay attention to the results of your choices. If you move something, how does that affect the rest of the text? How does it change the audience’s understanding? What will you need to add or alter as a result of making a change?

While there are no hard and fast rules for determining the most effective organization for your paper, there are some central questions to consider.

1. What are the elements of your rhetorical situation? Consider how your ideas might be arranged to best meet the needs of that situation. Does one part follow another and can you explain why you put them in that order?

2. How will the order affect your audience? The audience brings an array of beliefs, values, knowledge, and experiences that they draw on as readers to construct meaning. Does the organization of your text allow you to connect with your audience and encourage them towards persuasion?

3. How does the form of, and images within, your text affect the organization? Does the organization complement the type of text you are composing?

4. What does the organization say about you as a writer? The information and arguments may make sense to you and your audience, but does your text also express what you want it to about yourself?

5. Does the organization fit the context? How, when, and where will this composition be presented? Are there organizational choices that should reflect that context?

Revising

Revision means to “re­see.” The revision stage includes those times when you look at your writing in a new way. As you can tell from the description of drafting and organization above, revision begins the first time you put a word on a page or on a computer screen. The process of deciding one word over another is the process of revision. In fact, the inner rehearsal you do in your head as you experiment with ideas is considered by some composition scholars to be a kind of revision.

Revision is not fixing grammar, spelling, or punctuation. As you re­read, you may automatically make these changes, but this is not revision. It is editing and proofreading (see below). True revising involves rethinking every aspect of your writing. By gaining a new perspective on your essay, you can work towards transforming it into a new draft rather than just patching up errors from the existing one.

Global Revision Rethinking your essay as a whole is called global revision because it attempts to evaluate big­ picture concerns like your paper’s focus, organization, development, and purpose (see Rubric). Instead of skimming the surface for visual typos, global revision involves critically thinking about the deeper structure and substance of your writing.

The Writing Program Rubric can be a tool to assist you in revising. The rubric was designed to ensure consistency in grading across all Writing Program courses. It is a standard that your instructor uses to asses your work, but it is also a tool for you to use as you make decisions about how and where to revise your essay. When you look at the rubric you will see that it is divided into seven categories: Thesis/Focus, Organization, Development, Syntax and Diction, Format and Design, Research, and Mechanics. These seven categories are listed under headings for each whole grade, along with a brief description of how that category will appear at each grade level. When you look at Thesis/Focus, for example, you see that a C­level paper will have “a central idea that is conventional or general,” while a B­level paper has a Thesis/Focus that “is intelligent, clearly established, and consistently addressed,” and an A­level paper achieves the designation of “sophisticated.” When you go to revise your paper, and throughout the writing process, you can hold your writing up to this guide and ask yourself whether your thesis is merely “conventional or general,” or whether it is “sophisticated.” You will also ask that question of your peers, and of your instructor. If, as you revise, you realize that your thesis is not as sophisticated or clearly established and maintained as it needs to be, you will know that your task in revision is to sharpen the focus, clarify or modify the thesis, and ensure that it is maintained throughout the paper.

You can go through each of the seven categories, asking yourself (and your peers and your instructor) whether your Organization demonstrates a “clear sense of logical order,” whether the

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Development of your writing is “clear, insightful, in depth, and relevant,” etc. If you are reading this at the beginning of the semester, you may not be exactly clear about what is or is not a “sophisticated” thesis, or how to go about establishing a “logical order.” Understanding these things is part of the process of learning about and improving your writing. The reading, discussion, and analysis that you participate in as a part of your Writing Program classes will familiarize you with these concepts so you will become fluent at discussing and diagnosing these categories in relation to your own, and others’ writing.

Global Revision Strategies The following three strategies will help you to make the kind of large­scale changes that global revision requires.

• Strategy #1: In Writing with a Purpose, Joseph F. Trimmer encourages writers to read their own work as though they were approaching the piece for the first time. As they read, he asks them to keep in mind three aspects of their writing: its subject, audience, and purpose. By reading for subject, you can evaluate how the paper explains the topic. When reading for audience, you can assess how the paper meets an audience’s needs and expectations. And when reading for purpose, you can evaluate how the paper delivers what the thesis promises.

After carefully re­reading your own work, Trimmer advocates developing a revision agenda, which is a plan for the next draft of your essay. To organize your agenda, ask yourself these three questions:

1. “What did I try to do in this draft? 2. What are its strengths and weaknesses? 3. What revisions do I want to make in my next draft?” (Trimmer 84)

By answering these three questions and developing a revision plan, you will be able to make intentional and thoughtful decisions about how to improve your paper.

• Strategy #2: When we write on computers, only part of an essay’s text appears on the screen at any given time, making it easy to lose track of what we’ve already said. In Literature for Composition Sylvan Barnet recommends using an outline as a revision tool to ensure that an essay is organized well on the page—not just in your mind (23).

One kind of outline involves tracking your paper’s content. For each paragraph of your draft, jot down the main idea. Under each of these sentences, indent and type the supporting ideas or examples you used. This kind of outline will help you determine if your ideas are sequenced in a logical way, if the ideas are developed adequately, and if your paper supports your thesis (Barnet 23). After creating this outline, you may decide to move some paragraphs around, add more supporting information, or even take out details that are unrelated to your focus.

A second kind of outline focuses on the function of each part of your paper, rather than its content. To make this outline, jot down what each paragraph does in the paper instead of what it says. You may write that a paragraph grabs the attention of the reader, explains an important term, or provides supporting examples. This kind of outline will help you determine if the paragraphs serve their purpose. For example, if you write down that a paragraph introduces the thesis but you notice that the thesis isn’t clearly stated, then you know that this paragraph needs to be revised.

• Strategy #3: Another way to revise a paper globally is to cut it up. That’s right—use a scissors to cut between paragraphs so each section has its own sheet of paper.

After cutting the paragraphs into individual slips of paper, write each paragraph’s main idea in its left­hand margin. If you find that a paragraph has more than one main idea, you may want to consider breaking it up into two smaller, more focused paragraphs. You will also want to check that each sentence in the paragraph contributes to the main idea. If a sentence doesn’t fit, you can either move it to a more suitable paragraph, or you can delete it from your paper. Then, decide whether you need to make the main idea more explicit in the paragraph by writing a clearer topic sentence.

On the right­hand margin of each paragraph, write down your purpose for including the paragraph in your paper. For example, you may write, “This responds to a counterargument to show that I have considered opposing views” or “This paragraph provides textual support for my first idea.” Ask yourself whether the paragraphs follow through on their purposes, and look for places where the purpose of the information is clear to you as the writer, but perhaps not explicit enough for the reader.

Lastly, shuffle the paragraphs and spread them out. Play with the organization of your paragraphs ignoring the existing transition words for now, because they always can be changed. Determine an order that makes the most logical sense. You may find that a different order than you originally planned actually communicates more effectively.

A crucial factor for revision is the passage of time. Being able to take a break from your essay helps you to see it anew, and to approach it with fresh eyes. After some time away, you might notice missing description in your narrative, a contradiction in your argument, or an inconsistency between your thesis statement and the actual content of your paper. So allow for some time between drafts when you can set it aside for a day or two, or at the very least, a couple hours. Time away will make it easier to see your draft with fresh insight. Allowing time between drafts is one reason to start early on a writing assignment!

Local Revision Like a telephoto lens aerial satellite photos, or the zoom function on a Mapquest map, revising involves a process of narrowing in on finer and finer details in succeeding drafts. Once you have the big picture for your essay and you are confident that this big picture will meet the needs of your readers, then it is time to focus on the details. Here you zoom in on each road and city that your reader will be passing through to “re­see” each section as an individual entity. Does each section reflect careful focus, organization, and development? Does each paragraph within the section represent a coherent block of information? Are the transitions between paragraphs and sections effective? Does each sentence consistently contribute to the overall goal of the paragraph, the section, and the project? Is the style appropriate for both the situation and your intended readers?

Editing or Proofreading

When you’ve completed your large­scale global and local revision, it is time to move on to editing, sometimes called proofreading. At this point, you are looking for deviations from Standard Edited English (SEE) in sentence structure, punctuation, word choice, and spelling. These deviations are often referred to as “surface errors.” However, adherence to Standard Edited English is a rhetorical choice, based primarily on the expectations of your readers and the demands of the situation. Thus, if you are including dialogue that seeks to recreate the freshness of a particular dialect, then the rules of Standard Edited English would not apply. Regardless, editing involves tasks like choosing more precise words, combining choppy sentences, and checking the accuracy of quotations as well as proofing for lapses in SEE. While surface errors usually do not critically hinder a paper’s message, they do distract the reader and undercut your authority as a writer.

Editing Strategies • Strategy #1: Read your paper out loud to a blank spot on the wall. (This strategy is not

recommended in a room full of people!) While you might look funny, reading out loud forces you to slow down and recognize each word, helping you notice misspellings and mechanical errors. Reading out loud can also help you “hear” when you’ve paused, which helps you make decisions about punctuation placement. Writers who read their work out loud almost always catch embarrassing errors that they otherwise would have missed.

• Strategy #2: Part of local revision involves identifying and working on grammatical or stylistic areas needing improvement. If you want to work on an element of good writing style, such as conciseness, follow the links to find practical tips that will help you incorporate these elements into your writing. Or, if you tend to struggle with run­on sentences, sentence fragments or other pesky writing errors, follow the links to find out how to identify and improve these aspects of writing.

• Strategy #3: Run the spelling and grammar check, but do so carefully. This is no replacement for careful proofreading, but the spell­check can help you spot and eliminate typographical errors. The grammar checker can also help you identify sentence­level problems, such as fragments or sentences in passive voice. However, don’t just make any change the computer suggests; make sure that the suggested change truly improves your paper. And when the spell­check recommends changing a word, consider it carefully to make sure that it conveys the meaning you intend; do not blindly click the “change” button. Also, be warned that grammar check is notorious for being wrong! You are the authority on you paper. Use it cautiously. After you have run the spelling and grammar checkers, read your paper again, to see if anything has been missed.

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Research

A Rhetorical Approach to Research

Research, but not “The Research Paper” Most students have at some point encountered “The Research Paper,” and many students have come to dislike or even dread it. The problem with “The Research Paper” is that it provides a limited, and inaccurate, view of what research really is. When writing a “Research Paper,” you generally pick a topic, find a list of sources that provide information about the topic, and then proceed to summarize what the sources say by using quotes from those authors. The result is a regurgitation of information that is often of little interest to either the writer or the reader (usually limited to the teacher). Such an approach reduces research to mere summary, and you miss out on the more satisfying aspects of academic inquiry.

Students are not the only ones who have been frustrated by such “research.” In fact, the Writing Program at Ball State University has designed its courses specifically to eliminate “The Research Paper” and to allow and encourage students to experience authentic research for authentic situations that result in writing that is interesting, and even exciting, for writers to write and for readers (including, but not limited to the teacher) to read.

Rather than a “Research Paper” approach to research, we see research as a process of asking a question that interests you, systematically collecting both experiential and textual data, organizing that data, analyzing it for patterns, and determining the significance of those patterns for answering the initiating questions. This research process, rather than proceeding linearly from topic choice to reading to writing for the teacher, is a rich, diverse, and messy activity. It is also a rewarding activity.

The Role of Research in Daily Life, or: You’re Already Doing It Whether you realize it or not, you already engage in research. It is a basic component of all human activity. The process of questioning what goes on around us, of wondering about the origins of things, and of exploring things that interest us, is part of our everyday lives; it is not limited to school projects. That broader, everyday process is called Inquiry. What, for example, do you do when you meet someone new whom you find interesting? If you are like most people, you start asking around about that person, finding out who knows him or her and finding out where he or she hangs out or where he or she lives, or . . . .You get the idea. Maybe if you are a more direct person, you will go right up to the person and gather that information

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directly from the source.

As you ask questions, you gather many different types of information. If you talk to the person, you find out how receptive she or he is to talking to you; you get a sense of whether she or he has a warm personality or is more cool or hesitant or. . . . Again, you get the idea. Whatever the information you gather, you construct a certain level of new knowledge from the direct questions and answers and another type of new knowledge from direct observations of the other person. Inquiry is pursued through both systematic questions and systematic observations.

You probably engaged in a similar process of questioning and observing when you decided on a university. And you might have added a third element: reading what other people have written about the university. Perhaps you began with a specific set of criteria, then gathered information, or data, about a variety of schools. You then categorized the data, comparing it with your criteria until you found the university that aligned most closely with those criteria. Or perhaps you asked friends questions about Ball State. Then you checked out the Ball State website, browsing through the online information—the texts that other people have written—to gain additional insights. Finally, you might have decided to visit the campus so that you could gather first­hand observations of the school. All of this data you collected, organized, shared with others, analyzed, and interpreted to make your choice. This is the process of inquiry, and it is a natural element of human activity. Understanding the role of Inquiry in life and in the university allows you opportunities for authentic engagement with ideas and with your world.

Connecting Daily Life with Academics While everyday inquiry is something you already do, your current level of inquiry might not always be advanced enough for the demands of the academic situation. Academic inquiry is central to the university mission. Your teachers at Ball State are researchers; they are committed to inquiry in their areas of specialty and to sharing the products of inquiry with their discipline and with the larger public. Academic research is what anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston calls “formalized curiosity; it is “poking and prying with a purpose.” The formal element means that the poking and prying are conducted according to carefully devised methods and assessed according to rigorous standards.

English 104 provides you with the opportunity to engage in formalized poking and prying guided by rigorous standards and methods. The reward consists of exploring a phenomenon that fascinates you and discovering new information about it. Just as your teachers are also scholars—they are teacher­scholars—so too do we wish you to be student­scholars: involved and in charge of your own research projects. Therefore, in English 104 you will engage in systematic inquiry involving a variety of questions, data collection methods, and audiences.

The research process that we envision involves you in exploring topics and issues you care about. You will participate in creating new knowledge, which includes evolving your own research question(s), devising the best way to collect, organize, analyze, and interpret information that will provide an answer to your question(s), and addressing the needs of an audience for whom your question is important. You will be the author and the authority on your subject. While you will refer to sources and quote other researchers on your topic, the sources will function as the building blocks you will use to create and present original conclusions and unique perspectives. Your experiences will culminate in an authoritative text that you want, and need, to write, and that your audience will enjoy, benefit from, and be persuaded by.

This approach does not ignore your experiences with inquiry in your everyday life. Rather, your instructor will ask you to build on your natural abilities, adapting for and extending them to the specific academic situation. So you will start with what you know, what you are familiar with, and you will use that as a beginning for learning ways to think about and engage in inquiry. You will be pushed to ask new questions. You will be encouraged to explore issues from new angles. You will grapple with readers’ demands, which will stipulate what constitutes valid questions and an acceptable means of answering those questions. You will come to understand that all issues have many angles, and you will become more comfortable with identifying and considering the implications of multiple viewpoints

English 104 is designed to help you learn to think like a researcher. It is about conceptualizing a research project from question to answer; it is about learning how to carry out a research project from data collection to analysis; it is about learning how to report the results of the research to an audience concerned with the initial question. Throughout these experiences, you will be thinking and writing in new ways, increasing your ability to act as an authority, an agent, in the world.

The Research Process

Research Begins with a Question In the old “Research Paper” model of research, the first task a student was given was that of picking a topic. Students would consider what they were interested in or what they knew about. They would then decide to write about “football” or “ice skating” or some other general topic. Next, they would head off to the Internet or the encyclopedias to gather some facts.

In your Writing Program courses you will also have the opportunity to discover something that you want to write about, but the process involves more than just “picking a topic.” Instead, you will develop a research question. A research question is a formal question that guides you through the process of academic inquiry into your topic. The goal of research is to create new knowledge, which means not only that you will learn something new, but also that the result of your research will be your presentation of a new perspective, new argument, or additional knowledge about your topic that will also be new for the readers of your research report. In order to do this you will need to go beyond picking a topic.

In formulating a question that will be interesting and engaging, it is important to consider your interests, because if you do not find your topic interesting you will not get very far before you want to abandon the project. However, in addition to your own interests you also need to consider what will interest an audience. Remember the rhetorical situation. As you consider your topic and begin to formulate your research question, keep in mind all parts of the rhetorical question as discussed in Chapter Two. It is worth repeating two parts of that situation here:

Exigence is the drive, the desire, to change something specific. This involves our personal involvement in, experience with, and recognition of, a state of affairs that needs to be changed and can be changed through language.

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Audience involves the people whom the writer wishes to change. These people bring to the writer’s message an array of beliefs, values, knowledge, and experiences that they draw on as readers to construct meaning. Through the medium of the text, the writer seeks to connect with the audience so that they will share the same vision of reality.

Therefore, the topic “football” must evolve into something much more situated to be effective in a research project. Even when you narrow the topic to “the Indianapolis Colts,” or “Ball State football,” you will find it difficult to proceed without a question that you are looking to answer.

Consider for example, the topic “Ball State football.” If you used that as your starting point and then went out to gather facts, you could get many facts about who does play or has played on the team, or you might find what has been said about Ball State football in the newspapers, or you could talk to a group of students and get opinions on what they think of Ball State football. But if you put these facts into a paper you would end up with a list of facts that lack exigence and audience. However, when you begin with exigence, you can more easily refine your topic into a research question. Sometimes your initial reading leads you to this point. For example, in reading news reports, perhaps you encounter a discussion of the relative value of Ball State’s participation in the MAC conference.

A research question should be broad and open ended enough to allow fruitful exploration and narrow enough to be doable in the time and space available to you. Questions that can be answered “yes” or “no” should be avoided. So the question “Should Ball State remain in the MAC?” is not as effective as “How does participation in the MAC conference affect academics at Ball State?” In writing your research report, you may argue for or against participation in the MAC, but the broader research question encourages you to consider many aspects of the issue, providing you with an increased breadth and depth for your discussion.

For additional discussions of the research question, consider these sources:

• Bedford/St. Martins offers five stages of development from initial ideas to a refined research question: How to Develop a Research Question.

• Bill Hord offers a discussion of the benefits of questions over topics: The Art of Research Questions.

• The University of Connecticut offers a tutorial on Using a Topic to Generate Questions. • The Hong Kong Baptist University explains research as discovery and notes that you

cannot find answers if you do not have questions: Framing a Research Question. • The University of Hartford offers more pointers for moving from topic to question:

Research Strategies.

Gather Information A well­developed and refined research question will guide you towards the method of research that will work best for discovering answers. Each research question will demand different methods of gathering information. For example, if you are interested in understanding the “rules” by which a community—such as a football team—organizes itself, you would closely watch football players during practices, games, and leisure. If you wanted to discover whether first­year students enjoyed the common reader, you would survey and/or interview first­year students. In authentic research projects, scholars use various methods to explore the question, and they decide what method to use based on the question they ask. Although all research involves reading—we don’t know what questions are worth asking until we find out what other

people have asked and discovered about our topic—authentic research involves more than just reading what other scholars have discovered. It involves you constructing your own new knowledge. While you will certainly find “facts” and while you will certainly need to keep these “facts” straight, you will also learn more ways of engaging in inquiry than just looking up information in books, as you will see in Section 3 below.

Analyze the Data A good research question moves you beyond collecting snippets of information from the library or the Internet. In the old model, a student might collect six facts about dancing, jotting down types of dancing in pioneer America, when the first professional ballet was staged, and so forth, and then plug those facts into a paper. Authentic researchers guided by carefully crafted questions, however, realize that facts do not necessarily speak for themselves. When you are exploring the role that school­sponsored dances have on the mating rituals of American youth, in addition to reading about dances and middle schools, you would attend middle­school dances and talk to middle­school students. These various types of research will provide different types of data. Once you have read about your subject, collected information, recorded your observations, and conducted your interviews, you will go back through your data, sifting through it to look for patterns, which can then be double­checked and confirmed.

Interpret the Data Once you have collected and analyzed the data, you will compare it with the information you have collected from other scholars who have explored similar questions, or who offer a different perspective from what you were able to observe. To help you keep track of your sources, you might want to create an annotated bibliography. See the last section of Chapter 14 for an example of an annotated bibliography. Once you have compiled all your information you will be better able to answer your research question. You then can prepare a research report that

• explains the topic and the significance of the topic to your audience, • reviews what has been done before, • explains why your exploration adds new information, • describes your method of answering your question, and • presents, explains, and defends the conclusions you have come to as a result of your

research.

To illustrate, Deborah Brandt, a literacy scholar, gathered information about people’s reading and writing experiences across generations by carefully interviewing more than 50 people of different ages and life styles. She evolved and tested her questions before beginning her study; she carefully sifted through the stories people told her to discover patterns, and then interpreted the significance of those patterns to answer her question concerning how people of different generations learn to read and write. Her research report was a book: Literacy in American Lives. This is an example of “formalized curiosity” in action.

Present your Results In many academic situations, presenting results means writing a report or paper of some kind. In Deborah Brandt’s case, she presented her results in the form of a book. In English 104 most

of your reports will be in the form of a 4­6­page paper. Your reports will use and expand on the rhetorical foundation that you established in English 103.

Formalized Curiosity: Different Ways to Research

When you design a research project, you have many different ways that you can poke and pry with a purpose. That is to say, you can collect information about your subject through a variety of methods. For instance, you can go out and talk to people. This means conducting interviews with individuals who have special experiences or insights into your subject. Other methods involve surveying people or observing the behavior of people, and, while these methods consist of different procedures, they share three similarities:

• They are “formal”: each method consists of a series of do’s and don’ts. Part of the persuasive nature of your research depends on how carefully you follow those dos and don’ts. Part of your experience in English 104 is discovering how to conduct different kinds of research.

• The choice of one method over another is dictated by the kind of question you ask. For instance, if you want to analyze trends (how many people between 10 and 16 are playing online role playing games and how many hours a day are they playing), you would collect information through a survey. If you wanted to answer a question concerning the social divisions among eighth graders at Delta Middle School, you would directly observe the behavior of those eighth graders. If you want to interpret a literary text, then you would engage in a close reading of the poem or short story.

• All methods involve reading. Reading is necessary to find out what other people have said about your topic and to see if other people have tried to answer your question. Through reading you discover what your readers are already saying about issues related to your topic and question so that you will discover how your question fits into that “conversation.”

The entire process of devising, conducting, and reporting on a research project is tightly tied to an audience. For instance, not all questions are equally valid for all audiences. In addition, not all methods are valid for all audiences. Therefore, learning to research involves understanding that research is itself an act of persuasion; the expectations of your audience are important to the success of your project.

We have included below some common types of research methods developed in the social sciences. You will work with your instructor to determine how best to conceptualize and carry out your particular projects.

Recollection: Inquiring into Your Own Experiences Every man's memory is his private literature. ~Aldous Huxley

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And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses ­ would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure­ house of memories? ~Rainer Maria Rilke

The first and greatest source of information that we all have is our memories and ourselves. You will find that in all of your exploration you use your past experience as a guide, checking back, considering how new information measures up to or fits into categories you have experienced before. While this should not be a surprise to you, it may not be something you have paused to think about before. We invite you to consciously focus on this phenomenon as you go through the research process.

In addition to serving as a backdrop to all of your inquiry, sometimes your experiences can serve as primary data. If you are exploring middle school behaviors, you will want to recall and write about your own middle school experiences. If you are searching for an important reason to write, you may explore your past experience for things that strongly affected your actions or beliefs. At times this exploration will be less formal as you journal or jot down impressions and ideas. At other times you will want to explore your experiences more formally. You may work to capture everything you can remember about an event or issue. Then, once you have collected your thoughts, you will sift through them looking for patterns, questioning the circumstances, and identifying underlying themes that you were not consciously aware of before.

Observation: Conducting Field Research "You can observe a lot just by watching.” ~Yogi Berra

“He doesn’t watch, he notices.” ~Thomas D’Evelyn

What D’Evelyn says about noticing is important for field research, but it is also significant for everything that a scholar does in research. Sifting and sorting information is a part of what you will do when you set yourself the task of observing some phenomenon. Just being there is not enough; rather you must train yourself to notice what is important and to identify those patterns of behavior that will provide the insights you are looking for: the answers to your research question. In the case of middle­school dances, you would want to position yourself in a place where you can see as much as possible and where you are not obvious. You would then watch the ways that boys and girls interact. You would have a writing tool handy so you could record your observations. At first you will record everything you see. As the evening goes on, you may begin to notice a pattern of behavior, and you will begin to focus on that, looking for it in other situations. Sometimes no pattern becomes obvious while you are in the field. Even if you do begin to identify a pattern, remember to keep recording everything that you see, because after your observation time you will return to your field notes and sometimes it is only in reviewing your notes that patterns emerge.

In addition to observing from a distance, field research also includes talking to informants (that is, the people you interview). So in exploring middle­school behavior you would find middle­ schoolers that you could talk to. You would talk with them initially to gain a basic understanding of their community and you would talk with them later about the patterns you begin to see. You

may also need to ask them about certain aspects of a phenomenon that you do not fully understand or that you think you understand, but are interested in hearing their interpretation.

Note: before you do any observation of a site or interviewing of the people there, you should talk to the administrators or supervisors of the site to get formal permission to observe and interview. (See the "Ethical Considerations" section below.)

Conversation: Conducting Interviews Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards. ~Theodore Zeldin

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Some of the best resources a writer can have are people—professors, business people, other students, local residents, and even the guy who made your coffee this morning. No matter what the research topic, an informant probably can help. Someone writing about child abuse can learn a great deal from books and articles on abuse, but talking to a few family services case workers may help the writer to truly understand the problem. Even better, those family services workers can probably direct the writer toward the best, most current written materials on the subject. After all, it is their area of expertise. A student comparing elements of American and Chinese cultures could actually interview Chinese students they know on campus. Better yet, the Ball State Center for International Programs might be able to help the writer set up an interview with several Chinese students. The perspectives of those students, combined with the writer’s library research, could make for a powerful paper. Similarly, a single mother who knows a few things about raising a child alone might still want to gather some other opinions and insights to go along with or to challenge hers. She could gather a group of single parents who use the University’s Child Care Center, and together the group could explore issues in single parenting.

How you conduct and how you use these interviews will depend on your research question and on your purpose for interviewing a particular individual or group of individuals. There are two categories of interviews. In the first case you would be interviewing experts to gain more information about your topic. Such interviews will provide you with the background knowledge you need to understand your topic more fully. So you might talk to a sociology professor who has experience observing students or to a middle school teacher in order to get some background on adolescent behavior. In these cases you would be collecting secondary information, consulting experts on your topic.

A second category of interviews would involve primary research, for example talking to middle­ schoolers about their interaction with members of the opposite sex. In this case you would be collecting data that you will analyze for patterns and that will lead you to conclusions and to new knowledge about your topic.

If you are looking for an expert on a particular topic, always consider local businesses and agencies whose work might be relevant. If nothing comes immediately to mind, you may be able to get ideas from Muncie or Ball State phone book listings for area social services, businesses, organizations, or academic departments. Local press and media might also help, as might the library’s reference services staff. Remember, too, that you are not on your own: You can always brainstorm with classmates, instructors, or Writing Center tutors.

Before you contact a human resource, know what kind of information you are seeking. Do you want to talk in general about your topic, or do you have specific questions? Let your resource people know in advance what you want to talk about, so they can prepare. Do your own preparations, too. Find out relevant background information on your informant and on the topic or topics at hand. Prepare any specific questions you want to ask and try to provide those questions to informants in advance.

Whatever the purpose of your interview, the following tips will help you conduct a successful interview once you arrive on site:

• Ask a supervisor for permission to conduct interviews. You may wish to send a formal letter of request in advance. (See the "Ethical Considerations" section below.)

• Document it. Make sure you arrive with a notebook and writing utensil, (and a list of prepared questions) ready to take detailed notes. You might want to quote or paraphrase your informant in your paper, so you will want your notes to be specific and accurate. (Make sure to note down the place of the interview, the time, the date and the name of the informant.) You may also consider taping the interview, so you can refer to specific sections later. Always ask for permission before recording a conversation.

• Ask questions. o If you are interviewing an expert in the field for background information, don’t be

afraid of sounding stupid in an interview. Sometimes experts use jargon or make references that people outside the field won’t know. If you don’t understand something your informant says, make sure to ask for an explanation. Informants usually appreciate clarification questions, because it shows that you’re listening well and are interested in understanding everything they’re saying.

o If you are interviewing multiple subjects (say ten middle­schoolers, for example) make sure that you ask all informants the same questions. Only by doing this will you be able to identify a pattern of responses that will guide you towards answering your research question

• Be flexible. Even though you have your list of questions and topics to address, be willing to go with the flow of the conversation. Your informant may bring up issues or ideas that you didn’t anticipate. If you think further information will be helpful, be sure to ask additional questions to understand the new material completely. Again, if you have a group of informants, make sure that you have answers to the core questions.

• Be polite and professional. Your informants are making time for you, and you should do all you can to respect their sacrifice. Make an appointment well in advance and try never to act in too big of a hurry to get your information and get out the door.

• Ask for follow­up opportunities. End your interview by asking the person if you could contact them later with any additional questions.

Ethical Considerations Any time you conduct research that involves another human being you have a responsibility to that person. When your teachers conduct research that involves other people they must follow a carefully prescribed procedure including submission of their projects to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) in order to ensure the protection of human subjects. While as students you do not need to consult the IRB, you are still expected to conduct your research in a professional manner that follows the same guidelines. The University’s Handbook for Researchers provides the following guideline for ethical principles:

The University is guided by ethical principles regarding all research involving humans as subjects. These principles have been set forth in the report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research entitled, "Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.” These principles include respect for persons (autonomy), beneficence (including minimization of risks and maximization of benefits), and justice (fair procedures and outcomes in the selection of research subjects).

In brief, this requires you to treat your informants with respect, both during the interview and in the analysis and report of information, and to ensure that your research does not cause harm. In practice this means things like discussing whether your informant wishes to remain anonymous and taking the time to clarify the views of your informants so that you do not inadvertently misquote or misrepresent them.

In a situation where you wish to interview minors (middle­schoolers, for example) you need to consider whether to get approval from their parents before interviewing them. You will also encounter situations where you need prior approval even when you are interviewing adults; for example if you interview someone at work you will get approvals from supervisors or company owners. Consider all of the people who might be interested in and affected by your actions; discuss your plans with them ahead of time.

Although it may seem to you that something as simple as an interview will be harmless, and it generally is, whenever you interact with another human there is a potential for conflict or misunderstanding. When you will be representing someone else’s opinions in a written report, your responsibility to be especially careful increases. So treat your informants with respect and take care to do no harm.

Textual Exploration: Primary and Secondary Sources What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality. ~Wallace Stevens

All my knowledge comes from research. ~Stan Sakai

The subject of “secondary” vs. “primary” research was referred to above in the section on interviews. You will also need to understand the difference between secondary and primary information in textual research. When you go to the library and find a book that talks about the way American educational structure affects the social lives of adolescents, you are finding a secondary resource. You are reading an account from someone who has looked at both the phenomenon and at primary sources, and is presenting an interpretation based on that investigation. A secondary resource provides background information or shows the results of someone else’s research.

Primary sources are those that do not contain an analysis by another author. In the case of middle­schoolers, if students shared their diaries about their middle school experiences with you, that would be a primary source. Other primary sources might include pictures of dances or the programs, flyers, and advertisements for upcoming, or previous, dances.

Your instructor will expect you to become familiar with both primary and secondary research. If, for example, you are interested in Charles Dickens, you could read what literary or historical scholars had said about him and his work (secondary source). But you could not really talk authoritatively about his work if you did not read his books (primary source). However, there is another layer of primary research that you might be less familiar with. To understand more about Dickens, you might also want to explore some of the things that have not been published, such as letters that he wrote. In some cases scholars collect and publish the letters of famous people, in which case, the letters themselves would be a primary source, and what the scholar said about them would be secondary information.

You are not limited to published materials, though. Ball State’s Bracken Library has a huge archive that includes rare copies of published works, along with letters, diaries, photographs, and other textual material connected to famous people (including Charles Dickens). You can also find material about the history of Muncie, and of Ball State, as well as archival material about more contemporary figures, such as Bill Cosby. Stop by the archives on the second floor of Bracken Library sometime. The archivists love a chance to show off some of their treasures. By exploring them you will have the opportunity to actually handle a part of the past, and to draw some new conclusions that lead to new knowledge.

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting

As you begin drafting your research report, you will start making decisions about how to present your findings. As a writer, you have the option of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting the material you found.

• Summarizing condenses an entire work or a significant part of the work into a shorter piece of writing. For example, you might use a couple of sentences to explain the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet or recap Barbara Ehrenreich’s experience at Wal­Mart from a chapter of her book, Nickel and Dimed. You may also summarize an author’s argument, which took an entire book to explain fully, in a paragraph. Often summarizing allows you to provide background information or general support for one of your points.

• Paraphrasing restates a shorter passage in your own words. For example, if in the text Hamlet says, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” you may choose to paraphrase by saying, Hamlet questions the meaning of his own existence. Or if an author states, “One of the most difficult aspects of commuting to campus at Ball State is the frustration of finding a parking space,” you may paraphrase by saying, Ball State’s parking shortage frustrates commuter students. Paraphrasing may be an effective choice to explain an idea more clearly or succinctly in your own words. Also, sometimes paraphrasing allows you to incorporate another’s ideas into the flow of your paper more effectively than quoting word­for­word.

• Quoting duplicates the words of another source exactly. Quotes are easy to identify because the quoted material always must be set off in quotation marks. You will choose to quote when a source states something so uniquely and eloquently that you would be unable to improve it with your own paraphrase. Quoting is also valuable when you want to capture the voice and character of the speaker. For example, look at how Thomas Brelage opened his essay entitled “The Keeper of the Bees”:

If you live around Anderson, Indiana, and you want to know anything about bees or honey, or if you have a swarm on your property that needs to go away, you call Charlie DeMoss. Charlie loves to talk about his “girls.” He points to a small bump at the end of his left eyebrow. “My girls did that to me yesterday,” he says with a wry grin.

We are instantly curious about a man who loves his bees so much that he doesn’t mind getting stung on the face and even calls them his 'girls' as if they were his children.

At other times you may want to quote people to borrow their authority on your topic, as is commonly done in research papers. For example, if you are writing a paper on a medical topic, but you are not a doctor, your paper will probably be strengthened by quoting the words of a recognized leader in that field. To give us as firsthand an account as

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possible, news writers often quote the people directly involved with the events or issues they’re writing about. If you try your hand at fiction, or if you write a narrative of something that really happened, putting speakers’ words in quotation marks adds believability to your story telling.

Whichever option you choose for including outside information, it’s important not to take the words or ideas of another author out of context; you should strive for precision not only in your word choices, but also in the tone that’s communicated. All three options also require citations, which you will read about in Chapter 5, “Documenting Sources.”

Incorporating Quotes

When you have selected material you would like to quote, next you need to incorporate the material effectively into your paper. Whenever you incorporate someone else’s words, make sure you introduce the quote instead of merely dropping the material into your paper. As a general rule, if you include a quote, comment on it. Let the readers know why you found the quote significant or how it relates to your argument. Dropped quotations confuse readers because they lack context, and they sometimes use pronouns that are unclear. Note the following example:

In the story, Bob was a judgmental character. “They shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

Here the quote was dropped in to the paragraph without any explanation. As a result, the reader doesn’t know who said the quote. In addition, the reader doesn’t know whom the word they refers to. Notice how much clearer the sentences are when the quotation is introduced properly:

In the story, Bob was a judgmental character. For example, he made the following generalization about elderly people: “They shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

There are four ways to incorporate quotations effectively:

• Partial quote incorporated in sentence. A partial quote allows you to incorporate part of another sentence into the grammatical and structural flow of your sentences.

Bob believed elderly people lacked quick reflexes and declared that they “shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

• Lead in before quote. A lead in allows you to place the quotation in context with just a few words, which is often called a signal phrase. Common signal phrases include: According to ____, As ____ has noted, ____ claims, etc.

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In the words of the character Bob, “They shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

• Explanatory sentence before quote. You can also provide a lengthier introduction by including a full sentence of explanation before your quote, usually separated from it by a colon.

The character Bob believed negative stereotypes about elderly people, which led to him making ridiculous assertions about the ways their abilities should be regulated: “They shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

• Long quote indented. If the quotation you would like to use consists of five or more typed lines, MLA style requires that they be indented one inch in block form. Long quotations should only be used occasionally, and should be introduced with an explanatory phrase or sentence and a colon:

Critic Jane Doe argues that the character Bob demonstrates the negative effects of generalizations: Bob’s comments began innocently enough—noticing that one elderly driver was moving particularly slowly, that another had forgotten to use the turning signal, and that a third driver began driving the wrong way on a one­way street. What began as casual comments, however, soon grew into an unfair generalization, because Bob did not acknowledge the other elderly drivers who were careful and conscientious. Finally he began making unjust and undemocratic assertions that the government should take away elderly people’s drivers licenses.

For more information about how to punctuate quotations accurately, see “Quotation Marks.” You should also be aware that all quotations require proper citations, which this section did not discuss. To learn about documenting sources, see Chapter 5.

Formatting Papers

You are no doubt familiar with the Format button on the menu bar at the top of Microsoft Word documents. When you click on it you can choose, among other options, to change the font, or the paragraph, or the document. You can choose double­spacing, or single (or 1.5, or set your own); you can move paragraphs in, or shape them as a list, with bullets, or numbers; you can change the margins of the document, leaving one inch of white space, or more, or less, depending on your rhetorical and visual goals. You have control of how the text is arranged on the page.

Of course, when you are writing for an audience you exercise that control within the confines of your rhetorical situation. If you want to make your paper resemble a newspaper you might

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choose columns. If you want to highlight graphics or photographs you might choose lots of white space. All of these are design choices that will affect your reader and the way your reader responds to your text.

In academic settings there are often formal expectations in regard to formatting. Style sheets have been developed that prescribe exactly how a document should be formatted including specifications for margin width, line spacing, the location of page numbers, and so on. These have been developed to ensure consistency for written materials within and across disciplines. Some examples are the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) style sheets. Others include Chicago or Turabian, and CBE. Also see “ Documenting Sources,” Chapter 5. Each discipline prescribes or prefers a certain style and you will want to check with your instructor when you write a paper as to whether they specify a style sheet.

In the field of English studies, MLA is the accepted standard. This is a convention of English studies, the subject area within which writing instructors have been trained and within which they are most familiar. This does not mean that students cannot address audiences other than members of the humanities community. It merely means that the first choice of documentation style for writing instructors will often be MLA.

If your situation calls for you to format your paper according to MLA style, the basic conventions are as follows:

• All margins—top and bottom, right and left—are set to one inch; • Double­spacing should be used throughout; • The text should be in an 11­ or 12­point, easy­to­read font (such as Times Roman); • The heading (as opposed to the "header") and body text should be left­justified; • The title of the paper and of the Works Cited section should be centered and should not

be underlined, italicized, or bold­faced; • The running header of the paper should be right­justified, one­half inch from the top of

the paper; and it should contain the author's last name and the page number; • Each new paragraph should be indented with a single tab (or five spaces); • Block quotes should be indented one inch (or two tabs, or ten spaces); • Entries on the Works Cited page should use a hanging indent; • Tables, charts, diagrams, illustrations, models, photographs, maps, or any other

graphics should be introduced to readers in the text of the paper and inserted close to their textual introductions; they should be labeled and given a caption, such as, Table 1: Declining Rates of Substance Abuse at Ball State, 1999­2000.

Below is a sample paper formatted in MLA style:

Lastname 2 Your Name

Instructor’s Name

ENG 103

15 April 2000

This Is a Sample Paper: Your Specific Title Goes Here

The text of your paper begins here. Notice that this text is left justified. All margins

should be set at 1”. Choose a typeface that is easy to read and set the size at 11 or 12. When your

goal is to achieve a legible, professional, authoritative look, avoid casual or ornate typefaces. All

text should be double­spaced—no more, no less—from your name in the upper left corner all the

way to the bottom of your works cited page: this consistency keeps things simple and sharp.

The function that allows you to set up your header appears under “View” in typical word

processors. Be sure to insert page numbers, which can usually be done from the header set up.

When you discuss someone else’s ideas in your paper, whether quoting or paraphrasing,

you need a parenthetical citation. “Usually the author’s last name and a page reference are enough

to identify the source and the specific location from which you borrowed material” (Gibaldi 184).

Note that the reference goes inside the period. If you mention the author’s name in your text,

Gibaldi in this case, you only need the page number (186). Quotes of four or more lines should be

set off as block quotes, like this:

Apple was born in a valley of orchards, the product of two wise­eyed kids who in a

garage created a machine that would not just make them millionaires many times over but

would also have a profound effect on the way people live and work. . . . We know now

that the computer is not just a productivity tool but . . . is also a window into the

electronic universe, a portal to cyberspace. (Goodell 52)

Note that the parenthetical citation goes outside the period in a block quote. Remember to refer to

The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers if you have further questions.

Lastname 1

Lastname 2

Works Cited

Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. 4 th ed. San Diego: Harcourt, 1985.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Frost at Midnight.” Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu.

Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 462­65.

Gibaldi, Joseph. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 4 th ed. NY: MLA, 1995.

Goodell, Jeff. “The Rise and Fall of Apple, Inc.” Rolling Stone 4 Apr. 1996: 50­55+.

National Geographic Society. Smoking Kills Cultures. Washington: Natl. Geog. Soc., 1985.

Documenting Sources

Chapter Five Quick Links:

1. Standard Documentation Styles 2. In­Text Citation 3. Sample In­Text Citations 4. Works Cited

Electronic Sources 5. Sample Works Cited Entries

Books Selections from Books Periodical Articles Personal Sources Government Sources Performances & Works of Art Online Sources

As we have insisted repeatedly throughout this handbook, each rhetorical situation is unique and your writing should respond to your specific situation. We have also emphasized the importance of giving proper credit to authors whose words and ideas you use. This chapter will help you cite sources when your rhetorical situation calls for a formal documentation style, which includes most academic writing situations.

Academic writing requires the use of relevant sources for building arguments and exploring ideas. In your papers you will not only directly quote and summarize other people’s writing but also identify the sources of ideas you have borrowed. (Remember that failure to give credit when you use someone else’s thoughts or text can constitute plagiarism.) This chapter will help you understand standard documentation styles, such as The Modern Language Association (MLA) style of documentation, which is preferred by Ball State’s Writing Program. The chapter will also explain the two parts of the system that MLA requires for acknowledging your sources: with in­ text, parenthetical citations, and with a list of sources at the end of your paper (called a Works Cited page).

Standard Documentation Styles

Standard documentation styles for academic papers provide guidelines for giving proper credit to sources. Commonly used documentation styles include those designed by the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), and Council of Biology Editors (CBE).

Documentation styles help you keep track of any outside sources you use in your work, whether you quote someone word­for­word or just refer to someone’s ideas. By adhering to MLA, APA, or other documentation style conventions, you alert your readers that you are aware of what

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CHAPTER

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good academic writing is; and by citing your sources clearly, you borrow the authority of other writers, proving that you have reviewed the existing information and ideas in your area of interest.

Documentation styles may feel artificial or tedious as you learn to use them; however, a documentation style, once learned, becomes a helpful and relatively simple set of tools for communicating information about sources.

All writing program courses emphasize the need to document the sources you use. While English 104 is the course designed specifically to guide you through a variety of research projects and to include experience with formal documentation styles, you may also encounter rhetorical situations in 101/102 and 103 that require a familiarity with the following citation style. Other academic departments may require the use of APA, CMS, CBE, or other styles, because those other styles present source information in more appropriate formats for the purposes of those departments. If you plan to be a nurse, for instance, you will need to use APA in your formal writing for nursing classes. For more information on other styles, visit the Writing Center or view:

• APA: http://www.wisc.edu/writetest/Handbook/DocAPA.html • CMS: http://www.wisc.edu/writetest/Handbook/DocChicago.html • CBE: http://www.wisc.edu/writetest/Handbook/DocCBE.html

In­Text Citation

In­text citations—or parenthetical citations—identify the specific page of a source from which a quotation, an idea, a fact, an interpretation, or any other type of reference was taken. These citations provide readers with an immediate, minimal indication of what material you borrowed, and they point readers to the detailed bibliographic information in your list of works cited, located at the end of your paper.

MLA style uses two methods for citing borrowed material within the text:

• The author and page number of the source are identified in parentheses immediately following the borrowed material.

While some find the possibility of alien invasion to be “preposterous” (Smith 26), the team at Area 52 have a rather different view on the matter.

• The author is identified in the text and the page reference is provided in parentheses immediately following the borrowed material.

James Smith called the idea of alien invasion “preposterous” (23).

To fully understand the application of MLA to a text you will want to follow the specific examples provided in the chapter’s next section, but, to start with, here are the basic rules:

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• Keep citations concise, providing all necessary information but no unnecessary information.

• Use an author’s last name for all in­text citations. Use an author’s first initial and last name if two authors in the Works Cited list share the same last name.

• Include the page number or range of pages from which the borrowed material came. In citations such as (180­82) or (1002­04), the second number may be reduced to two numerals.

• Place the parenthetical citation either at the end of the sentence or at a natural pause within the sentence. (See, for example, the Alexander Pope citation below under literary works: plays and long poems.) In either case, the citation should be placed as close as possible to the material it identifies.

• If the citation is placed immediately following a quotation, place the citation after the closing quotation marks.

• If the citation appears at the end of a sentence, the final period should come after the closing parenthesis of the citation. If the citation appears at a “natural pause” in the sentence, a comma will likely follow the parenthetical citation.

• There is never a need within parenthetical citations to include abbreviations (like vol., p., or pp.); neither is there a need to separate each item with a comma (though in certain situations, as shown below, commas are expected).

Remember that all texts identified in your paper must also appear in the Works Cited section. Also remember that the first time an author is mentioned, the author’s full name should be included; thereafter, the author should be referred to by last name only.

Sample In­Text Citation

Below are some sample in­text citations. In most cases, you will have to make a choice about how much information you include in the body of the text and how much you place in parentheses. Remember that information in the body of the text will receive more attention from your reader than information in parentheses, so consider your choices and the effects of those choices on your audience.

Entire work Damned Lies and Statistics, by Joel Best, is an eye­opening study of the ways social statistics are created and manipulated by the media, politicians, and activists.

(Arranging the sentence this way emphasizes the source.)

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Author named in sentence Joel Best reminds his readers that before they confidently cite a statistic, they should understand who released the statistic, why the statistic was created, and how the statistic was created (30­32).

(In this sentence the identity of the author is emphasized.)

Author named in parenthetical citation “Although we sometimes treat social statistics as straightforward, hard facts, we ought to ask how those numbers are created” (Best 32).

When the quality changes in Blake’s work, so too does the quantity (Kaplan 223).

(In these examples the words and ideas are more prominent than the author or the source. This is also how you cite sources after you have already introduced the author and/or work elsewhere in your paper.)

Author has written two or more cited works The novel begins in medias res, with its protagonist, Jacopo Belbo, in the thick of things. “That was when I saw the pendulum,” Belbo begins, already breathless and bewildered (Eco, Foucault’s 3).

Discussing the interaction of art, history, and philosophy, Umberto Eco asserts that, “In every century the way that artistic forms are structured reflects the way in which science or contemporary culture views reality” (Eco, Open 13).

This short essay recounts the story of two unwise boys who were killed while teasing a polar bear (Eco, “How” 108).

(The works cited here include a novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, a theoretical treatise, The Open Work, and an essay, “How to Speak of Animals,” all by the Italian scholar Umberto Eco. The texts are identified in the simplest form, using the first important words of the title: Foucault’s and Open and “How.”)

Work with two or three authors Though now outdated, The Elements of Style offers much sound writing advice, wittily phrased, such as this passage on qualifiers: “Rather, very, little, pretty—these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better; we should all be very watchful of his rule, for it is a rather important one and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then” (Strunk and White 73).

It Ain’t Necessarily So, a study of statistics and their social uses, bemoans the fact that many statistics are misleading but also assures its readers that there are “means by which savvy news consumers can defend themselves” (Murray, Schwartz, and Lichter xv).

(Write the names of the authors in the order they appear on the cover or title page of the book.)

Work with four or more authors “The stories told in the Homeric poems are set in the age of the Trojan War” (Mack et al. 5).

(The Latin term et al. means “and others.”)

Anonymous work (alphabetized by title in the list of works cited) The people dying from AIDS in the contemporary musical Rent, then, are perhaps a later generation of “free­thinkers” than those celebrating free love in the 1960s musical Hair (“Comparing” 3­5).

(Here, as with an entry where the same author has written more than one work, a shortened version of the title identifies the work.)

Corporate author However, a press release claims that the new Macintosh operating system, also known as Rhapsody, will run on both Apple Macintosh and Intel Pentium computers (Apple Computer 2).

The Indiana Board of Higher Education’s year 2000 report on the state of reliable exit assessment practice in the state points out that educators have much work to do (7­9).

Indirect citation Backstage at the 2001 John Lennon tribute, dubbed “Come Together” by its TNT network organizers, STP singer Scott Weiland explained that “Beatles music is sacred,” neatly summarizing the attitude of many in attendance (qtd. in Scaggs 21).

('qtd.' means 'quoted.')

Two or more sources in a single citation Reviews of Liz Hamp­Lyons and William Condon’s Assessing the Portfolio: Principles for Practice, Theory, and Research highlight different principles and uses of the text (Whithaus 46­ 47; Atkins 27).

Multivolume work Although it is generally not acknowledged, the Byzantine influence is undeniable in much of the city’s architecture and art (Greight 3: 428).

(If you have used only one volume of a multi­volume source, you may use a typical parenthetical citation, indicating the volume number only in your Works Cited entry. However, if you use more than one volume you will need to employ the above format, citing the author, followed by the volume number, a colon, a space, and the page number.)

Literary works: short poems and song lyrics E. E. Cummings is loved (and sometimes despised) for the quirky, rhythmic wordplay in his poems, as in, “anyone lived in a pretty how town / (with up so floating many bells down)” (lines 1­2).

Yet, there is often sadness underlying Cummings’s wordplay, as in the poem quoted above, wherein, in the end, “one day anyone died I guess / (and noone stooped to kiss his face)” (25­ 26).

(For short poem and song lyric citations, use line numbers rather than page numbers. Indicate in the first

citation, as in the first citation above, that you are using line numbers. In subsequent citations you need only indicate the line numbers themselves, as in the second citation above.)

(Cummings, as a poet, has chosen to remove the space from “no one”; normally “no one” is written as two words.)

Literary works: verse plays and long poems Romeo wastes no time in reducing Juliet to lovelorn metaphors: “But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” (Romeo 2.2.2­3).

(Here, the format is for a play written in verse, and 2.2.2­3 indicates act 2, scene 2, lines 2­3.)

“An Essay on Criticism,” Alexander Pope’s long eighteenth­century poem about learning and taste, contains many original maxims that have become famous in themselves, though few people can name their author. “A little learning is a dangerous thing; / Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring” comes from this work (2.215­16); as does the well­worn line, “For Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” (3.625).

(Here, book and line numbers are cited. Note how the first parenthetical citation is incorporated unobtrusively in the middle of the sentence.)

Literary works: novels The Dodger is one of the most memorable juvenile delinquents in nineteenth­century literature. Says the narrator of Oliver Twist, “He was a snub­nosed, flat­browed, common­faced boy enough, and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see, but he had about him the airs and manners of a man” (Dickens 83; ch. 8).

(For classic works published in multiple editions with varying pagination, it is recommended that you include not only the page number but also the chapter, as an aid to any readers who are looking at different editions of the work.)

Authors with the same last name “Curiosity,” the good doctor once said, “is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind” (S. Johnson 231).

The Bible “Wisdom is supreme,” says the psalmist, “therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding” (Prov. 4:7).

(For Biblical passages, cite book, chapter, and verse or verses. Abbreviate the names of all books whose names exceed five letters. Note that a full list of standard, accepted abbreviations is available in The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.)

Non­print source (such as a films, televisions shows, newscasts, radio programs, etc.) Recent rumors have named Sixth Sense writer M. Night Shyamalan, among others, as potential writers for Indiana Jones 4, a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the wildly popular 1980s adventure films which featured Harrison Ford as the bullwhip­cracking archaeologist Indiana Jones.

Works Cited

The Works Cited in a paper includes all those sources actually referred to—cited—in the paper. These sources are listed in the Works Cited section at the end of a formal research paper. This bibliographic list helps your reader track down your sources and shows the quality and thoroughness of your research. An educated reader will be able to use this page to see if your research is based, for example, on a wide sampling of work by experts or on the work of a few amateurs with no convincing authority.

Preparing this list in the proper form may at first seem to be a tedious extra task coming after the "real" work of writing the paper, but the Works Cited section, like most MLA conventions, is actually a time­saving device. Within the text of your paper you use brief parenthetical citations rather than full bibliographic information because the list of works cited presents the necessary publication information for each work used in your paper. Thus, the longer and more complex your paper is, the more time these conventions will save you.

The Works Cited section begins on a separate page following the final paragraph of your paper. This new page should be numbered in sequence with the rest of the paper, and it should follow the same conventions for margins and headers followed in the rest of the paper (see Formatting Papers). The title, "Works Cited," should appear at the top of the page and be centered, without quotation marks or underlining or boldfacing. This page, like the rest of the paper, should be double­spaced—no more, no less.

Bibliographic entries in the list of works cited should be arranged in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. An anonymous source should be alphabetized by the first word in its title (besides a, an, or the). Each entry's first line should begin at the left margin of your paper, but all subsequent lines should be indented by one­half inch (or one tab), called a "hanging indent.” Double­space within and between entries. See the sample "Works Cited" page for an example.

As you prepare your list of works cited, you will discover that different kinds of sources require different sorts of information. A personal interview will not, and cannot, be cited in the same way as a book; and a book will not, and cannot, be cited in the same way as a magazine. However, while different sorts of sources require different sorts of information, any standard MLA entry will contain three major elements, in this order: author, title, and publication information. These three elements are separated from one another by a period and a space. Also, all entries end with a period. Here is a model:

Lastname, Firstname. Title of the Book. City: Publisher, Year.

The basic model varies slightly for publications in periodicals:

Lastname, Firstname. “Title of Article.” Title of the Publication Date: Page Numbers.

When it comes to publication information, convention calls for you to keep it simple. For instance, if the publication information includes “Bantam Books, Inc.,” just use “Bantam.” In the same way, “Charles Scribner’s Sons” becomes “Scribner’s”; “Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.” becomes “Harcourt”; “Harvard University Press” becomes “Harvard UP”; and so on. If a book

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has been published several times, you should use the most recent listed year of publication.

Electronic Sources Because online sources are sometimes more difficult for readers to locate than print sources, their citations require more information. As mentioned earlier, print sources require three main categories of information: author’s name, title, and publication information. An electronic publication requires up to five divisions: author’s name, document title, print publication information, electronic publication information, and access information.

• Author’s name: Like print citations, electronic citations also begin with the author’s name, typically found at the document’s beginning or end.

• Document title: Include the document’s full title inside quotation marks. If you are citing an entire Internet site or an online book, then underline the title.

• Print publication information: When a document has been published in print format, include the print publication information, using the guidelines for print sources.

• Electronic publication information: The available information about the electronic publication varies based on the source, but in general, include the title of the Web site (underlined), date of publication or most recent update, and name of site’s sponsor.

• Access information: Since electronic sources change frequently, an electronic source citation requires the last date it was viewed by the researcher. Also, include the complete URL address of the Web site in brackets. If the URL is excessively long, give the URL of the site’s search page. Or, you can list the URL for the site’s main page; then give the sequence of links that you followed, preceded by the word Path:.

The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6 th ed. provides the following example of a basic online source entry (Gibaldi 212):

Ross, Don. “Game Theory.” 11 Sept. 2001. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N Zalta. Fall 2002 ed. Center for the Study of Lang. And Information, Stanford U. 1 Oct. 2002 <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game­theory/>.

Often electronic sources do not contain information for each of the five categories mentioned above. In that case, only include the available information or follow the format of additional examples in the next section. You may also consult The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6 th ed., Chapter 5.9.

(Reminder: Be sure to test your URL as part of your proofreading process.)

Sample Works Cited Entries

The latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writer's of Research Papers, available at the reference desk in the library, provides an exhaustive list of citation standards. However, an abridged set of examples is provided below, covering the most common sorts of sources used in writing college research papers. If you cannot find the type of source you need in the list

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below, consult the current MLA Handbook. Also, please keep in mind that the Writing Center can help you with citation issues if you run into trouble.

BOOKS—BASIC ENTRIES

Book with one author Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. NY: Signet, 1963.

Two or more books (or other works) by the same author Stoppard, Tom. Lord Malquist & Mr Moon. NY: Knopf, 1966.

­­­. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. London: Faber and Faber, 1980

Book with two or three authors Lindemann, Erika, and Gary Tate. An Introduction to Composition Studies. NY: Oxford

UP, 1991.

Murray, David, Joel Schwartz, and S. Robert Lichter. It Ain’t Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality. NY: Rowman, 2001.

Book with more than three authors Bendure, Glenda, et al. Scandinavian and Baltic Europe on a Shoestring. Berkeley:

Lonely Planet, 1993.

Book with an anonymous author The World Almanac and Book of Facts. NY: NEA, 1983.

Book with an author and an editor Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. Ed. Mary Helen

Washington. NY: Harper, 1990.

(The year, 1937, following the title, is an optional piece of information, indicating the year the book was originally published, as opposed to the year of publication for the edition you are using.)

Book with an editor Docherty, Thomas, ed. Postmodernism: a Reader. NY: Columbia UP, 1993.

Gibson, Stephanie B., and Ollie O. Oviedo, eds. The Emerging Cyberculture: Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2000.

Book with a corporate author National Geographic Society. Smoking Kills Cultures. Washington: Natl. Geog. Soc.,

1985.

Book in a series Dowden, Edward. Shakespeare. Literature Primers. NY: American Book, 1903.

Book with a title within a title Lovecraft, H. P. “The Thing on the Doorstep” and Other Weird Stories. NY: Penguin,

2001.

Richmond, Hugh Macrae, ed. Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Richard III. NY: Hall, 1999.

Other situations with books: a multi­volume book, a translation, a new edition Martz, Louis L., ed. The Anchor Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse. 2 vols. NY:

Doubleday, 1969.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1987.

Harner, James L. Literary Research Guide: A Guide to Reference Sources for the Study of Literatures in English and Related Topics. 2 nd ed. NY: MLA, 1993.

SELECTIONS FROM BOOKS

Generic model for items from books Lastname, Firstname, ed. Title. Trans. Firstname Lastname. Anthology Title. Ed.

Firstname Lastname. 2 nd ed. Vol. 2. Muncie, IN: Ball State UP, 2002.

Selection from an anthology or collection Kafka, Franz. “The Metamorphosis.” The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed.

Maynard Mack, et al. 5 th ed. NY: Norton, 1987. 2301­41.

King, Stephen. “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” Different Seasons. NY: Signet, 1983. 15­106.

(Note the required inclusion of page numbers at the end of the entries. Also note the inclusion of an edition number in the Kafka entry.)

Two or more selections from an anthology McMichael, George, ed. Anthology of American Literature I: Colonial Through Romantic.

NY: Macmillan, 1980.

Bryant, William Cullen. “The Poet.” McMichael. 109­10.

Thoreau, Henry David. “Waldon.” McMichael. 1496­1660.

Article in a reference book Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. “Beat Generation.” A Handbook to Literature. 7 th

ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

“Samurai.” Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 15 th ed. 1995.

“Sesquipedalian.” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. 1989.

(For well­known reference works, use a simplified entry—without author or publisher information—such

as the second two here.)

Letter published in a collection of letters Keats, John. “To Benjamin Bailey.” 22 Nov. 1817. Letter 31 of The Letters of John Keats.

Ed. Maurice Buxton Forman. 4 th ed. London: Oxford UP, 1952. 66­69.

Interview published in a book Doe, John. Interview. Book Title. By Jane Doe. Muncie, IN: Ball State UP, 2002. 101­21.

Doe, Jane. “A Conversation with Ms. Doe.” Book Title. By John Doe. Muncie, IN: Ball State UP, 2002. 121­31.

(In the second example the interview was titled in the book.)

ITEMS FROM PERIODICALS

Article in a scholarly journal Acker, Kathy. “A Few Notes on Two of My Books.” RCF 9.3 (1989): 30­36.

(The “9.3” in the above entry refers to volume and issue number, so this article came from volume 9, issues number 3 of RCF.)

Article in a magazine Fricke, David. “The Father of Punk: Joey Ramone, 1951­2001.” Rolling Stone 24 May

2001: 45­49.

(All months except for May, June, and July should be abbreviated to three letters, as in “Feb.”)

Article in a newspaper Jones, Steve. “The Portland Trailblazers Acquire Star Forward From Ball State.” Oregon

Post 12 June 1999: C1+.

(C1 indicates section C, page 1. The “+” indicates in a simple way that the article continues later in the newspaper, though not on the next page.)

Boyle, T. Coraghessan. “The Great Divide.” New York Times 18 May 1997, late ed., sec. 7: 9.

(Note the format here for indicating edition and section number.)

Article with a title within a title Eklund, Matthew. “Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.” Explicator 59.4 (2001): 45­50.

Thoreen, David. “Thomas Pynchon’s Political Parable: Parallels between Vineland and ‘Rip Van Winkle.’” ANQ 14.3 (2001): 45­50.

Letter to the editor

Weber, Carl. “In Health Care, U.S. Is Best.” Letter. New York Times 30 May 1990: A25.

Signed (not anonymous) and/or titled review Boyle, T. Coraghessan. “The Great Divide.” Rev. of Mason and Dixon, by Thomas

Pynchon. New York Times 18 May 1997, late ed., sec. 7: 9.

Sheffield, Rob. Rev. of Reveal, by R.E.M. Rolling Stone 24 May 2001: 83­84.

Stoddart, Judith. Rev. of Ruskin’s God, by Michael Wheeler. Nineteenth Century Literature 56.1 (2001): 114­17.

Review that is both unsigned and untitled Rev. of Reveal, by R.E.M. Rolling Stone 24 May 2001: 83­84.

(An entry of this kind would be alphabetized by the name of the work reviewed, here “Reveal.”)

Published interview (in contrast to a broadcast or personal interview) Asimov, Isaac. Interview. “Isaac Asimov: The Great Explainer.” By Susan Hood.

Instructor 90.3 (1981): 32­36.

(This interview is formatted as an article from a scholarly journal; an interview from a newspaper or magazine, for example, would be cited accordingly.)

PERSONAL SOURCES

Personal letter Jones, David. Letter to the author. 9 Aug. 2001.

Sumner, Gordon. Subject. E­mail to the author. 10 Aug. 2001.

Personal interview Hewson, Paul. Personal Interview. 11 Aug. 2001.

Evans, David. Telephone Interview. 12 Aug. 2001.

Lecture or speech Weisel, Elie. “Surviving the Holocaust.” UniverCity. Ball State University. Muncie, IN. 15

Sept. 2000.

GOVERNMENT SOURCES

Basic format Name of Government. Name of Agency. Number of Congress, Session of Congress.

Type and Identification Number of Publication. Place: Publisher, Year.

(In government sources, abbreviate words such as “department” if the context makes them clear. Standard abbreviations in governmental publications include S for Senate, HR for House of

Representatives, Res. for resolutions, Doc. and Misc. Doc. for documents and miscellaneous documents. Bills should be identified as, for example, S 33 or HR 77, depending upon the house from which they come. The U. S. Government Printing Office in Washington is abbreviated as GPO, and the British governmental printing office, Her/His Majesty’s Stationary Office, is abbreviated as HMSO.)

Publication of the Senate or House of Representatives United States. Cong. House. Full Title. 107 th Cong., 2 nd Sess. H. Res. 50. Washington:

GPO, 2000.

­­­. ­­­. Joint Committee on Crisis. Hearings. 107 th Cong., 1 st and 2 nd Sess. 3 Vols. Washington: GPO, 2001.

­­­. ­­­. Senate. Report of the Secretary of the Senate from April 1, 2001 to September 30, 2001, Part I. 107 th Cong., 1 st Sess. S. Doc. 107­2. Washington: GPO, 2001.

(The United States and Congress are here treated as the same corporate author, cited three times.)

The Congressional Record Author. “Title.” Cong. Rec. 20 Dec. 2001: 3831­51.

Publication of a governmental agency besides Congress California. Dept. of Energy. Hypothetical Publication. Identification Number. Place:

Publisher, Year.

United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Analysis of Apollo 8: Photography and Visual Observations. NASA SP­201. Washington: GPO, 1969.

­­­. National Cancer Institute. Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke: The Report of the California Environmental Protection Agency. Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph no. 10. NIH Pub. No. 99­4645. Bethesda, MD: U. S. Dept of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, 1999.

PERFORMANCES, WORKS OF ART, AND OTHER THINGS YOU SEE OR HEAR

Television or radio program Imaginary Show. Dir. David Jones. Perf. Paul Hewson and David Evans. NBC. WXYZ,

Indianapolis, IN. 18 Aug. 2001.

Television or radio interview Nader, Ralph. Interview with Ray Suarez. Talk of the Nation. Natl. Public Radio. WIPB,

Muncie. 12 Apr. 1998.

(The above example is taken directly from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6 th ed.)

Sound recording Simon, Paul. The Rhythm of the Saints. Warner Bros., 1990.

The Beatles. “Polythene Pam.” Abbey Road. EMI, 1969.

Videorecording Voyager: Living Witness. Narr. John Swanson. Videocassette. Filmic Archives, 2000.

The Game. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. Polygram, 1997.

Bringing Out the Dead. Screenplay by Paul Schrader. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore. Videocassette. Paramount, 2000.

Scorsese, Martin, dir. The Age of Innocence. Perf. Daniel Day­Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder. Columbia, 1993.

(The second entry is the minimal entry, and the third is a more complete entry. Also note that the fourth entry emphasizes the director rather than the film.)

Live performance Arcadia. By Tom Stoppard. Dir. Antonio Quantine. Perf. Mia Carol, Hugh Burns, and

John Travolta. Haymarket Theatre, London. 12 Jan. 1999.

Musical composition Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Don Giovanni.

Work of art (painting, sculpture, or photograph) Bernini, Gianlorenzo. Apollo and Daphne. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Kahikina, Nelson. Waveforms. Mitchell Place Gallery, Muncie, IN.

Photograph of a work of art (painting, sculpture, or photograph) Kahikina, Nelson. Waveforms. Mitchell Place Gallery, Muncie, IN. Mitchell Place

Exhibits. By Karin Partin. Muncie, IN: Ball State UP, 2001. 15.

Artistlastname, Artistfirstname. Work. Location of work. Book in Which Photo of Work Appeared. By Author of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Page Number.

Map or chart Indianapolis. Map. Chicago: Rand, 1999.

Cartoon Davis, Jim. “Garfield.” Cartoon. The Star Press [Muncie, IN] 19 Sept. 1999: 14.

Advertisement The Black Crowes. Advertisement. Rolling Stone 24 May 2001: 33.

Cheerios. Advertisement. CBS. 1 Jan. 2001.

ONLINE SOURCES

Entire Web page

CNN.com. 2002. Cable News Network. 15 May 2002 <http://www.cnn.com/>.

Postmodern Culture. Ed. Lisa Brawley and James F. English. 2002. 1 Oct. 2002 <http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/>.

(In these entries, the name of the Web page is followed by the site’s editors (if known), date of publication or latest update, date of access, and the URL.)

Book online Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Henry Churchyard. 1996. Jane Austen

Information Page. 6 Sept. 2002 <http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ pridprej.html>.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Twice­Told Tales. Ed. George Parsons Lathrop. Boston: Houghton, 1883. 16 May 2002 <http://209.11.144.65/eldritchpress/nh/ttt.html>.

(If the information is available on the Web site, provide the author’s name, title of work, editor’s name, original publication information, and then electronic publication information.)

Article from an online periodical Chan, Evans. “Postmodernism and Hong Kong Cinema.” Postmodern Culture 10.3

(2000). Project Muse. 20 May 2002 <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ pmc/v010/10.3chan.html>.

Sengers, Phoebe. “Cultural Informatics: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities.” Surfaces 8.107 (1999): 58 pp. 3 Aug. 2002 <http://pum12.pum/umontreal.ca/ revues/surfaces/sgml/vol8/sengers.sgm>.

(These entries include the publication information first, then the date of access and URL.)

Article from library subscription service Harris, John. “’Goodbye Dolly?’ The Ethics of Human Cloning.” Journal of Medical Ethics

23.6 (1997): 353­ . Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Ball State University Libraries. 25 Nov. 2002 <http://www.epnet.com/>.

Email Harner, James L. E­mail to the author. 20 Aug. 2002.

Online posting Chu, Michael. “Bellini Style.” Online posting. 20 May 2002. Opera­L. 21 May 2002

<http://lists.cuny.edu/archives/opera­l.html>.

Synchronous communication Grigar, Dene. Online defense of dissertation. “Penelopeia: The Making of Penelope in

Homer’s Story and Beyond.” 25 July 1995. LinguaMOO. 25 July 1995 <telnet://lingua.utdallas.edu:8888>.

(All of the above examples for “Online Sources” are taken directly from Chapter 5.9 of The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6 th ed., by Joseph Gibaldi, except for the example of an article from a library subscription service, which was adapted specifically for Ball State University.)

Parts of an Essay

Readers bring an array of expectations with them to your text, and if they have been taught to read in the West, they will have been taught that all writing has a structure, that all writing consists of specific parts. Whether you are writing an email, a memo, a letter, a biology report, or a speech, all writing has a title of some sort, a beginning (or introduction), a middle (or body), and an end (or conclusion). How you configure that title, introduction, body, and conclusion depends on your rhetorical situation. Thus, a casual email to a friend or family member might have a title in the subject line that simply says “I’m Here.” The introduction might be a casual “Hey, you,” while the body might consist of a series of short fragments: “computer up. furniture in. frig stocked.” The conclusion, again, might be a couple of words, “Miss you. Me.” The conventions of email writing where the recipient is a close friend or relative make this structure acceptable and effective. A biology report or literary critique, on the other hand, requires different conventions and different approaches to the same array of parts.

In addition to these conventions for the parts of an essay, you and your reader also respond to a more organic sense of what parts are necessary in an essay. When we introduced “organization” in Chapter 3 ("Writing Process"), we discussed how a reader’s sense of an essay’s coherence results from what Kenneth Burke calls “the arousing and fulfilling of desires.” The writer creates sentences and arranges them in patterns that cause the reader to expect certain ideas; then the writer satisfies those expectations in the subsequent sentences and paragraphs. If, for example, the writer begins a paragraph by saying something like, “The first reason for living on campus rather than at home is that you will experience the richness of a diverse college community,” then the reader will expect two things: 1) that the paragraph will provide examples of the pleasures of living among different people with many options for varied activities living on campus and 2) that the following paragraph will probably begin with something like: “The second reason. . .” By saying “first reason,” the writer arouses the expectation of, and desire for a second reason. When the writer delivers on that expectation, the reader experiences the essay as organized.

In this chapter we provide a general overview of the parts that your readers will expect from your writing. By learning these parts and the functions they serve, you will become more proficient at shaping titles, introductions, bodies, and conclusions in ways that are unique outgrowths of your rhetorical situation, and therefore uniquely persuasive to your audience.

CHAPTER

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Titles

Titles matter, so don’t just slap one on at the last minute before you hand your paper in, and don’t hand your paper in without one. A writer who carefully assesses the rhetorical situation realizes that the title is the first thing a reader sees, and if the title does not get the reader’s attention it may also be the only thing a reader sees.

A good title should accomplish three things. First, it should suggest to the readers what persona they should assume. Your readers come to your essay with the ability to read in many different roles: as parents, children, professionals, Republicans, Democrats, car drivers, community members, sports enthusiasts, and so forth. We all possess within us a multitude of different readers. The title of an essay helps us determine which persona should be guiding our reading. Thus, a title such as “The College Connection: Using Hypertext to Teach Research Writing” suggests that the reader is someone who teaches writing and is familiar with digital technologies. On the other hand, a title such as “How to Survive Your First Year of College” suggests a reader who is planning to go to, or is just beginning college.

Second, a title should grab the reader’s attention. If your title doesn’t elicit your reader’s interest, he or she won’t go beyond those few opening words. What grabs a reader’s attention, however, will shift depending on the situation. Thus, an appropriate and interesting title for a paper designed to persuade parents to extend curfews for high school seniors is not an appropriate and interesting title for a literary essay on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Therefore, you need to consider carefully who your readers are, what you’re trying to do in relationship to them, and what might best pique their interest.

Third, a title should give readers some indication of the paper’s content and focus. Readers come to your essay with lots of background knowledge, and they use that knowledge to help themselves understand your meaning. A title cues the specific background knowledge that the reader needs for your essay. It is a bit like an early alarm system or a heads up. So, in the example above—“The College Connection: Using Hypertext to Teach Research Writing”—the intended reader (writing teachers) will begin to organize his or her internal knowledge about colleges, hypertext, and inquiry­based writing.

As you can see, a title is not something that you add to your essay without thinking. It is an important part of your writing. To better understand these three functions in action, collect a series of titles from very different sources (websites, academic journals, popular magazines, and so forth). Consider the titles and analyze how well and how often they achieve these goals; to make those assessments you’ll have to identify the intended reader and the rhetorical situation.

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Beginnings, or Introductory Paragraphs

Since the title creates an expectation, your reader will approach the introductory paragraph already hypothesizing what will come next. The first paragraph needs to satisfy that expectation and extend the work begun in the title. The beginning follows through on the title and establishes the context of the essay, which means you need to make a case for the importance of the problem or point you address. This is also where you establish your relationship with your reader and indicate how your argument will unfold.

Writing a good beginning can sometimes feel like the most difficult part of the essay to write. You might have the feeling that if you could only get started, then the rest would just come easily, but you end up wadding up or deleting every beginning you come up with. This difficulty is common for all writers, so you might consider writing your opening paragraphs towards the end of your writing process. Writers learn more about their topic and their intended audience while they write the paper, so discovering a good starting point from the reader’s point of view may only occur towards the end of the project. Remember: what got you, the writer, interested in the topic is not always the same thing that will persuade your reader to continue reading.

Opening paragraphs have three main jobs: • Introducing the main idea of the essay and establishing its importance • Capturing your readers’ interest by highlighting the relevance of the main idea to their

situation • Confirming your readers’ identity

Introducing the Main Idea The traditional approach recommends that introductions begin with general information about the topic, then move to more specific information covered in the essay, and finally offer a statement that summarizes the entire paper—the thesis statement. While you should be familiar with this approach, and be able to use it when the situation calls for it, much authentic writing will not funnel so neatly into a thesis statement. In fact, as discussed below, your essay may or may not have a thesis statement. Many rhetorical situations call for a writer to communicate the main idea without such an explicit statement. With or without an explicit statement, however, the introductory paragraph should give the reader a clear sense of the topic, the writer’s point concerning that topic, the importance of both topic and point, and the approaches the essay will take.

While the beginning of an essay serves to grab the reader’s attention, it also serves as an agreement between the writer and the reader. The writer lets the reader know what to expect in reading further. The writer also indicates why the reader needs to read further; the writer suggests, either implicitly or explicitly, what value the reader will derive from finishing the essay. The introduction serves, in a way, as a contract between writer and reader. If this agreement is

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in some way broken later in the essay, the reader will justifiably feel betrayed and will most likely remain unconvinced of the writer’s point because the writer has proven to be unreliable.

Capturing your Reader’s Interest The introduction should make readers want to read on. Your introductory paragraphs should excite, interest, engage, and provoke thought in your readers. Part of capturing your reader’s attention is making it clear why your claim is important. In addition, you can also make your opening more appealing through a variety of stylistic choices.

Here are some possibilities: • Open with a quotation by someone famous, important, or relevant to your essay • Ask an engaging question that will make your audience think about the issues you will

raise and address in the paper • Start with an anecdote, perhaps a funny or serious story that applies to your essay • State a controversial opinion, which could possibly make your audience skeptical but

will at least engage their attention for further discussion • Make an interesting comparison between one aspect of your topic and something else

familiar to your audience • Present some startling information about your topic • Describe a scene from a movie, book, or real life that relates to the topic of your paper

However you decide to begin, remember that the beginning must match the rhetorical situation. An interest grabber that just demands attention, but does not connect to the topic, will quickly disappoint your readers and undercut their confidence in you and the essay. Also, what works as an interest grabber will shift depending on the reader. Finally, a beginning that is factually accurate but does not connect to the audience’s situation will also fail to meet the readers’ needs and will defeat the purpose of the opening.

Confirming Your Reader’s Persona The introduction should extend the work of the title by confirming for the reader that they have adopted the proper persona for this reading. This does not mean that you just tell the reader who they are supposed to be. For example, rarely would you say something as blatant as, “Every parent should be concerned about a teenager’s curfew.” Your introduction should indicate the persona you wish your reader to adopt, but should do so through more subtle means. Usually, you communicate the reader’s persona through what you assume the reader already knows or feels. For example, “A troubling issue for parents is the question of curfew,” is an assertion that accepts as a given the idea that the reader is concerned about the times his or her child returns home at night.

You can also communicate the reader’s persona through what you define as the focus and importance of your essay. A topic—teenage curfew—can be relevant to any number of different readers (police officers, teachers, community outreach leaders, etc.), but the point you wish to make about that topic (parents should negotiate curfews with their children) serves to indicate

who should be interested in this essay.

Finally, the style and strategies you use will help confirm your reader’s persona. For instance, startling information about curfews might be appropriate for an audience of police officers and community outreach leaders because it indicates that they should be reading as professionals. However, an emotionally appealing anecdote—a story about curfews, teens, and parents— invites the readers to take on the persona of someone emotionally and intellectually committed to parenting.

Thesis Statements

A thesis statement is a staple of academic and business writing. It is an expected convention of writing for audiences who are reading primarily to learn something or to decide what action is best to address a particular situation. It communicates the essay’s central focus or argument in a sentence or two. This statement gives your audience a quick and easy­to­follow summary of your paper’s topic and your position on the topic. The thesis statement also offers a guide to the paper’s organization, helping readers navigate your paper. In fact, sometimes people compare a thesis statement to a map: It tells where a paper is going and how it is going to get there. Writers value this map because it keeps them from straying from their point, and readers appreciate it because they know from the start where the paper is heading. Thus, a clear thesis statement is important because without it, either the writer or the reader gets lost.

However, not all writing requires a traditional thesis statement. Often, you will choose not to use one. This does not mean that you don’t have a thesis. Every essay has a thesis. Your essay is about something; your essay responds to an exigence, and you write to your reader because they are involved in that exigence. Your readers will expect to understand clearly what you are writing about and what they will gain by reading. Thus, while you may decide that your rhetorical goals do not call for or would be better served by an implied thesis, at some point the reader must be presented with the assertion that you are trying to persuade them of. Essays without an explicit thesis statement will still clearly communicate a main idea.

Very often, the thesis statement appears at the end of the introductory paragraph so that from the beginning readers will know what to expect as they read. This is not mandatory, however. Some essays place the statement more effectively at the beginning of the second paragraph. Some essays actually put the statement off until late in the paper; such papers try to lead up to the thesis. Still others, as we have noted, never have such a defining statement at all. Determining where to place your thesis statement will depend on the kind of essay you write.

When an explicit thesis statement is appropriate, the following tips will help you judge the effectiveness of one that you write or read:

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• Include topic and analysis. Most thesis statements consist of two parts: the paper’s topic and the writer’s analysis or position on the topic. This means that a thesis should tell the reader what you are writing about, as well as what you think about it. For example, think about the following thesis sentence: “This paper will explore the role of class discrimination in America.” This statement indicates the paper’s topic, but not the author’s position. Adding the author’s analysis of the issue improves the thesis statement: “Even though the media focuses almost exclusively on gender and race discrimination, class discrimination and its negative effects touch the lives of the majority of Americans.” Here the author has not directly said, “I believe class discrimination results in negative effects and is often ignored,” but the wording of the statement allows the reader to clearly understand the author’s position.

• Be specific. Make sure your thesis statement expresses the paper’s main ideas in a detailed and precise way. Often thesis statements are too vague, which leaves the reader wondering about the paper’s content or the author’s position. For example, note the following thesis statement: “There are many similarities and differences between Kate Chopin’s short stories.” This thesis statement gives the reader some idea of the paper’s topic—Chopin’s short stories—but a reader still doesn’t know which stories the writer will discuss or which similarities and differences the writer has identified. The following thesis statement communicates much more clearly: “While Kate Chopin’s main characters in her short stories ‘The Story of an Hour’ and ‘Desiree’s Baby’ are both married women, the characters present contrasting views toward marriage.”

• Think about organization. Many writers don’t realize it, but thesis statements often communicate the order in which they will address their paper’s points. A good thesis statement should help a reader navigate your paper, so you will want to make sure that yours provides clear directions. For example, think about what you would expect from the following thesis statement: “People concerned about their health should become vegetarians in order to lose weight, avoid chemical consumption, and reduce risk of disease.” This thesis statement not only tells the reader the author’s position, but it also tells the order in which they will be discussed: first, weight loss; second, chemical consumption; and third, reduced risk of disease. If the writer does not address these points in this order, the reader may become distracted or confused.

Writers often have drastically different ways of writing their thesis statements. Some know exactly what they want to say and write their thesis statements before any other part of their paper. Others sketch out a thesis idea as they start writing, but go back to change it as they write and revise. Still others write their thesis statements when they are completely finished writing, because at this point they can see how the details of their paper contribute to one main idea. Any of these processes can result in a good thesis statement; the important thing is to make sure that the final thesis statement accurately reflects the paper’s content.

Body Paragraphs

In Western discourse, body paragraphs move an essay’s argument forward, building progressively on a claim by providing individual ideas for support. Just as all paragraphs should support the main idea of the entire essay, so all sentences within a paragraph should build upon each other to illustrate the paragraph’s main idea, explain aspects of the topic, and carry the reader to the essay’s final goal. Visually, functionally, and rhetorically, paragraphs signal movements from one unit of the essay to another.

The paragraphs that perform the main work of your essay are called body paragraphs. Each body paragraph focuses on an individual point that adds to the main idea. Therefore, all body paragraphs should have main ideas of their own. However, paragraphs are not really “separate” from one another. One paragraph builds toward the following paragraph, which grows out of the preceding paragraph while raising expectations for the next. There is an organic and logical relationship among the paragraphs. The organic logic that connects these paragraphs (and sentences within a paragraph) arises out of two things: the point your wish to make and the ways you wish to move your readers from what they believe at the beginning of your paper to what you wish them to believe at the end.

You have many strategies at your disposal that might help you achieve your goals in terms of your message and your audience. For instance, if you wish to engage your audience’s emotions and help them identify with the exigence that drives your essay, then you might develop your argument with a narrative. If you wish your readers to experience a situation, you might vividly describe elements of that situation. If you wish your readers to see the ways in which specific actions have specific consequences, then you would rely on a cause and effect strategy for organizing information. If you believe that your readers need to share a common understanding of an abstract concept, then you might choose to spend time defining that concept. In each case, the choice for a particular strategy depends on your point, your audience, and your end goal for that audience.

Such discourse strategies constitute tools in your writer’s toolbox. They become relevant only when they are needed to perform a particular rhetorical job. Thus, consider the following options useful only when they forward your agenda as a writer.

• Narrating stories or anecdotes from your past. Narration answers the question “What happened?”

• Describing concepts, people, places, hopes, and objects. Description answers questions like “What does it look like? sound like? smell like? etc.”

• Giving examples of cases that apply to your ideas, of characters or actions within literature, and of different topics. Examples answer “What are some typical cases of this situation?”

• Comparing and contrasting one object or concept to another. Comparison and contrast discussions answer “How is this thing alike and different from the other thing?”

• Explaining cause­effect relationships between events and their results. Cause and

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effect relationships answer “What made something happen, and what happened as a result?”

• Defining terms, explaining what kind of thing it is, and giving details on how the thing is different from other such things. Definitions answer “What is the nature of the thing?”

• Dividing and classifying things, that is, breaking things into their individual parts and categorizing them by qualities or characteristics. Division and classification answer “What are a thing’s parts, and how can they be arranged?”

• Explaining the process of building something, showing how something works, or explaining chronological events that make up a circumstance. Process answers “How does this work or happen, or how do I make this work?”

While your instructor might ask you to experiment with these discourse strategies in informal writing assignments so you can acquaint yourself with each strategy’s strengths and weaknesses, you will never be ask to write a “process paper,” or a “narrative paper,” or a “definition paper” because these are strategies, not papers. Your decision to define, narrate, classify, and/or describe will always be made within the context of your point, your purpose, and your audience. In addition, you may discover that your goals require you to do a little bit of everything. Thus, to narrate effectively, you describe vividly. To highlight consequences of an action, you deploy a cause and effect sequence. To establish a shared ground, you might open with a definition that later becomes part of a narrative or a cause­effect sequence. The point we wish to reinforce is that these decisions are made as part of the overarching goals for your essay in relationship to your reader.

Topic Sentences

In the same way that a thesis statement articulates the main idea of an essay, a topic sentence summarizes the main idea of a paragraph. Sometimes you’ll want to include explicit topic sentences in your paragraphs; other times, you’ll allow the central ideas of your paragraphs to rise to the surface without stating them outright. In either case, you should be able to summarize the focus of each paragraph with a statement.

The topic sentence traditionally is located at the beginning of the paragraph. This placement orients the reader immediately to the paragraph’s topic, and allows the writer to give examples and illustrations of the main idea from the beginning. Positioning the topic sentence elsewhere allows you to structure the information differently:

• Placing it near the middle of the paragraph allows you to gradually build up to the point, preparing your audience for the main idea by giving some history or background information before stating it. You can then go on to give supporting detail and information.

• Situating the topic sentence at the end of the paragraph allows you to present a controversial argument step­by­step, leading the audience to accept an idea it might otherwise reject.

• Ending with topic sentences also allows you to build suspense. By taking anecdotes or

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explanations slowly and only summarizing the situation at the end, you can grip your readers’ interest and create exciting paragraphs.

In some paragraphs, you may not need to state a topic sentence at all. During some narrative and descriptive paragraphs, the main ideas are completely obvious. In such cases, stating the main idea might seem artificial, awkward, or insulting to your readers’ intelligence; therefore, leaving the topic sentence “implied” is a good idea.

Deciding When to Break Paragraphs

Breaking text into paragraphs is useful for many reasons. Paragraph breaks can help: • Set off your introductions and conclusions • Shift the focus of your essay • Emphasize a point or concept • Change time, place, or action • Clarify the sequence of steps or actions • Set off dialogue of different characters • Break up lengthy text, allowing readers to pause.

Set off Introductions and Conclusions The introduction and conclusion paragraphs of an essay are set off with paragraph breaks. These are two of the most important transitions within essays, because they signal preparatory comments and summary sections.

Shift the Focus of your Essay When you begin a new concept or movement in your essay, you should begin a new paragraph. Since paragraphs attempt to focus on one main idea, a new paragraph will allow you to discuss the main idea completely, then move on to a new idea with a new paragraph. In this sense, the paragraph is like a contract with your readers that might say, “Dear readers: Since you certainly realize that you have found yourself within a paragraph, I will fulfill your assumptions by developing only one idea within this section of text, and I will develop it completely.”

Sometimes you might use an entire paragraph to signal a break in the direction of the essay, which is called a transitional paragraph. Shorter essays rarely need transitional paragraphs. Usually, transitional words and phrases, like usually, on the other hand, therefore, or to put it another way, will move a paragraph in a new direction from the previous paragraph (see “Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases”). However, in longer essays where a direction has been followed for many paragraphs, a transitional paragraph can dramatically stop the essay and let the reader know that a new direction or major contradiction is coming.

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Transitional paragraphs sometimes contain only one sentence. Such paragraphs might read:

While this is usually the case, there are certainly many exceptions to consider.

This concept deserves more intense study.

These paragraphs offer the reader a visual and mental pause before diving into a contradictory or more intense look at the subject.

However, transitional paragraphs can also be longer and more detailed. They can explain why the following material will be contradictory, why it will be a more intense study, why it is a good idea to take a visual and mental pause before moving on. Both shorter and longer transitional paragraphs should be relatively short compared to the other paragraphs in your essays. They offer a break and signal a new direction, and they shouldn’t take up too much time or space.

Emphasize a Point or Concept You might need to begin a new paragraph to emphasize different aspects of an idea, even if you are not beginning a new one. For example, if you have defined unconstitutional laws in one paragraph and you want to include an example of an unconstitutional law, you might place the example in a new paragraph, especially if it will take many sentences to explain and develop the law. The paragraph break probably will not make your readers think you are leaving the law; instead, it will give them a brief pause to consider your definition and to prepare for the example. The paragraph break will allow you to emphasize your conception of the law, and it will help your readers anticipate a new way of looking at the concept.

Change Time, Place, or Action Beginning a new paragraph is a good idea when changing time, location, setting, or type of action. Especially in narrative essays, changing to a new paragraph usually seems logical and natural when some time passes between events, when the scene shifts to a new location, or when different activities take place. If paragraphs become too long, or if too many things happen in one paragraph, your readers could become confused and tired of reading: they may need to take a breath. Paragraph breaks allow for such pauses.

Clarify the Sequence of Steps or Actions In some kinds of essays, especially process essays, you will describe instructions or steps in which actions take place. If you write a manual on how to string and tune a guitar, for example, you will describe the sequence and steps that the reader should take for a successful tuning. You should dedicate a paragraph to each of these steps. That way, the reader can comprehend and follow each paragraph as a stage in completion of the project.

Set Off Dialogue When writing dialogue between characters, you should begin a new paragraph every time a new character speaks. Whether characters say a couple of words or several lines, you should begin new paragraphs as the spotlight shifts from character to character. This visual clue helps your reader see when one character stops talking and when another starts:

Jamie said to Joel, “Grammar is one of the most interesting aspects of the language.”

“How so?” Joel replied. Jamie answered energetically, “I mean, with all the rules and exceptions to the rules

to memorize, I just can’t get enough of studying that stuff.” Joel raised an eyebrow, “I see.”

There are a few possible exceptions to this rule. For example, if you want to create a fast­ paced, chaotic scene in which all characters talk at once, you might put many characters’ words within the same paragraph:

Before I had any idea what was going on, Jamie screamed “Get out of here!,” Carole shouted, “Turn the radio off!,” and Kurt ran to the door yelling, “Has anyone seem my coffee cup?” The whole place was going berserk.

Another possible exception is when you want to add only one character’s dialogue within a paragraph of information. If there is no conversation between characters, then the quotation usually won’t cause any confusion for the reader. For example, notice this paragraph from Thomas Brelage’s “The Keeper of the Bees”:

If you live around Anderson, Indiana, and you want to know anything about bees or honey, or if you have a swarm on your property that needs to go away, you call Charlie DeMoss. Charlie loves to talk about his “girls.” He points to a small bump at the end of his left eyebrow. “My girls did that to me yesterday,” he says with a wry grin.

Break Up Lengthy Chunks of Text You might want to begin a new paragraph for no other reason than your current paragraph seems too long. Knowing that readers need to pause and digest your messages (and that white space pleases the eye), it is sometimes a good idea to find a logical stopping point and break the paragraph. Even though the following paragraph might not discuss an altogether new concept, your readers will probably appreciate the pause. If you begin a new paragraph simply to break up lengthy text, choose stopping and starting places that make sense within the essay. Make sure that at least some small issue concludes at the end of the first paragraph and that some slightly new aspect of the issue begins the next paragraph.

Conclusion Paragraphs

Writers often find the conclusion to be the most difficult part of an essay to write. By the time they reach this section of the paper, they often feel as if they’ve already said what they wanted to say. Readers, however, often remember this section the most, so it should be the best and most powerful part of the paper.

The concluding paragraph has two jobs; it serves to: • Reinforce the main idea of the essay • Wrap up the essay in a memorable and meaningful way.

Reinforce the Main Idea In a sense, conclusion paragraphs can be like mirror images of introductory paragraphs: The introduction first captures the readers’ attention and then summarizes the focus of the paper, moving from general to more specific information. Conclusions often move from specific to more general information by first re­summarizing the focus and ending with attention­keeping strategies.

Sometimes, you might actually re­state the thesis of a paper in the first few sentences of the conclusion and summarize the main points of the paper during the course of this final paragraph. Other times, you might leave the direction of the conclusion more open. In either case, the conclusion should certainly wrap up what has been going on in the paper and not veer off into a different direction.

As you work to incorporate the main ideas into your conclusion, try to synthesize the points rather than summarize them. Use the conclusion to demonstrate how each part of the paper fits together in a cohesive whole, because often your main ideas can come together to create a more powerful meaning for the reader than each of the points alone. Also, make sure your conclusion answers the question, “So what?” The reader wants to know why this material is meaningful and important. (In fact, if you’re stuck on your conclusion, take 10 minutes to freewrite in response to the questions, “So what? Why does the argument matter to this reader?”)

Wrap Up the Essay Meaningfully and Memorably Memorable concluding paragraphs can make readers think about the essay’s issues for days or longer, even responding to the essays with essays of their own. Below are some possible strategies to secure a thoughtful closing:

• The Last Shot—Is there one more piece of important information or reasoning that you can use to unify your audience? Use it!

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• Review of Benefits—Can you show your audience how it will benefit if it goes along with your viewpoint? (You should be able to do this, or you’ve written your paper for yourself instead of an audience.)

• Call to Action—Can you tell your audience members what they should do right now if they go along with your point of view? This technique keeps your audience fired up ... and keeps your ideas in front of them.

• Further Researching/Reading—Give your audience ways to find more information about your subject. This technique shows that the writer is confident, and wants the audience to become confident too.

• Moral Issue/Universal Truth/Knowledge—Is there a moral truth resolved or a universal truth revealed or some essential knowledge transmitted by your essay? If there is, talk about it ... how else will your audience sense any closure in your essay?

• Prediction/Warning—End by predicting the future status of your topic or warning your readers regarding some aspect of your topic. This demonstrates to your readers that the topic carries consequences that are important for them to consider.

Again, your rhetorical choices for your conclusion will arise out of the momentum you’ve built throughout the entire essay and the reader’s specific attitude, belief, or behavior that you hope to affect.

A Rhetoric of Style

When we talk about “style” we are not referring to a fashion magazine or to the latest hairdo, but to the way a writer uses language to communicate. Style is not just about pretty words or fancy phrases; rather, as Silva Rhetoricae puts it, “style names how ideas are embodied in language.”

One of five original “canons” of rhetoric (categories proposed in the Rhetorica Ad Herennium to explain how communication works), style serves as the lynch pin, the core element holding the other four canons together. It balances invention (or discovering good ideas) and arrangement (or distributing those ideas in an effective order) on the one hand and memory (memorizing a text) and delivery (or enacting the text) on the other hand. Style is crucial to rhetoric because “it is responsible for the manifestation of text as text. It is style that brings the text into linguistic existence” (Sloane, 745). It is also style that brings the writer’s persona—or identity—into existence because readers know a writer only through his or her stylistic choices.

However, style has had a bumpy history. You have probably encountered the remnants of ancient arguments about the relative value of style. For example, you might have heard the claim that “content is king.” Those who have argued for content emphasize invention, stressing that the ideas themselves are much more important than how they are presented. Plato, for example, claimed that ideas could represent the highest possible knowledge. Plato criticized those who used language to draw and keep an audience’s attention because he thought that such strategies kept an audience from understanding truth while revealing that the writer was not interested in truth either.

One of Plato’s contemporaries, however, argued that the words were more important than the ideas. Gorgias claimed that he could use style to make a speech in favor of any position on any argument; in fact, he often performed this very act in the public square. During the Renaissance, a man named Peter Ramus followed in this line of thinking, claiming that discussions of truth belonged in philosophy and theology, while the only thing that needed to be discussed in the field of rhetoric and composition was how the words were put together and which words were chosen.

A rhetorical approach to style, however, realizes that it is not possible to separate ideas from words, not possible to separate how we say something from what we say. Rather, style is part of the words we use, the people we are, and the ideas we have.

In the sections below, we discuss the kinds of choices writers make about sentences, phrases, and words in ways that emphasize this holistic approach to language use. As you explore the ways that sentences can be put together, you will see that your choices affect the way language sounds, the “beauty” of the phrasing, and that such choices also affect the meaning. For example, choosing to put an idea in a subordinate clause rather than using a coordinating

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arrangement changes both the way the language sounds and the meaning that is conveyed to the reader. This is just one of the many ways that your ideas are embodied in your language. Other choices are equally rhetorical and affect the way the reader understands and interprets your ideas. The order in which you present your ideas, the vocabulary you use to embody them, your figurative language (metaphors, similes, and so forth), and the length of your phrases and sentences all have an effect on the reader and on the meaning of your text.

To make successful choices about style, a writer must build a “style repertoire”: That is, a writer must understand:

• the available linguistic options for embodying ideas and creating a “writerly” identity, • the expectations of the audience, • the dictates of the writing situation and the acceptable variations for style within that

situation, and • the limits of the medium being used.

In what follows, we provide a brief overview of stylistic elements so that we can share a common vocabulary. Your decisions about how to say something—thus your configuration of these stylistic elements—will evolve out of your message, your persona or identity as a writer, your audience, and your medium.

Understanding the Sentence

A sentence must express a complete thought, and must be grammatically complete. To be grammatically complete, a sentence must contain two parts: a subject, which tells who or what the sentence is about, and a predicate, which usually tells or asks something about the subject. Therefore, the subject contains a noun or pronoun (the simple subject) and the words that modify or describe it, and the predicate contains a verb (the simple predicate) and any words that modify or describe it. The combination of a subject and a predicate creates an independent clause, which means the string of words can stand by itself as a grammatically complete unit. By capitalizing the first word of the independent clause and ending with a period, question mark, or exclamation point, the independent clause becomes a sentence.

Sentences are often classified grammatically in the following categories, each of which is described further below:

• Simple sentences contain one independent clause. The cat chases mice.

• Compound sentences contain more than one independent clause. The cat chases mice, but the mice run away.

• Complex sentences attach modifying dependent clauses (clauses that have a subject and a predicate, but cannot stand alone as grammatically complete units).

Because she is hungry, the cat chases mice.

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• Compound­complex sentences have more than one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.

The cat chases mice when she is hungry, but the mice run away.

Simple Sentences A sentence with one subject (noun or pronoun) and one predicate (verb) is a simple sentence. Since the people, places, or things performing actions in a sentence usually contrast sharply with the actions being performed, it isn’t hard to tell where the subject of a sentence ends and the predicate begins, especially in very simple sentences. For example, what is the subject and predicate in each of the following sentences?

Birds fly. Phish rocks! The larger horses run faster. The horse with the biggest appetite usually eats oats faster than all the other horses in the barn.

The first two example sentences consist of only the basic requirements of a sentence: a simple subject and a simple predicate. The subjects of the other two sentences contain some modifiers of the simple subject, and the predicates contain additional descriptive words called modifiers, complements, and objects of the simple predicate. However, the complete subjects are easy to spot (The larger horses and The horse with the biggest appetite), as are the complete predicates (run faster and usually eats oats faster than all the other horses in the barn).

Compound Sentences Not all sentences are simple sentences, nor would you want to use only simple sentences in your writing. Compound sentences can add variety by combining two or more independent clauses. The independent clauses each contain subjects and predicates, just like simple sentences, and they can be separated in several different ways.

• A comma and a conjunction (a connecting word) link related or contrasting independent clauses:

Smoke billowed from below the stage, and Kiss came out in all their makeup. Gene Simmons sang well, but his bass playing was rusty.

• Semicolons link related independent clauses: The high­heeled foursome played for three hours; I could have listened all night.

• Colons link independent clauses that define or explain each other; beginning the second independent clause with a capital letter is optional:

Ace Freley almost fell off the stage at one point: A fan tossed an article of clothing at his feet, which wrapped around his ankle and tripped him.

• Conjunctive adverbs (words that transition between clauses) with a semicolon serve to connect two independent clauses:

Kiss didn’t play most of their songs in their entirety; instead, they combined many songs into medleys. The pyrotechnics were phenomenal; in fact, I’d say they were the highlight of the show.

• Correlative conjunctions (pairs of words like either/or, neither/nor, not only/but, and whether/or) connect equal elements:

Not only did they wear their full makeup, but they also wore leather and high­heeled boots. Either they were going to play three encores, or the crowd was going to bang on their seats all night.

• Dashes link clauses that build upon each other: They closed the show with “Beth”—it reminded me of the old days.

Of course, most of these independent clause combinations could be separated by a period, creating two simple sentences. But mixing in some compound sentences can liven up your writing and offer a nice change of pace.

Complex Sentences A complex sentence consists of an independent clause with a dependent clause attached to it. Usually separated from the rest of the sentence with a comma, the dependent clause modifies part of the complex sentence:

Before we went to the concert, we ate more food than we should have. I had a greasy hamburger and fries, which didn’t sit well with my stomach.

Neither before we went to the concert nor which didn’t sit well with my stomach is a complete sentence, yet both clauses are important to the meaning of the entire complex sentence.

Compound­Complex Sentences Compound­complex sentences are those with at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause. By attaching dependent clauses to the different independent clauses, you can vary your sentence structure, length, and style in your writing. In the following sentence, the independent clauses are bold, and the dependent clauses are underlined.

Before I went to the party, I thought I’d be tired before midnight, but by the time I got there, I knew I’d be up till the wee hours, because everyone was dancing and having fun.

Varying Sentence Length and Structure

Now that you know and understand the different kinds of sentences, you can begin to implement a rather sophisticated style element in your writing: varying sentence length and structure. As you can imagine, repeating a single kind of sentence can produce monotonous and tedious writing; therefore, vary the length and structure of your sentences within paragraphs.

Short sentences pack a punch. They express or summarize ideas concisely, clearly, and matter­ of­factly. Long sentences are helpful and often necessary for describing and explaining concepts, building scenes, adding detail, or performing other complicated functions in your writing. However, all lengths of sentences can lose their effectiveness if you do not vary them within your paragraphs. DeKita Pollard demonstrates well­varied sentence length in “The Best Lesson I Learned”:

I thought I was going to break down and cry. For me not to beat that boy to a bloody pulp took every ounce of strength in my body. I was a tomboy, and I had the reputation of not taking “any mess,” so all the kids were expecting me to fight him. I just couldn’t. My body would not move from that dusty spot by the swings. I had never felt so humiliated in my whole life.

Alternating short and long sentences adds excitement to writing; variety of length keeps the sentences from becoming boring and predictable.

Besides sentence length, you should vary your sentence structure as you write. Though the underlying structure of your sentences rarely crosses your mind as you draft essays, you should certainly consider whether to alter the structures as you revise. Consider the following passage from Carol Kirsch’s “To Sign or Not to Sign”:

60 Minutes recently aired a program entitled “Not Quite Dead.” This broadcast only cemented my feelings towards organ procurements. Mike Wallace conducted excellent interviews with many different people involved. One case came to public light in Ohio. A young lady had an intruder shoot her in the head. She did not die immediately.

Here, Kirsch’s words are clear and precise; however, all of the sentences are simple sentences—they follow the same subject+predicate structure. Therefore, the paragraph risks becoming monotonous. Here is a possible revision of this section:

60 Minutes recently aired a program entitled “Not Quite Dead,” which only cemented my feelings towards organ procurements. Mike Wallace conducted excellent interviews with many different people involved. In an Ohio case, a young lady had an intruder shoot her in the head, but she did not die immediately.

This revision contains a complex sentence, a simple sentence, and a compound sentence.

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Varying sentence structure can help energize writing by reducing mundane repetition and by emphasizing the important features of your writing.

Emphasizing Main Ideas

If your English instructors have ever asked you to write thesis statements within the introductions of your papers, it was probably because they wanted you to emphasize your main points from the beginnings of your papers. This is not the only way, nor the only opportunity that you have in an essay, to create emphasis. You will also want to emphasize certain parts of each main idea and even certain words or phrases within individual sentences in order for your ideas to become embodied in language. The choices you make in constructing and revising your sentences affects how the reader interprets your ideas.

Emphasizing Beginnings and Endings of Sentences As discussed in Chapter 5, on the parts of an essay, the introduction and conclusion of an essay are particularly important. In the same way, the beginnings and endings of sentences are important points that should be considered carefully. At the beginning of a sentence you connect back to the previous sentence; likewise, at the end of a sentence you connect to the next sentence. Consider these sentences from Robin Elmerick’s “Shrek – a Film for All Ages?”:

Another sexual innuendo is made when Shrek and the donkey approach the castle of the rather short Lord Farquaad. As they approach the castle, an image is shown of the tall slender tower and Shrek makes the comment, “Do you think maybe he’s compensating for something?” (Shrek). This comment could be referring to Farquaad’s height, but there is an obvious underlying sexual innuendo referring to the size of his genitalia.

The beginning of Elmerick’s first sentence connects this part of her argument about sexual innuendos with the previous discussion (not reprinted here) about another sexual innuendo. The end of the sentence emphasizes the moment of approaching the castle. The second sentence opens by picking up on the arrival of Shrek and the donkey at the castle, and moves to providing the actual example of a comment from the film. Finally, in the beginning of the third sentence, Elmerick uses the phrase “This comment” to refer back to the quoted statement in the previous sentence, but then goes on to offer her explanation of its meaning.

In your own sentences, identify important words that you want to emphasize. If they are buried in the middle of a sentence, try to vary the wording by placing them near the beginning or the end.

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Climactic Word Order Another trick for emphasizing important material is to position it in increasing importance within your sentences. For example, Leslie Kaluzynski reveals society’s disinterest in poor people in ”The Lack of Lovers of the Poor.” She writes:

Society has had a total dismissal of human compassion. While caught up in the struggle for money, prestige, and power, we have forgotten that the reason there are those with “more” is that somewhere there is someone with “less.”

The first two items in her list, money and prestige, refer to tangible yearnings, but the third item, power, refers to a more pervasive and all­encompassing motivation. As the most influential element in Kaluzynski’s list, it gains status by being listed last.

In general, the final position in a list or group of words holds the most strength and importance. Whenever you have a series of three or more items, consciously arrange them with the most important item last in the list.

Using Coordinates and Subordinates Writers can also emphasize main ideas by using coordinate and subordinate clauses. Coordinate clauses refer to ideas that are equal in importance in a sentence or paragraph, so therefore are written in an equal grammatical structure. Writers can use a coordinating conjunction (such as and or but) or a semicolon to link these independent clauses. A subordinate clause carries less importance, so it is written as a dependent clause attached to an independent clause. Choosing whether to write any piece of information as a coordinate or subordinate clause affects the meaning of your sentences. Consider these three sentences:

Martha Stewart owns the perfect garden. Stewart works in her garden on her Saturday morning show. She has the best­looking black raspberries I’ve ever seen.

Since the sentences are all independent, they all seem to have equal importance. If you want to combine the sentences and maintain the equal emphasis, you can coordinate them, making them all independent clauses within one complex sentence. Notice, none of the sentences diminish in importance:

Martha Stewart owns the perfect garden, and she works in it on her Saturday morning show; she has the best­looking black raspberries I’ve ever seen.

However, if you want to emphasize one of the sentences and de­emphasize the others, you can subordinate two of them, leaving only one independent clause and creating dependent clauses of the others. You can select any of the sentences to remain as the most important idea:

In her Saturday morning show, Martha Stewart shows off her perfect garden, which has the best­looking black raspberries I’ve ever seen.

Since she owns the perfect garden with the best­looking raspberries around, Martha Stewart uses the garden as the set of her Saturday morning show.

The best­looking raspberries I’ve ever seen are in Martha Stewart’s garden, the perfect garden in which she works during her Saturday morning show.

You can use coordination and subordination to emphasize and clarify the main ideas of your essays and the minor points that follow.

Writing Concisely

According to the Western conventions of writing that Americans write within, sentences should be concise. That is, a sentence shouldn’t use unnecessary words if a more economical version is possible. You have probably read academic writing or literature that sounds confusingly wordy; you might even have concluded that academic writing should be hard to understand. Wrong! The best academic writing gets to the point, cutting out nonessential words, needless repetition, and “buzzwords.” For example, read the following wordy sentence followed by a concise revision. Which sounds better?

The conclusion we were able to draw was that the lame fox, whose legs had been broken, was in a very bad predicament because he wouldn’t be able to hunt for food.

The lame fox couldn’t hunt.

The revision of this sentence deletes The conclusion we were able to draw was that, because the sentence obviously testifies to the conclusion drawn. This phrase is nonessential to the meaning of the sentence. Other nonessential words are very, which usually adds no information to sentences, and for food, because foxes obviously hunt for food. The revision also deletes whose legs had been broken, because the phrase duplicates the meaning of lame. Usually, repetition is unnecessary and reduces a sentence’s conciseness. The sentence also deletes the buzzword or cliché was in a very bad predicament. Used too often to be effective, the phrase adds almost no meaning to the sentence (any fox who can’t hunt is clearly in a bad predicament). Finally, you can reorganize wordy sentences and simplify grammatical structures within your sentences to make them more concise. The example sentence revises the verb structure:

Original Version wouldn’t be Able to hunt

helping verb be verb helping verb infinitive

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Revised Version couldn’t hunt

helping verb action verb

The revised predicate is more clear and concise. Eliminating wordiness and complex structures can strengthen your writing.

Strategies for Conciseness If you want to work on conciseness, implement the following practical tips:

• Locate the verbs. If they are long and unwieldy, replace them with more direct and powerful ones. As in the example above, wouldn’t be able to hunt can be replaced with couldn’t hunt. Also, replace a verb and a descriptive adverb with a stronger one­word verb. Instead of walk slowly, write amble, saunter, or wander.

• Look for words that are redundant or unnecessary for the sentence’s meaning. Writers usually use more words than they need, so work on cutting words and phrases until you have eliminated between 10­30 percent of your paper. (You will be surprised at how this strengthens your essay!)

• Locate the prepositional phrases in your essay. In most cases, you will want no more than three prepositional phrases in a row. Try to eliminate the phrases that aren’t necessary.

• Eliminate wordy phrases. Sometimes entire phrases can be replaced with a single word. For example, change because of the fact that to because, as a matter of fact to in fact, and in the event that to if.

• Check sentence beginnings. Sometimes writers use empty phrases that actually delay the reader from reaching the point of the sentence. Beginnings like In my opinion and It seems that take up additional space without offering further information.

Taking Advantage of Parallelism

When ideas are comparable, they are easier to understand if they are expressed in similar grammatical forms. Called parallel structures, this way of communicating adds rhythm and balance to sentences by using corresponding single words, phrases, or clauses to express items similarly. Parallel structures within sentences can be one of the best ways to convey information concisely and to emphasize important material. For example, to draw a comparison between an organ donor and the nurses performing the organ procurement, Carol Kirsch writes in “To Sign or Not to Sign”:

My strong feelings stem from the perspective as an operating room nurse helping to perform the harvests. There appears to be little, if any, respect for the donor on the operating table or for the personnel in the room.

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In this sentence, Kirsch emphasizes the similar treatment of the organ donor and the medical professionals by her use of parallel phrases. She first lists the person (the donor or the personnel) and then describes the person’s location (on the operating table or in the room).

DeKita Pollard also uses parallelism in her narrative, “The Best Lesson I Learned”:

She summoned me from my room to call my grandmother, who came to pick me up, took me out to lunch and told me the stories of the name­calling she endured as a child and some of her teenage years.

By writing parallel phrases, Pollard establishes rhythm. Perhaps more importantly, her use of parallelism builds up the significance of the situation.

Conclusion: Remembering Rhetoric

One of the repeated themes of this handbook has been the need to consider your rhetorical situation. In considering your rhetorical situation you consider what your audience expects, what you want or need to communicate; from that you consider the best way to proceed. Style, as with all other elements of writing, changes with each writer and with each situation. If we return to a historical example of this, Cicero, a Roman orator of classical times, identified three levels of style: high, medium, and low and he suggested that each style had an appropriate task: to move, to please, and to instruct.

Much of our writing would fit into Cicero’s low style because we have come to value clarity and conciseness in writing, the type of language we expect a teacher to use in explaining a new concept. However, we can also identify some broad styles within which we negotiate with our individual writing styles. Your academic papers are written in a different style from emails to friends. Your style of writing probably changes depending on whether you are writing a paper for English or a report for biology. Sometimes, however, it helps you to use big words, and there are times that you want to avoid them. When you read a newspaper you encounter a different style from what is in many of your textbooks.

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Figure 7.1 Woman in Armchair

Figure 7.2 Woman Seated in an Armchair

(1923)

Pablo Picasso is famous for his cubist paintings, such as the one at the right, Woman in Armchair (figure 7.1). If this painting was all you knew about Picasso, and if you were looking for a realistic picture of a woman in a chair, you might, in addition to being completely disappointed, think that Pablo Picasso had no idea how to paint. You would probably think that Picasso made an error, or a whole list of errors in his attempt to paint this picture.

Picasso, is an artist is renowned for his ability to change the perspective of his audience; he persuades his audience to see things in a new way through his cubist representation. However, Picasso did not start out by painting in cubes, and it was not the only way he was able to paint. Before he altered perspectives he practiced and demonstrated a proficiency in painting more traditionally representative form.

A similar scenario can be seen in the way experienced writers use sentences. According to the rules of Standard Edited English (SEE), sentences can be correctly shaped only in certain ways. If you deviate from that form, you end up with a run­on sentence, a comma splice, a fragment, or some other “weak” or “wrong” use of language. The traditional rules of language insist that there is a right way and a wrong way.

A careful reader will see that experienced writers do not always follow the rules of SEE and sometimes they use “incorrect” sentence structures. Even fragments. When experienced writers do so, however, they do so for a reason, with a full consideration of their rhetorical situation. Before they began making such choices to work outside the rules, they learned the rules and understood the intent of those rules, just as Picasso demonstrated his ability by also painting more realistic representations of his subjects such as the one to the left (figure 7.2). Although experienced

A Rhetorical Approach to Common Errors

CHAPTER

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writers choose to break the rules, which is a decision of style, they, like Picasso, have to understand the rules first. They also have to understand the rhetorical situation so that breaking the rules achieves the rhetorical effect they intend.

When less experienced writers are addressing readers who expect them to honor SEE (which is the general case in academic situations), then it is imperative that writers know and honor the rules of SEE. Then, when they choose to break the rules for rhetorical reasons, they will also be prepared to explain the rationale behind their choices.

As a writer, the price that you pay for inadvertently breaking the rules is high. First, your audience might perceive you as less authoritative, or credible. If you do not have control over your language, why should the reader believe that you have control over logic and content? Second, when you deviate from SEE, you make reading your essay difficult for your readers. If they become frustrated, they may stop reading or misinterpret your point. In either case, you will fail in your rhetorical goal of changing their thinking, behavior, or attitudes.

Thus, it is vitally important for you to learn the rules of SEE and to become aware of any habitual deviations from those rules in your writing. One way to discover patterns that you might overlook in your own writing is to keep an error log. Have an expert reader, such as a tutor from the Writing Center, proof read your essay looking specifically for recurring deviations from SEE. Then make a record of these patterns, discover the rules that you misunderstand, correct your misunderstanding, and focus specifically on these patterns when you edit the final draft of an essay. This way you can systematically address accidental deviations from SEE.

To help you get started on that process, this chapter discusses some common deviations from SEE, such as comma splices, sentence fragments, and passive voice, explaining what they are and how you can fix them.

Run­on Sentences and Comma Splices

Run­on sentences or comma splices result from failing to separate two independent clauses correctly. Basically, they are two or more sentences stuck together without proper punctuation.

A run­on sentence (or fused sentence) consists of two independent clauses that are not separated by any punctuation:

The concert was the best one I’ve ever seen it has changed my life.

A comma splice is the result of two independent clauses separated only by a comma:

The concert was the best one I’ve ever seen, it has changed my life.

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These two errors are common, but people often struggle to identify them in their own work. To determine whether a phrase is a run­on, comma splice, or sentence, make up a yes/no question about the sentence in question. If you can make up a single question, then the sentence is acceptable. If you must ask two yes/no questions about the sentence, then it is a run­on sentence or a comma splice.

Examples: • Sentence: The concert was the best one I have ever seen. • Question: Was the concert the best one you have ever seen? • Conclusion: Since the statement can be made into one yes/no question, it is a

grammatically correct sentence.

• Sentence: The concert was the best one I have ever seen it has changed my life. • Questions: Was the concert the best one you have ever seen? Has it changed

your life? • Conclusion: Since the sentence created two yes/no questions, it is a run­on.

To fix comma splices and fused sentences, you can choose one of the options for separating independent clauses in the “Compound Sentences” section. Or, you can simply restate the sentence as two simple sentences: The concert was the best one I’ve ever seen. It has changed my life.

Sentence Fragments

A sentence fragment consists of a group of words punctuated like a sentence and intended to function as a sentence, but lacking a necessary component. Often, a sentence fragment looks like a correct sentence. A fragment can actually contain a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb), but a subordinating word or phrase at the beginning of the clause converts it into a dependent clause. In the examples in this section, the boldfaced segments are sentence fragments, which often look like complete sentences.

Lately, Mick pays attention in class. Because the test is coming up and will be tough.

Even though this fragment contains a noun (test) and verbs (is coming up and will be tough), it is a dependent clause because of the word Because, a subordinate adverb (see “Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases”). One obvious way to revise the sentence involves deleting the subordinate adverb, because: The test is coming up and will be tough. Another way to revise is to add the fragment to the previous sentence as a dependent clause: Lately, Mick pays attention in class because the test is coming up and will be tough.

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At the beginning of the year, I usually have trouble getting into the swing of studying. Watching T.V. and playing Nintendo.

This confusing fragment contains verbals, forms of verbs, like gerunds and infinitives, which don’t function as the simple verbs of sentences. For example, watching T.V. and playing Nintendo are activities or events; they are nouns, not verbs. In order to make the fragment a complete sentence, we would have to add a predicate: Watching T.V. and playing Nintendo invade my study time.

My family, descending from Irish immigrants who came over in the early nineteenth century and with strong roots in tradition.

This fragment contains both a verbal and prepositional phrases, but no complete predicate. To revise this fragment, we would probably want to convert both the verbal and the preposition to verbs: My family descends from Irish immigrants who came over in the early nineteenth century and has strong roots in tradition. Another option is to subordinate one of the clauses: Because my family descends from Irish immigrants who came over in the early nineteenth century, it has strong roots in tradition.

The Beatles only put out spectacular albums, but one stands out as the best. Which is The White Album.

The fourth fragment contains a predicate (is The White Album) and a reflective pronoun (which). However, the reflective pronoun creates a dependent clause. There are many ways to revise this fragment:

The Beatles only put out spectacular albums, but one stands out as the best: The White Album.

The Beatles only put out spectacular albums, but The White Album stands out as the best.

The Beatles only put out spectacular albums, but one stands out as the best. It is The White Album.

Identifying Sentence Fragments If you tend to write sentence fragments unintentionally, several strategies may help you identify them:

Strategy #1: Add a tag question, such as “isn’t it?”, to the end of the sentence in question. If the sentence makes sense with the tag question, then it is grammatically correct. If not, then it is a fragment.

Examples: • Suspected Fragment: It’s a nice day. • Tag question: It’s a nice day, isn’t it? (Sentence.)

• Suspected Fragment: Watching T.V. and playing Nintendo. • Tag question: Watching T.V. and playing Nintendo, aren’t you? (Doesn’t make

sense. Therefore, a fragment.)

Strategy #2: Insert the sentence in question into a nest sentence, such as, “They were unable to understand that…” If the phrase makes sense within the sentence, then it is grammatically correct. If not, it is a fragment.

Examples: • Suspected Fragment: It’s a nice day. • Nest sentence: They were unable to understand that it’s a nice day. (Makes

sense. Sentence.)

• Suspected Fragment: Watching T.V. and playing Nintendo. • Nest sentence: They were unable to understand that watching T.V. and playing

Nintendo. (Doesn’t make sense. Fragment.)

Strategy #3: If you have received feedback that you frequently include fragments in your writing, try reading your next essay backwards before you turn it in. That is, begin with the last sentence and work your way to the beginning. This practice will help you evaluate each sentence as an individual unit, so words that do not express a complete thought will stand out.

For example, let’s return to an earlier example:

As written: Lately, Mick pays attention in class. Because the test is coming up and will be tough. He needs a good grade in order to pass the class.

Backwards: He needs a good grade in order to pass the class. Because the test is coming up and will be tough. Lately, Mick pays attention in class.

Read forwards, the fragment blends in with the preceding sentence, making it easy to miss. But when read backwards, the fragment jumps out.

Using Fragments Effectively Though sentence fragments are not grammatically correct, you might find them effective in your writing once in a while. For example, a fragment can offer a straightforward and frank way of saying something. Consider how fragments affect the tone of these examples:

The Beatles only put out spectacular albums, but is there any question which one is the best? The White Album, obviously.

Some people argue that organ donation can be unethical. How so? There is nothing unethical about saving lives.

Mike Tyson once claimed to be the best boxer of all time. Ridiculous. In every aspect of great boxing, Mohammed Ali was the best competitor ever to enter the ring.

Sentence fragments can carry as much tone or emphasis as they do meaning, especially when they consist of interjections, short phrases, or questions, like the examples above. However, you should be careful not to use many fragments in a paper: If you emphasize too many ideas with fragments, nothing will seem to be emphasized, and the fragments will merely seem sloppy. You should conservatively choose to use structures that are usually considered ungrammatical.

Weak Be Verbs

When people discuss the pesky writing problem of weak verbs, they often refer to the overuse of be verbs rather than action verbs. Be verbs employ some form of the verb “to be,” indicating a state of being, and include words like be, being, been, is, are, and was. Action verbs indicate specific kinds of activity. Because be verbs do not communicate action, writing becomes more effective when it employs action verbs. In the following pairs of sentences, the first sentence uses a be verb and the second uses an action verb. Which of the sentences sounds better to you?

The snake was in the direction of the tent and was in the reared­back striking position. The snake slithered toward the tent and reared its head back to strike.

Anderson’s farmers are in preparation for a dry summer. Anderson’s farmers prepare for a dry summer.

Pigs are animals that stink! Pigs stink!

In these cases, the second examples, which contain action verbs and not be verbs, sound better.

This is not to say that you should never use be verbs; sometimes, you won’t be able to avoid them. For example, Thomas Brelage concludes “The Keeper of the Bees” with, He is a friend to the bee community and a friend to his own community. Brelage uses the be verb is in this sentence, and the statement probably would have been less effective in the action verb version: He befriends the bee community and his own community. You will certainly find cases in which be verbs are appropriate and more effective than action verbs. Therefore, you should carefully

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consider the verbs you use.

Passive Voice

The form of verbs that you choose will dictate whether you’re using the active or passive voice. Active voice means that the subject of the sentence performs the action of the sentence:

Donald Trump fired Omarosa Manigault­Stallworth from the TV show The Apprentice.

The subject, Donald Trump, performs the action of the sentence—firing Omarosa Manigault­ Stallworth. Passive voice refers to sentences in which the subject does not actually perform the action. In fact, passive sentences either do not name the performer of the action or do so outside of the subject position. For example, both of these sentences are passive:

Omarosa Manigault­Stallworth was fired from The Apprentice. Later, an explanation was made by Donald Trump.

In the first sentence, although Omarosa Manigault­Stallworth is the subject of the sentence, she does not perform the firing; whoever performs the action is not named. In the second sentence, an explanation is the subject of the sentence, and later, Trump is named as the one who does the explaining. However, since Donald Trump is not the subject of the sentence, the statement remains in the passive voice.

In general, active voice sentences are more concise and effective than passive voice sentences; however, there are certainly cases where you would prefer to use the passive voice. For example, if you want to downplay the importance of who performs the action and emphasize the action itself or the person the action was done to, you might select the passive voice. But when you attempt to write concise and exciting narratives and explanations, stay with the active voice.

You can usually turn a passive verb into an active verb by deleting the auxiliary verb. Of course, you’ll then have to rearrange the sentence a little, providing a different subject than the passive sentence’s subject. Notice how changing the voice of the verb changes the sentence from passive to active.

Passive: Water skiing and barbecuing was enjoyed by everyone. Active: Everyone enjoyed water skiing and barbecuing.

Passive: Flowers were arranged by Montgomery Florists, the food was provided by Katherine’s Catering, and my hair was fixed by my sister’s stylist.

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Active: Montgomery Florists arranged the flowers, Katherine’s Catering provided the food, and my sister’s stylist fixed my hair.

Though you will probably find instances in which passive voice works well for you, active sentences are usually more successful.

Informal Diction

Imagine that one day when you were driving home from the grocery store, you were in a car accident that dented your back bumper. When you told the sequence of events to the police officer that came to the scene, you explained, “I was traveling westbound on McGalliard Avenue. I began reducing my speed as I neared the stoplight at Tillotson and McGalliard, but the car behind me did not slow with traffic, thereby colliding with my vehicle.” When recounting the story to your friends, however, you explained it more like this: “I was just cruising down the street, and out of nowhere this car zoomed up behind me and smashed into my back end.”

In the same way that our verbal language changes based on who we are speaking to, so our written language should appropriately reflect our audience. The term diction refers to a person’s choice of vocabulary and sentence structure, which varies based on the situation’s degree of formality.

Two categories of informal diction are usually inappropriate for academic writing. The first, slang, means words that are usually only understood by a particular community. The second, colloquial language, refers to the broad category of spoken language that all of us use in informal situations. While both of these categories are appropriate (and even preferred) in some situations, they should usually be avoided in academic writing. Using slang or colloquial language can communicate to an audience that the author isn’t taking the material seriously. At other times this informal diction can exclude an audience, especially if they don’t understand the words or tone being used. Often using more specific and formal language can actually improve a sentence’s clarity. Note the following examples, with colloquial language in boldface:

My mom went crazy when I told her I was engaged. There was a ton of people at the funeral. I couldn’t come to the party yesterday because I had so many other things to deal with.

Notice how the author’s meaning becomes clearer with more formal language.

When I told her I was engaged, my mom stared at me in surprise for a moment and then began jumping up and down in excitement. There were approximately 600 people at the funeral.

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I couldn’t come to the party yesterday because I had to locate my impounded car, visit my grandfather in the hospital, take my sick cat to the vet, and study for an exam.

Even though academic writing requires a certain level of formality, you should not resort to the opposite extreme of writing in flowery or exalted diction. You should still feel free to use your own voice and language as you write.

Indefinite Use of You

In spoken English, people often use you to mean anyone or everyone. For example, one student might say to another, “You know you’re in trouble when the instructor asks you to take out a piece of paper for a quiz.” In this case, the student isn’t using you to say that the other student is the only person in trouble; instead, the student uses you more inclusively to say that anyone fears this moment.

When sentences like these are written in a paper, however, it feels to a reader that the you refers only to him or her. For this reason, you used indefinitely should be replaced in academic writing with a more specific term, as in the following examples:

Indefinite You: This story forces you to think about the consequences of hate. Better: This story forces a reader to think about the consequences of hate.

Indefinite You: In college, you have to study hard to pass courses. Better: In college, students have to study hard to pass courses.

Indefinite You: The media tries to convince you that being thin equals being beautiful. Better: The media tries to convince women that being thin equals being beautiful.

Occasionally you can be used effectively in academic writing to refer to the reader. For example, Carol Kirsch used this technique near the end of her essay “To Sign or Not to Sign,” about organ procurement. She stated, “The next time you need to renew your driver’s license and the clerk behind the counter coldly and routinely asks you if you want to be an organ donor, think about what your answer might be.” Her use of you was not indefinite; she used it specifically to prompt the reader to action.

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Gender­Biased Pronouns

Once upon a time, writers used a masculine pronoun to refer to a hypothetical person (that is, an implied, unnamed person who stands for “people in general”) in formal writing. “Before a person drives to work,” we used to write, “he should buckle his seat belt.” However, considering all those who drive to work to be men, and all members of most any group to be men, is sexist and ridiculous. Some authors have attempted a counterbalance by changing the he to she, considering all hypothetical people to be female. And some groups have actually created neutral pronouns for the hypothetical he/she, which sometimes sounds the silliest of all. But the fact remains that in your writing, you will be addressing audiences that consist of both hims and hers, and you should construct your writing to include both genders. You can do this in at least four ways.

• Using Plural Forms One way to eliminate gender­bias is to use plural forms of nouns and pronouns instead of singular forms. Instead of using he or she, you can use they for the hypothetical person. In “Understanding and Building Walls,” Chris Calow switches from the singular subject to the plural pronoun form in order to maintain non­sexist language:

In the traditional reading, the reader may think that the poem is referring to just a physical wall. Many readers don’t see that there is not only a physical wall but an emotional one as well. They assume that the speaker is against physical and emotional walls.

By using plural sentences rather than singular sentences, you can avoid having to choose between him and her.

• Using the Singular He or She and You If you prefer retaining the singular form, you can use he or she rather than only one of the pronouns. Using this technique, the first example would become, Before a person drives to work, he or she should buckle the seat belt. However, be careful when using he or she, because after just a few he or she’s, your sentences can sound awkward.

Another way to use singular pronouns is to switch from the third person he/she to second person you. For example, Thomas Brelage opens “The Keeper of the Bees” with:

If you live around Anderson, Indiana, and you want to know anything about bees or honey, or if you have a swarm on your property that needs to go away, you call Charlie DeMoss.

However, you should be careful using you in academic or formal writing (see the previous section called “Indefinite Use of You”).

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• Restructuring Sentences A third way to avoid gender­bias is to simply restructure your sentences in order to avoid pronouns altogether. For example, in “What’s My Name?”, Sarah Felinski avoids writing, As a patient’s Alzheimer’s disease progresses, so does his forgetfulness. Instead, she writes,

As the Alzheimer’s disease progresses, so does the forgetfulness.

Further, you can change words like mailman to mail carrier, chairman to chair or chairperson, policeman to officer, etc. Restructuring sentences and words in order to eliminate pronouns can be the way to write the most natural­sounding, non­sexist language.

• Using Specific Examples Finally, by using specific examples of real people who are either female or male, you can use she or he without using biased language. After giving a few characteristics of the Alzheimer’s patient, Felinski talks about her own grandfather:

Although my grandfather has not been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, he shows many of the same symptoms. He had several strokes which, in turn, caused his absent­mindedness. He started out forgetting what day of the week it was, which then led to his forgetting to eat.

By using the individual case of her grandfather, Felinski uses the pronoun he without gender bias.

Revisiting the Parts of Speech

You might remember from junior high or from watching enough Schoolhouse Rock videos that we use eight categories of words in speaking and writing. These categories are called parts of speech:

• Nouns name people, places, things, actions, ideas, qualities, and such.

• Pronouns function as nouns or noun phrases and refer to a specific noun or noun phrase.

• Verbs express actions or states of being.

• Adjectives describe, intensify, limit, qualify, or in some way modify nouns or pronouns.

• Adverbs describe or modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and parts of speech other than nouns and pronouns.

• Prepositions introduce nouns, pronouns, or noun phrases (the objects of the prepositions) to become prepositional phrases; prepositional phrases modify nouns, verbs, complete sentences, and other structures.

• Conjunctions connect words, phrases, clauses, and sentences.

• Interjections express emotions, exclamations, questions, or feelings.

This chapter introduces the parts of speech in order to help you understand their grammatically correct uses (according to Standard Edited English) and employ them in stylistically effective ways.

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Nouns and Pronouns

Nouns are names given to people, places, things, actions, ideas, and qualities. They can be replaced by pronouns in a sentence, but every sentence must contain either a noun or a substituting pronoun as the subject of the sentence.

Pronouns function as nouns or noun phrases and refer to some specific noun or phrase within the context of the discussion. It is important to make sure that the pronoun’s antecedent, i.e. the noun or noun phrase the pronoun refers to, is clear.

Nouns and Pronouns function in two main ways in a sentence: • As subjects • As objects

Also discussed in this section: • How to Keep the Antecedents of Pronouns Clear • How to use the Proper Case of Nouns and Pronouns

Nouns and Pronouns Subjects

• Nouns As discussed in “Conquering the Sentence,” every complete sentence or independent clause must contain a noun or pronoun as the subject of the sentence. One of the first sentences of Lance Vaillancourt’s “Attack of the Clones” illustrates a noun functioning as a subject:

Long the subject of popular fiction, cloning has inspired everything from the drama of Brave New World, to the thrills of Jurassic Park, to even the comedy of Multiplicity.

In this sentence, cloning is the noun which serves as the subject and which performs the action of the sentence (has inspired).

A noun phrase consists of a noun and all of the words that connect to it and modify it. A later sentence in Vaillancourt’s essay illustrates a more complicated noun phrase:

Legal, ethical and religious concerns have created enough frenzy to ban the research of human cloning in America.

Here, concerns is the noun, but several modifying words are included in the noun phrase: legal, ethical and religious. Together, the entire noun phrase performs the action of the sentence (have created enough frenzy).

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• Pronouns At some point, you might have learned that a pronoun takes the place of a noun. This is sometimes true: you might use he to take the place of Dennis Rodman in a sentence and it to take the place of hair. But more often, a pronoun takes the place of a full noun phrase. For example, in Vaillancourt’s second sentence, concerns is a noun. And if you wanted to replace concerns with a pronoun, you might select the pronoun they to take its place. But if you allowed they only to take the place of the noun, your sentence would read:

Legal, ethical and religious they have created enough frenzy to ban the research of human cloning in America.

Obviously, you would want to replace the entire noun phrase with the pronoun:

They have created enough frenzy to ban the research of human cloning in America.

Here, the pronoun They functions as the subject of the sentence.

Pronouns can also take the place of complete sentences and concepts. Near the end of Leslie Kaluzynski’s “The Lack of Lovers of the Poor,” the author uses a pronoun as the subject of a sentence to refer back to and take the place of an entire previous sentence:

Our values have become so corrupted that the only way we will show any human compassion or mercy is if there is something in it for ourselves. This is a tragedy for the future of our species.

Here, the pronoun this refers to the fact established in the previous sentence and functions as the subject of the following sentence.

Nouns and Pronouns as the Objects of Sentences Nouns and pronouns that do not perform the actions of a sentence but, instead, receive the actions are called objects.

A direct object is a noun or pronoun that directly receives the action of the sentence. For example, in this sentence, the pronoun us is the direct object:

The record executive contacted us.

An indirect object is a noun or pronoun that indicates to or for whom the action of the sentence is done. In this sentence, us is the indirect object, and the contract is the direct object.

The smiling executive sent us the contract.

Because us is closer to the verb gave, it is tempting to think that us is the direct object. But notice that the record executive is not sending the people called us; she is sending a contract.

The contract is receiving the sending, and the action is performed to or for us. Therefore, the contract is the direct object, and us is the indirect object.

The Drop­It Trick: A sneaky way of deciding whether a word is a direct or indirect object is to attempt to drop the word out of the sentence. Usually, a sentence cannot lose its direct object and still make sense, but it will sound fine without its indirect object. For example, you can remove the indirect object us from the above sentence:

The smiling executive sent the contract.

Though you don’t know to whom she is sending the contract, the sentence still makes sense. However, when we attempt to remove the direct object and keep only the indirect object, the sentence falls apart:

The smiling executive sent us.

The meaning of the original sentence is lost; by attempting to drop the object from the sentence, you can decide whether it is a direct or indirect object.

Keeping the Antecedents of Pronouns Clear When using pronouns to accomplish complex functions, make sure you clearly establish the antecedent of the pronoun.

The antecedent is the noun or noun phrase the pronoun is referring to. In Kaluzynski’s example above, the antecedent of this is clear. However, if she had written the sentences as follows, the antecedent would not have been so clear:

Our values have become so corrupted, that the only way we will show any human compassion or mercy is if there is something in it for ourselves. People often believe that compassion refers to an awareness of another’s suffering, not realizing that it always includes a desire to relieve the suffering; and people often think that mercy means being kind and forgiving, forgetting that it also entails providing relief. This is a tragedy for the future of our species.

If Kaluzynski had written this group of sentences, we might wonder what was a tragedy: Is it a tragedy that people misunderstand the meaning of mercy? That they have an incomplete awareness of compassion? That they only show compassion and mercy for selfish reasons? It is important to make sure it is clear which antecedents go with which referents. Basically, the farther a pronoun is from its antecedent, the less clear its antecedent is. The example above illustrates this fact. Therefore, positioning the antecedent and the pronoun relatively close together often helps maintain clarity.

However, you might choose to leave a lot of space between the referent and the antecedent for certain reasons. For example, you may occasionally prefer to keep a pronoun such as he or she

unclear when telling an anecdote in order to make the reader ask, “Who is she?” or “Who is he?” This vagueness results in an exciting, suspenseful story for readers, making them engaged with the narrative until you reveal the person’s identity. Therefore, while it is usually desirable to keep the antecedents of pronouns clear, you may find yourself in situations where your purpose is better served by to keeping your audience in the dark.

Using the Proper Case of Nouns and Pronouns Luckily, in English most nouns work fine as either subjects or objects in sentences. But annoyingly, some pronouns only work as subjects and other pronouns only work as objects. It’s tough to consistently use the correct case of pronouns. And though your friends probably never stop you in the middle of a conversation for saying “Peyton Manning and them really beat the pants off the Packers” rather than “Peyton Manning and they really beat the pants off the Packers,” your reading audience might well be distracted by such minor yet noticeable misuses of pronoun case.

Case refers to the form of a noun or pronoun that indicates how it functions in a sentence. Nouns and pronouns can appear in three cases:

• Subjective Case: Nouns or pronouns that serve as the subject of sentence.

Kenny wads up the paper. He is apparently angry, and the paper is ruined.

• Objective Case: Nouns or pronouns that serve as the object of a sentence.

Kenny throws the paper at Jennifer. She scolds him.

• Possessive Case: Nouns or pronouns that demonstrate ownership or possession of attributes or qualities.

Kenny’s action was un­called for. Their relationship weakened.

Notice that nouns can function in the subjective and objective cases without any change— Kenny, Jennifer, and paper can be either subjects or objects. However, subjective pronouns are almost always different from objective pronouns. He in the subjective case becomes him in the objective case. Further, in the possessive case, both nouns and pronouns change. Singular nouns usually take an apostrophe and s to change to the possessive case, and plural nouns usually take an apostrophe after the “s” to become possessive. Pronouns often change altogether to become possessive. Consider the following chart:

• Subjective Pronouns I, we you he/she/it they who/whoever

He and I hit the balls.

• Objective Pronouns me/us you him/her/it them whom/whomever

The ball hit him.

• Possessive Pronouns my/our your his/hers/its their whose mine/ours yours his/hers/its theirs

Their dog chased the ball.

You can use this chart when you have a question about which form of the pronoun to use. For example, you can finally get to the bottom of the great “who/whom” controversy: You use “who” when the pronoun is the subject of a sentence:

Who is giving today’s lecture?

And you use “whom” when the pronoun is the object of the sentence:

To whom is Dr. Papper giving the lecture?

The Drop­It Trick When you’re dealing with a complex subject or object, it is sometimes hard to decide which case of the pronoun to use. The baffling fact is that the incorrect version of the sentence, “Peyton Manning and them beat the Packers,” almost sounds better than the correct version, “Peyton Manning and they beat the Packers.” A nifty trick that will help you through such cases is to drop one of the subjects (the noun) and read the sentence using only the pronoun. The correct version pops out immediately.

Them beat the Packers. They beat the Packers.

Subject­Verb Agreement Within sentences, subjects should “agree” with the verbs. Though it was too boring a concept even for Schoolhouse Rock, you should maintain subject­verb agreement within your writing. This means that if the subject of a sentence is singular, the verb must be singular, and if the subject is plural, the verb must be plural.

It probably isn’t too difficult to hear that she miss her mother or bugs is gross are grammatically incorrect, and she misses her mother and bugs are gross are correct. But problems often arise when our sentences become more complex, especially when many words fall between the subject and the verb. For example, try to decide which of these sentences are correct:

A jar of peanuts are attractive to an elephant. A jar of peanuts is attractive to an elephant.

The herb cilantro, resembling other herbs and even different kinds of clovers and grasses, add a special flavor to many recipes. The herb cilantro, resembling other herbs and even different kinds of clovers and grasses, adds a special flavor to many recipes.

Perhaps seeing the pairs of sentences together helps illustrate that the second sentence of each pair is correct, but when only one version hides within your essays it is often harder to find problems.

The Drop­It Trick In order to find subject­verb agreement problems, it often helps to use the drop­it trick. When you momentarily drop the material between the subjects and verbs, the correct versions surface:

A jar are attractive. A jar is attractive.

The herb cilantro add a special flavor. The herb cilantro adds a special flavor.

Another Trick: Replacing Plural Subjects with Plural Pronouns When two or more nouns or pronouns are connected with and to form a plural subject, remember to use a plural verb. Jan and she is a plural subject, and it requires a plural verb. Therefore, you would write, Jan and she rollerblade, and not Jan and she rollerblades. If you get confused with subjects joined with and, replace the plural subject with the plural pronoun they. After all, Jan and she make up a they, don’t they? Then ask yourself whether you’d write they rollerblade or they rollerblades.

Jan and she rollerblade. Both the butcher and the baker rollerblade. Many candlestick makers also rollerblade.

Either/or situations are not plural; they are singular, as are each, one, or none situations. If a sentence indicates that only one or none of a group is the subject, then that is a singular subject, and the verb, too, should be singular. Consider these examples, all of which are correct:

Either Jan or she rollerblades. She or he rollerblades. One of the students rollerblades. Neither of the two students rollerblades. None of the five students rollerblades. Each of the students rollerblades.

The butcher, along with the baker and candlestick maker, rollerblades.

In all of these cases, the subjects are singular, because only one of the individuals is being considered at a time. Even the final example, which has a phrase with a compound object between the subject butcher and the verb rollerblades is singular. When a subject considers only one individual, one subject from among many, or one subject at a time (for example, each of the students), consider the subject to be singular, and select a singular verb to accompany it in the sentence.

Verbs

Verbs indicate actions (walk, speak) or states of being (is, become). Every sentence must contain a main verb, sometimes preceded by an auxiliary (or helping) verb. Common helping verbs include forms of have, do, and be.

You might remember being taught that verbs exist in different forms—the base form or present tense (jump), the past tense (jumped), the past participle (has jumped), the present participle (is jumping), and the ­s form (jumps). In fact, you might remember being taught huge amounts of information about individual verbs and verbs as a whole. In this section, we will dig up some of these aspects of verbs and let others rest. We’ll attempt to limit our discussion to those aspects of verbs that will specifically help you sharpen your verb­using skills to write more concisely and effectively.

You may also want to visit Chapter 8, “A Rhetorical Approach to Common Errors,” to learn about effective and ineffective ways to use verbs. The sections specifically relating to verb use are “Weak Be Verbs” and “Passive Voice.”

What About Auxiliary Verbs? Auxiliary verbs (helping verbs) are words that accompany other verbs and help establish completed action, continuing action, future action, positive or negative statements, possibility, obligation, or other kinds of modifications to verbs. Some auxiliary verbs are: have, be, do, will, can, could, might, may, must, ought to, should, and would. For example, in the sentence I can walk across the street by myself, can is the auxiliary verb, and walk is the main verb. Auxiliary verbs are almost always attached to main verbs; when they aren’t, they refer to a main verb within the context of the situation:

Can you walk across the street by yourself? Yes, I can.

Here, the auxiliary verb can does not technically precede a main verb, but the main verb is

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implied. The meaning of the sentence is, Yes, I can walk across the street by myself.

Auxiliary verbs change the meaning of a sentence to a degree. For example, I signed the contract means something slightly different than I had signed the contract, and both of these differ from I should have signed the contract and I could not have signed the contract.

Like be verbs, overused or misused auxiliary verbs can sometimes weaken your writing. For example, I have drawn a picture is less direct and concise than I drew a picture. Consider these sentences and choose which sounds the best.

(be verb version) The snake was in the direction of the tent and was in the reared­back striking position.

(auxiliary verb version) The snake had slithered toward the tent and had reared its head back to strike.

(action verb version) The snake slithered toward the tent and reared its head back to strike.

The third version probably sounds the strongest. It is usually better to choose action verbs rather than auxiliary verbs.

Understanding Verb Tenses A verb’s tense refers to when the action occurred or when the state of being existed. Auxiliary (or helping) verbs and verb suffixes are the main elements that change a verb’s tense. For example, in the list of verb tenses below, you’ll see that adding s or ed to a verb or adding auxiliary verbs like will, had, or is changes the verb’s tense.

Your junior high English teacher might have asked you to memorize all the verb tenses. If so, the list probably looked something like this:

• Simple Tenses Present jump, jumps Past jumped Future will jump

• Perfect Tenses Present Perfect have jumped, has jumped Past Perfect had jumped Future Perfect will have jumped

• Progressive Tenses Present Progressive am jumping, is jumping Past Progressive was jumping Future Progressive will be jumping

Present Perfect Progressive have been jumping Past Perfect Progressive had been jumping Future Perfect Progressive will have been jumping

Though your college composition teacher will not ask you to memorize verb tenses, you will still probably find it necessary to use the tenses in your writing. And importantly, every one of the tenses indicates a slightly different time in which the action or state of being takes place. For example, I had jumped hurdles for four years (past perfect) indicates that the time period the jumper jumped was four years, and the action is now over; I have been jumping hurdles for four years (present perfect progressive) indicates that the period has been four years so far, and the jumper is still going; I will have been jumping hurdles for four years (future perfect progressive) indicates that it hasn’t been four years yet, but by the end of the jumping tenure, the jumper will have jumped for four years.

As the name implies, past tense verbs are good for telling about past events. DeKita Pollard writes “The Best Lesson I Learned” in the past tense, because she is narrating a story that happened to her years ago. In “To Sign or Not to Sign,” Carol Kirsch usually employs past tense, because the interviews, stories, and other sources she uses happened in the past.

Not all past events must be recorded with the past tense, however. Using the present tense to write episodes that already happened can make a narrative exciting and suspenseful. For example, Thomas Brelage uses primarily present tense in “The Keeper of the Bees” to describe his meeting with beekeeper Charlie DeMoss, even though it happened in the past. By making it seem like the story is happening as we read, Brelage makes the scene immediate and exciting.

Whenever you write about literature or reference material, do so in present tense. Even though, for example, Midsummer Night’s Dream was written nearly four hundred years ago, it is considered proper to talk about the characters, events, and poetical devices in present tense. After all, every time we read the play, the events are, in a sense, happening again in our minds. Even when addressing the way Shakespeare writes the play, you should use present tense. Instead of writing When Hermia made fun of Helena’s height, Shakespeare used his audience’s common notion of beauty, you should write, As Hermia makes fun of Helena’s height, Shakespeare uses his audience’s common notion of beauty.

Maintaining Consistent Tense As a general rule, you should maintain a consistent verb tense throughout an essay. If you are writing in past tense, be careful not to slip into present tense unless you have a specific reason for doing so. If you are writing a narrative in past tense, you might find it necessary to use the past perfect, past progressive, and past perfect progressive tenses. But if you accidentally slip into one of the present or future tenses, you might confuse your audience or be accused of not revising carefully. When you decide on a tense for a paper, stick with that tense throughout.

Having agreed to maintain a constant verb tense throughout individual essays, you will almost certainly find cases within papers where you’ll find it necessary to switch tenses briefly. In “The Lack of Lovers of the Poor” Leslie Kaluzynski uses present tense to discuss a Gwendolyn

Brooks poem. However, at the very beginning of her paper, she alludes to a personal episode from the previous Christmas, and she uses the past tense to tell the story. And, at the end of her paper, she applies the poem to her thoughts on the next Christmas, and appropriately, she switches to the future tense to project what will happen then. Even though the general rule states not to change verb tenses within a paper, Kaluzynski finds two cases where it is important to switch.

Similarly, Sarah Felinski switches tenses a couple of times in “What’s My Name?” Her paper includes narration about her grandfather’s experiences with memory loss and instruction on how to respond to ailing family members. During her narration, Felinski uses the past tense to relate past moments of her grandfather’s forgetfulness. However, she uses present tense to explain current patterns of his amnesia and to offer tips for family members of someone experiencing memory loss. Felinski differentiates between past anecdotes, current behavior patterns, and instructions for treatment. She writes:

He started out forgetting what day of the week it was, which then led to his forgetting to eat. ... Now, he has trouble remembering family members when he does not see them every day, especially his grandchildren. ... However, there are many steps that can be taken to cope with such illnesses.

She uses the past tense to narrate his first symptoms, and the present tense to discuss his current problems, and to talk about how people can respond to memory loss.

Adjectives, Adverbs, and Prepositions

Adjectives and adverbs modify or describe words, phrases, or entire sentences; prepositions do the same thing by linking with a noun or pronoun to form a prepositional phrase.

• Adjectives describe nouns or pronouns, answering questions like which? what kind? or how many?

• Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and even complete thoughts and sentences, answering questions like when? where? how? and to what extent?

• Prepositions can modify anything that adjectives or adverbs can, but they only work with nouns or pronouns within prepositional phrases.

We naturally use adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases often when we talk, but we often forget to use plenty of description when we write. This can be a problem, because our readers need just as much vivid detail as our listeners (maybe even more detail, since readers can’t watch our facial expressions or pick up on other non­verbal cues as we communicate). Therefore, it is important to use appropriate description while writing. In “The Keeper of the Bees,” Thomas Brelage uses plenty of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases to describe beehives. Without these descriptors, his explanation of a beehive would be flat and

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unclear. It might read:

Each hive is a box. Charlie explains that openness allows circulation, but a roof and floor exist. A slot allows the bees an exit and entrance.

Brelage doesn’t leave his writing so unclear; instead, he takes advantage of plenty of describing words and phrases in his essay. He writes:

Each hive consists of a stack of four to five 16” x 20” x 7” deep wooden boxes sitting on 4” x 4” stock lumber rails to keep them off the ground. Charlie explains that the absence of tops and bottoms for the boxes permit the bees to circulate up and down through the stack, but both the top and the bottom of the stack are closed with a roof and floor, respectively. At the very bottom of the stack, a horizontal slot about 1 1/2­inches wide and 16­inches long allows the bees to enter and exit the hive.

Adjectives Adjectives and adjective phrases describe nouns and pronouns. Adjectives make the things you talk about seem interesting, lifelike, believable, and important. They can turn the lion that you talk about in your wildlife narrative into a hairy lion, or a hairy, brown mountain lion, or a hairy, brown mountain lion showing huge, sharp, white teeth. You can describe your own feelings toward a work of literature, an artist, a social issue, yourself, or anything else by modifying the noun or pronoun with adjectives.

When adjectives are listed in a series, they are called coordinate adjectives. Coordinate adjectives modify a noun individually, so they can go in any order, and commas should separate them.

The apple was plump, red, and polished.

Other strings of adjectives are known as cumulative, because the adjectives build upon one another in a certain order. Cumulative adjectives should not be separated by commas.

The boy dropped seven tiny purple marbles one by one.

The And Test A nifty trick to see whether adjectives are coordinate or cumulative (and to see whether you need a comma between the adjectives) is to put the word and between the adjectives. If it still sounds correct, then it probably needs a comma. For example, consider the hairy, brown lion. Since the hairy and brown lion sounds fine, the phrase needs a comma between adjectives—hairy and brown are coordinate adjectives. However, the brown mountain lion cannot be rephrased as the brown and mountain lion. This revision sounds wrong, so brown and mountain are cumulative adjectives; they don’t need a comma.

The Switcheroo Test Another trick to decide whether adjectives are coordinate or cumulative is to switch the adjectives around, putting the first one second and the second one first (the hairy, brown lion becomes the brown, hairy lion). If this still sounds fine, then the adjectives are coordinate, and they need a comma. If the adjectives sound awkward (though the brown mountain lion sounds fine, the mountain brown lion sounds wrong), then the adjectives are cumulative and don’t require a comma.

Adverbs Adverbs do to verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and sentences what adjectives do to nouns and pronouns: They describe, explain, and otherwise make your writing sound interesting and clear. Notice the difference between a sentence without adverbs and the sentence with the addition of adverbs:

I cleaned the dark basement. I quickly but quite diligently cleaned the frighteningly dark basement.

In the second sentence, adverbs do a lot of work. Frighteningly modifies the adjective dark, quickly and diligently modifies the verb cleaned, quite modifies the adverb diligently. The addition of adverbs results in a more descriptive sentence with a more interesting voice than the first sentence.

The And Test and the Switcheroo Test As with adjectives, some adverbs are coordinate and others are cumulative. The and test and the switcheroo test work with adverbs as well as with adjectives. If the above sentence read: I slowly, carefully, cleaned the basement, the adverbs would be coordinate, and they would need a comma. Applying the test: both …slowly and carefully cleaned, and …carefully, slowly, cleaned sound fine.

Prepositions Though prepositions are parts of speech, they don’t appear by themselves within sentences. Instead, they introduce a noun or noun phrase called the object of the preposition. The preposition, the object or objects, and any modifiers of the object make up a prepositional phrase. These phrases, like adjectives and adverbs, explain, characterize, and describe.

The Crawling Bear Trick At some point, an English teacher might have shared a trick with you about how to decide whether a word is a preposition: If you can substitute a word for over in The bear crawled over the mountain, then the word is a preposition.

The bear crawled down the mountain. The bear crawled into the mountain. The bear crawled around the mountain.

Sure enough, down, into, and around are all prepositions. But this early test for preposition­hood begins to fall apart for many prepositions; The bear crawled regarding the mountain and The bear crawled since the mountain sound terrible, but regarding and since are indeed prepositions. Therefore, the bear trick is probably not a reliable one. But it does help show how prepositions work within sentences—they express spatial, time, and directional relationships between nouns, pronouns, and other words in sentences.

Prepositional phrases are not limited to two or three words. Though the phrases can consist of as few as two words (the preposition and its object), there is no limit to how many descriptors the object can carry, nor is there a limit to how many objects a preposition can have:

The bear crawled around me. I feared for my poor little life. All of a sudden, this beast of the wild and untamed wood left me for some bigger dinner and sleep.

In fact, prepositions themselves aren’t limited to single words. Prepositions that consist of two or three words are called compound prepositions. Compound prepositions still require objects, and they work just like single­word prepositions; they simply consist of two or three words. In the sentence The bear crawled in front of the mountain, in front of is a compound preposition.

Common Prepositions

• Prepositions about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, as, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, out, over, past, regarding, since, through, toward, under, until, up, upon, with, without

• Compound Prepositions according to, as well as, because of, by way of, due to, except for, in addition to, in front of, in place of, in spite of, instead of, next to, out of, with regard to

Ending Sentences in Prepositions One rule of grammar that you have no doubt heard is: Never end a sentence with a preposition! With this rule, the following sentences are grammatically incorrect.

Where are we going to? Greece is where Dimitri is from. Who did Carole give the paper to? Where is Jamie at?

Some of these sentences can be re­organized to achieve grammatical correctness, and others can simply drop the preposition:

Where are we going? Dimitri is from Greece. To whom did Carole give the paper? Where is Jamie?

Some writers have argued against the don’t­end­in­preposition rules. The fact is, sometimes the correct version of a sentence sounds awkward, and the incorrect version sounds more natural. And sometimes, you might be able to get away with ending a sentence with a preposition if your essay is not too formal. For example, if you are writing a narrative or a personal story, ending a sentence with a preposition might be acceptable, and stretching the sentence simply for grammar’s sake might sound awkward and distracting. However, in any more formal, academic writing, you should rearrange the sentence so you don’t have to end in a preposition. In some academic writing situations, you will be expected to conform to rules even though they seem awkward. Rearranging sentences so that both the sound and the rule are valued is the best solution.

Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases

Conjunctions are special words that make connections between paragraphs, sentences, and words. There are four kinds of conjunctions:

• Coordinating Conjunctions • Correlative Conjunctions • Subordinating Conjunctions • Conjunctive Adverbs

Transitional phrases work much like conjunctions, but they show strong relationships between sentences and concepts.

Coordinating Conjunctions Conjunctions that join equivalent clauses, nouns, pronouns, verbs, or other parts of speech are called coordinating conjunctions. Structures that are coordinated are given equal importance within a sentence. Notice how coordinating conjunctions combine these equal structures.

My car was parked illegally. Jamie’s truck was, too. My car and Jamie’s truck were parked illegally.

I drove to the Parking Services office. I refused to pay my ticket.

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I drove to the Parking Services office, yet refused to pay my ticket.

I put up quite a fight. They threatened to cancel my enrollment. I agreed to pay my fine. I put up quite a fight, but they threatened to cancel my enrollment, so I agreed to pay my fine.

Coordinating conjunctions can economize your sentences and help you vary your sentence structure and length while emphasizing the coordinated words equally.

Common Coordinating Conjunctions and, but, for, nor, so, or, yet

Correlative Conjunctions Like coordinating conjunctions, correlative conjunctions link equal elements in a sentence. However, correlative conjunctions actually consist of two separate parts distributed between the joined structures.

Both English 103 and Biology 101 are part of my Freshman Connection team. Not only are we writing a lot in Biology, but we are also exploring biological topics in English.

Correlative conjunctions can link words, phrases, and independent clauses, helping define the relationships between the elements.

Common Correlative Conjunctions both . . . and, either . . . or, just as . . . so, neither . . . nor, not only . . . but also, whether . . . or

Subordinating Conjunctions Unlike coordinating and correlative conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions link phrases and clauses that are not equal in importance. In fact, subordinating conjunctions often reduce one clause’s importance within a sentence and increase another’s. Consider the effect of the subordinating conjunctions on the following sentences:

Joel trotted out to the field. He was the greatest quarterback alive. Joel trotted out to the field as if he were the greatest quarterback alive.

He could throw the ball quite far. His accuracy was a little off. Even though he could throw the ball quite far, his accuracy was a little off.

In the first example, the subordinating conjunction actually changes the meaning of the two clauses. In both examples, the conjunction reduces the importance of the clause that immediately follows it, thereby emphasizing the other clause.

Common Subordinating Conjunctions after, although, as, as if, because, before, even though, if, in order that, once, since, so that, than, that, though, unless, until, when, where, while

Conjunctive Adverbs Conjunctive adverbs join independent clauses and show a relationship between them. A semicolon must precede a conjunctive adverb if it follows an independent clause, and a comma must follow a conjunctive adverb if it precedes an independent clause. Notice how the conjunctive adverbs clarify the relationships between concepts in these examples:

Algebra is easy for me. I’ve been studying it all my life. Algebra is easy for me; indeed I’ve been studying it all my life.

I offered to tutor several members of my class. Therefore, I offered to tutor several members of my class.

I feel confident I can ace any test. I study several hours beforehand. I feel confident I can ace any test; nevertheless, I study several hours beforehand.

Though the conjunctive adverbs don’t add vital information to the sentences, they show readers the relationships between your ideas.

Common Conjunctive Adverbs also, anyway, besides, certainly, finally, furthermore, however, incidentally, indeed, instead, likewise, meanwhile, moreover, namely, nevertheless, next, now, otherwise, similarly, still, then, therefore, thus, undoubtedly

Transitional Phrases Transitional phrases are groups of words that show relationships between sentences and paragraphs. Like conjunctions, they show relationships between ideas, but they usually signal more substantial relationships than conjunctions do. Transitions add coherence by helping readers follow one idea to the next, and they signal the ways in which one concept or statement will contradict, explain, or relate to the previous idea. Transitional phrases are separated from sentences with a comma. If you use a transitional phrase to link independent clauses, use a semicolon before the transitional phrase, and a comma after it (see “Semicolons”). Notice how switching transitional phrases can clarify and change relationships between ideas in these examples:

My great aunt is coming to visit on Saturday. I will have a fun weekend. My great aunt is coming to visit on Saturday; of course, I will have a fun weekend. My great aunt is coming to visit on Saturday; despite this fact, I will have a fun weekend. My great aunt is coming to visit on Saturday; in the meantime, I will have a fun weekend.

You can choose from many transitional phrases and invent even more to clarify relationships in your writing. Here are some common transitional phrases you can use and modify:

• To Signal Sequence again, also, and, and then, besides, finally, first . . . second . . . third, furthermore, last, moreover, next, still, too

• To Signal Time after a few days, after a while, afterward, as long as, as soon as, at last, at that time, before, earlier, immediately, in the meantime, in the past, lately, later, meanwhile, now, presently, simultaneously, since, so far, soon, then, thereafter, until, when

• To Signal Comparison again, also, in the same way, likewise, once more, similarly

• To Signal Contrast although, but, despite, even though, however, in contrast, in spite of, instead, nevertheless, nonetheless, on the contrary, on the one hand . . . on the other hand, regardless, still, though, yet

• To Signal Examples after all, even, for example, for instance, indeed, in fact, of course, specifically, such as, the following example, to illustrate

• To Signal Cause and Effect accordingly, as a result, because, consequently, for this purpose, hence, so, then, therefore, thereupon, thus, to this end

• To Signal Place above, adjacent to, below, beyond, closer to, elsewhere, far, farther on, here, near, nearby, opposite to, there, to the left, to the right

• To Signal Concession although it is true that, granted that, I admit that, it may appear that, naturally, obviously, of course

• To Signal Summary, Conclusion, or Repetition as a result, as has been noted, as I have said, as we have seen, as mentioned earlier, in any event, in conclusion, in other words, in short, on the whole, therefore, to summarize

Interjections

Interjections are words that express surprise, emotion, or feeling. They can be set off by commas within a sentence, or they can be punctuated like an individual sentence with an exclamation point.

Interjections don’t have a grammatical function within sentences. Instead, they are stylistic tools that you can use to express surprise, emotion, or strong feeling. Somehow, they have been allowed to break some of the rules for grammatical structures. For example, they can be punctuated like a sentence, but they neither require a subject or predicate, nor are they considered sentence fragments. They’re just interjections. Yippee!

Interjections can be inserted within sentences and set off by commas:

My time here, alas, has come to an end. There are five, six, wow, seven deer right outside our door. Zoinks, Scooby, here comes the Phantom!

They can also be punctuated like an individual sentence, usually ending with an exclamation point:

Alas! My time here has come to an end. There are five, six, seven deer right outside our door. Wow! Zoinks! Here comes the Phantom, Scoob!

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Understanding Punctuation & Mechanics

It’s easy to think of punctuation as a set of pesky, arbitrary rules that English teachers use to make students’ lives difficult, but punctuation serves an important rhetorical purpose. Punctuation helps you communicate and serves as a handy form of shorthand that makes your writing more compact and potent. For instance, instead of saying, “I hate boy bands like N’Sync, and, boy, I really mean that,” you can say “I hate boy bands!” By doing this you use an exclamation point to both strengthen and shorten your sentence, making it hit harder in two ways.

An exclamation point is an obvious case, but all punctuation marks do not do the same kind of work. Commas, for example, can be used for several specific purposes, such as separating a short, interrupting phrase like for example at the beginning of this sentence. Commas can also quickly alert your audience that you are listing items, words, names, objects, places, and so on. (Get it?) As you consider the grammatical function of punctuation, keep rhetorical choices in mind. In academic situations, for example, an exclamation mark should be used sparingly, but in an email, or in some situations using dialogue, it might be appropriate to use it more often. In academic situations you will be encouraged to find ways to use words to add emphasis to your writing, so you might use something more creative like “Boy bands are like cockroaches at a dinner party.” However you make it work for you, punctuation is an important and necessary part of your writing and your writing will be more persuasive when you use punctuation thoughtfully and appropriately.

Punctuation works because you and your audience share a basic understanding of what punctuation marks mean. Amazingly, even people who don’t know how to punctuate well can often still read punctuation accurately, following where your writing leads and taking your cues to understand the meaning you are trying to convey. A number of other shared assumptions about writing include things like Capitalizing certain words and italicizing others. But why are some words capitalized while others aren’t? Why are some items italicized while others aren’t? This chapter shows the most commonly accepted ways of handling these issues, but it also attempts to show how punctuation can work for you in your writing.

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Commas

Use a comma to: • Separate independent clauses in a sentence • Separate items in a series • Separate coordinate adjectives • Set off an introductory word, phrase, or clause • Set off nonessential elements • Set off most quotations • Prevent confusion • Separate a name and a title or degree • Set off parts of a date • Clarify the length of large numbers.

Written English needs commas. Without them, confusion arises quickly from what should have been simple sentences. Observe this example:

While we were painting cows walked around the edge of the barn to see what we were doing.

Unless you are a very modern artist indeed (or an employee of Gateway Computer Company’s packaging department), the sentence makes more immediate sense with the addition of a comma after the word painting.

While we were painting, cows walked around the edge of the barn to see what we were doing.

Commas divide parts of phrases, clauses, and sentences, allowing your readers to read the information you are giving them in understandable chunks. Commas may also signal places where you would naturally pause if you were reading your piece aloud. However, punctuating by ear—adding commas where it sounds like you need them—is usually a bad idea because you will have a tendency to add too many commas, putting some where they are not necessary and confusing your reader. Below are some guidelines to help direct your decisions.

Separate Independent Clauses in a Sentence An independent clause is a group of words containing a subject and predicate that can stand on its own as a sentence. The human race exists is an independent clause. It is not alone in the universe is another. When linked with a comma and a coordinating conjunction, they form a longer sentence that still makes sense.

The human race exists, and it is not alone in the universe.

And is the coordinating conjunction above. Others include but, or, nor, for, so, and yet. If you

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decide to join two independent clauses into a single sentence, be sure to use both a coordinating conjunction and a comma. Otherwise, you will create a comma splice, which lacks a coordinating conjunction, or a run­on sentence, which lacks both a comma and a coordinating conjunction:

Comma Splice: We went out after the storm, the air was twenty degrees cooler. Fused Sentence: My apartment is off­campus I have two roommates.

The sentences can be corrected by including the missing elements:

We went out after the storm, and the air was twenty degrees cooler. My apartment is off­campus, and I have two roommates.

For further discussion of comma splices and run­on sentences, see their section in Chapter 7.

Separate Items in a Series When you need to list three or more items in a series, separate them with commas and use a conjunction like and or or before the final item.

Three symptoms of low blood sugar are faintness, dizziness, and trembling.

Remember that the items in the series might well be phrases or independent clauses.

After the crash they found bits of broken glass in their hair, in their ears, and even inside their clothes.

During the summit, Carter swung a hammer, Clinton painted over graffiti, and Powell picked up trash.

Separate Coordinate Adjectives Sometimes adjectives can also be listed in a series, and these are called coordinate adjectives. Coordinate adjectives modify a noun individually, so they can go in any order, and commas should separate them.

The apple was plump, red, and polished.

In contrast, cumulative adjectives, which build upon one another in a certain order, do not need commas to separate them. To determine whether adjectives are coordinating or cumulative, follow the tips in the adjectives section.

Set Off an Introductory Word, Phrase, or Clause All sorts of items can introduce a sentence, and they are usually set off with a comma.

Well, there’s always next time. Apparently, he hadn’t learned his lesson. When I got off the plane, I rushed to greet my wife. Knowing he couldn’t win, he turned around and went home.

Set Off Nonessential Elements To clarify and add flavor to your writing, you can interrupt sentences in a number of ways that modify nouns and pronouns. Some of these are essential to the meaning of the noun or pronoun they specify. For example,

The dog that bit the child was immediately taken to the animal shelter.

That bit the child is a clause that specifies a certain dog, so it is essential to the sentence, and therefore commas do not set it off. A nonessential clause, however, is set off by commas.

The telephone, which has now gone out of order, was originally installed by the maintenance man.

The clause which has now gone out of order simply adds extra information to the sentence. It is nonessential, so it requires commas. Adjective clauses, appositives, and prepositional phrases may all be either essential or nonessential. For further discussion of modifiers, see “Adjectives, Adverbs, and Prepositions.”

Set Off Most Quotations For a discussion about how to use commas with quotations, see “Setting Off Direct Quotations,” under “Quotation Marks.”

Prevent Confusion You may find that you have written a sentence that sounds as though it needs a comma, and yet it matches none of the guidelines in this section. For example, you may have omitted a word or words intentionally.

The day was brassy and yellow; the night, charcoal gray.

In these instances, a comma alerts your audience that you intended the omission, and they are to fill in the blank with the obvious best choice (was in this case, between night and charcoal). A similar occasion involves words that echo nearby words.

Whatever happens, happens.

Here the comma separates the like words and eliminates confusion. Here is another scenario.

Students who can, register by early April.

This brave little comma keeps your audience from trying to read can as a helping verb that goes with register, which would mean students who are able to register, not students who are able to do so by early April.

Separate a Name and a Title or Degree Titles and degrees are normally set off with commas (before and after).

Tony hurled the Hank Williams, Jr., CD out the window from the nineteenth floor. Chadwick Furns, M.D., treated the malady effectively. Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, has some tough opinions.

Numerical elements of a date are often set off by commas, separating the day from the year and the year from the remainder of the sentence, unless the year comes at the end of the sentence.

On September 11, 1996, the company’s stock fell for good. The company’s stock fell for good on September 11, 1996.

Another format for dates, one commonly used in European countries, eliminates the need for the comma between the day and year by placing the day before the month.

On 11 September 1996, the company’s stock fell for good.

Clarify the Length of Large Numbers Commas in front of every third digit, counting from the right, help make large numbers (of four digits or more) easier to read.

123 1,234 12,345 123,456 1,234,567 and so on

Semicolons

Like commas and periods, semicolons separate various items in your sentences, making it possible for your audience to understand your meaning. The period separates sentences most completely; the semicolon separates them less firmly; and the comma separates them most lightly of all. But the semicolon also does special jobs that neither commas nor sentences can do.

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Use a semicolon to: • Separate closely related independent clauses • Separate independent clauses that already contain other punctuation • Separate complex items in a series.

Separate Closely Related Independent Clauses Situations will arise in your writing in which you have two very closely related ideas that still need to be expressed in separate independent clauses. For example, I cried when the old woman passed away and she had been my first Sunday school teacher. One solution would be to connect the two clauses with a comma and a conjunction.

I cried when the old woman passed away, because she had been my first Sunday school teacher.

However, a semicolon allows you to separate the ideas more completely while keeping them together in the same sentence.

I cried when the old woman passed away; she had been my first Sunday school teacher.

A third alternative separates the two clauses completely into individual sentences.

I cried when the old woman passed away. She had been my first Sunday school teacher.

The version you choose depends on your needs as you write. Do you need more separation between the ideas or less? You can also use semicolons to join more than two clauses if you need to, and if the resulting sentence is not awkward.

We came; we saw; we signed the lease; we moved in.

Separate Independent Clauses that Already Contain Other Punctuation Sometimes you will have complex clauses that you would like to join with a comma and a conjunction, but one or both of the clauses already contain commas. Joining these clauses with another comma would result in a jumble that would confuse your audience. Instead, try a semicolon to create a clearer division.

My venerable, ancient PC, which I purchased in ‘91, was still functional; but it was no match for the brand new Macintosh I saw in the university bookstore.

Remember that separating the clauses completely with a simple period may also work.

My venerable, ancient PC, which I purchased in ‘91, was still functional. However, it was no match for the brand new Macintosh I saw in the university bookstore.

Separate Complex Items in a Series You may need to create lists of items in your essays. If the individual items themselves contain commas, then try separating them with semicolons instead.

I currently own one pair of brand new, expensive cross­trainers; one pair of blue and white, torn high tops; two pairs of brownish, suede Rockports; and one pair of scuffed cowboy boots.

If commas had been used instead of semicolons, would the sentence still be legible? Here is another example.

Our vacation took us to some fabulous cities, such as Port Huron, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; and Eerie, Pennsylvania.

Colons

The colon has a simple function: it calls attention to whatever you put after it.

Use a colon to: • Draw attention to a list • Set off a quotation • Separate two independent clauses if the second explains or fulfills the first • Clarify titles and subtitles, chapters and verses in Biblical references, numbers that tell

time, numbers that express ratios, greetings in formal letters.

Draw Attention to a List A colon announces clearly that your audience should pay attention to what comes after it, which makes it perfect for introducing all sorts of lists.

Take the following to the beach: a Frisbee, beach towels, sunscreen, and lemonade.

Be sure, however, not to place a colon between a verb and its object. For example, in this example no colon is necessary between ordered and the rest of the sentence.

We ordered salad, breadsticks, and pizza.

In that case the verb itself, ordered, introduces the list, and no colon is necessary. The same is true of a preposition and its object. For example, no colon is necessary after with in this sentence.

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We wanted our pizza topped with pineapple, green peppers, onions, and extra cheese.

Lists after such as, for example, and including also need no semicolon.

I was angered by words and phrases such as “mealymouthed,” “hot­headed,” and “ill­educated.”

Set Off a Quotation For a discussion about how to use colons with quotations, see “Setting Off Direct Quotations,” under “Quotation Marks.”

Separate Two Independent Clauses if the Second Explains or Fulfills the First Similar to the way a semicolon can join two closely related independent clauses, a colon differs slightly in that it joins one clause to a second that explains, explores, and fulfills the first by adding necessary information.

America is a land of immigrants: We have all come from somewhere else. In World War I, German U­boats were enigmatic: submarines were invisible, yet deadly.

Notice in each example above that the second independent clause may begin with either an upper or lower case letter.

Clarify Titles and Subtitles, Chapters and Verses in Biblical References, Numbers that Tell Time, Numbers that Express Ratios, Greetings in Formal Letters Book and essay titles that contain subtitles often use a colon to separate the parts. For example:

Envision: Persuasive Writing in a Visual World

In Biblical references, divide chapter and verse with a colon (but not book and chapter).

John 3:16, Revelation 1:17­20, Psalm 34:18

Use colons to separate minutes from hours when writing down times in numerals.

2:06 a.m., 3:30 p.m., 10:45 p.m.

Colons separate numerals in ratios.

The odds on Santa’s Little Helper were 98:1.

Use a colon with formal greetings in letters.

Dear Ms. Abernathy:

However, remember that less formal letters normally use a comma after the greeting.

Dear Mom,

Apostrophes

Unlike most other punctuation marks, which have reasonably uniform jobs, apostrophes serve three unrelated functions.

Use apostrophes to: • Create possessives • Create contractions • Create certain plurals.

Create Possessives A possessive noun shows ownership of the thing that immediately follows. For example, “the kid’s bike” means “the bike belonging to the kid.” Most writers know that a possessive noun is formed by adding ­’s to its end, as in “neighbor’s wall.” However, a number of situations arise that make such a simple rule seem more complicated. Below is a guide to some of those cases.

• Some singular nouns already end in ­s. What then? In most cases, go ahead and add ­’s.

Lita Carnes’s music store was cheaper and closer than any other in town.

However, in some cases the extra syllable added by the ­’s creates a word that is very awkward to say aloud. In those cases, just add the apostrophe alone.

Ulysses’ bow could only be strung by Ulysses himself.

• Most plural nouns already end in ­s. What then? In these cases, simply add the apostrophe after the ­s that is already present.

The trees’ trunks were all encircled by white, metal benches. Both the lecturers’ harsh speeches inflamed the class.

• Some plural nouns do not end in ­s. What then?

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Some irregular plural nouns have no ­s at the end, such as people and children. To make this kind of plural possessive, just add ­’s.

The poem describes quite accurately people’s views and feelings towards the many less fortunate in our society. (From Leslie Kaluzynski’s “The Lack of Lovers of the Poor”)

• Often a whole group of words needs to be made possessive. What then? In certain cases, whole groups of words stand as a single noun. To make these possessive, add ­’s to the last word of the group.

The editor­in­chief’s position on the issue was completely balanced. They all applauded the Secretary of State’s bold, new plan.

• In some circumstances two or more words need to be made possessive at once. What then? If you need to show joint possession by two or more nouns, just use ­’s after the final noun in the sequence.

The Skipper and Gilligan’s plans always seemed to fail.

However, if you need to show individual possession by two or more nouns, use ­’s after each item in the sequence.

Senator Guilder’s and Governor Suding’s crime initiatives differed significantly.

Create Contractions A contraction is a single word that combines two other words, often a pronoun and a verb, such as she’ll (for “she will”) or let’s (for “let us”). Some other contractions combine the words of a verb phrase, such as you’d (for “you would”). In each case, run the words together and use an apostrophe to indicate where letters have been left out.

Let’s order some pizza.

Another kind of contraction shortens a year number, such as writing ‘97 instead of 1997. Again, the apostrophe marks where you’ve removed any numbers.

The Class of ‘69 was known for its pranks.

Create Certain Plurals The use of apostrophes to create certain plurals represents an excellent example of the ways that language and writing conventions change over time. Most style sheets, including MLA and APA now recommend not using apostrophes to create plurals as was done previously.

For example, to write the plurals of numbers and acronyms you should not use apostrophes: 1890s, several VCRs, tens, URLs, and so forth.

Another situation where apostrophes were formerly recommended was in using words as words. For example if you were referring to how often your classmate used the word and in his paper, you would write that he used too many ands. This is an example where technology has changed conventions. With computers it is easy to italicize words, so the new convention is to italicize the word you are referring to and add an un­italicized “s” to make it plural

In a few cases, however, you will still want to use apostrophes because the apostrophe is needed to make your meaning clear. Use the apostrophe when omitting it would cause confusion, for example when you are referring to multiple letters: “He used too many a’s, i's, and u’s.” Without the apostrophes these letters read: “…as, is, and us.”

Quotation Marks

No matter what type of writing you do, you will probably find good reasons to quote the words of other people. Quoting is a great tool in your writing toolbox, but it must be done carefully. When you use another person’s words directly, whether they wrote or spoke them, you should always use quotation marks and identify the source in order to avoid plagiarism. Quotation marks also have a couple of other uses, and we’ll discuss those below, too.

Use double quotation marks to: • Set off direct quotations • Set off dialogue • Set off certain titles • Set off special senses of words.

Use single quotation marks to: • Set off quotes within quotes

Also in this section: • How to Tailor Quotes Effectively but Fairly with Ellipses and Brackets • How to Clarify Quotes with Extra Material in Brackets • How to set off long passages of prose or poetry • How to use other punctuation with quotation marks.

Set Off Direct Quotations Any time you use another person’s exact words, you should enclose those words within

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quotation marks. This goes for everyone from the president of the universe to your little brother.

After the long ovation, Zaphod Beeblebrox stepped up to the microphone, winced at a slight bit of interstellar feedback, and addressed sentient beings everywhere: “Um, hello.”

Bobby squealed at me: “Get off my bike! I’m telling Mom!”

If you are paraphrasing another person’s words, you should not use quotation marks, but you should still give credit to the person.

Mr. Jarvis stated that he was willing to testify against the teenagers, but he would not agree to do so against the younger children.

Often, the words you write to introduce a quote are set off by a comma before the quote begins.

He said, “Wow.”

However, if your introductory words create a complete sentence, set off the quote with a colon.

What he said didn’t surprise me at all: “Wow.”

How to Tailor Quotes Effectively but Fairly with Ellipses and Brackets If you want to cut an irrelevant section out of a quote, make sure you do not alter the meaning of the quote by omitting critical words, which is misquoting. Mark the omission with three periods; this is called an ellipsis (“ . . . “). Type a single space before each period and after the final one.

The director stood up and said, “A number of groups . . . were involved with the fund­ raiser, and we owe them our thanks.”

If ending a quote before the original speaker ended the sentence, mark the omission with an ellipsis and a period (“. . ..”). Do not type a space before the initial period, but do type a space after all periods except the final one.

He further states, “A police officer lives under the same laws as all citizens. . ..”

If you are providing a parenthetical citation with the quote (in an MLA style research paper, for example), type a single space before each period of the ellipsis and place the final period or other end punctuation after the quote and the citation.

He further states, “A police officer lives under the same laws as all citizens . . .” (Jamison 7).

If the omission comes at the end of a sentence within the quote, meaning that you have ended a sentence before the original speaker did and possibly omitted other sentences, use an ellipsis

followed by a period to mark that omission (“. . . . “). Type no space before the initial period, but do type a single space after all others. You may then continue with the next sentence of the quote.

Louise Johnmeir states flatly that “the dissenters calling for the elimination of the financial incentives are simply socialists. . . . They do not forget, but intentionally ignore the fact that the incentives create more profit for workers as well.”

How to Clarify Quotes with Extra Material in Brackets In some circumstances, you may need to add small bits of information to a quote to make it clear for your reader, especially since a quote very often pulls a speaker’s or writer’s words out of their original, complete context. Any necessary information may be added inside brackets, indicating the addition to your reader.

LeRoy asserted, “The backlash resulted from the police action [in Beiruit] carried out the year before.”

Also, if the quote contains an error in the original version, place the Latin word sic (meaning “thus”) in brackets after the error to indicate that you are faithfully duplicating the original and not making the error yourself. Sic indicates the misspelling in this sentence:

The activist’s pamphlets stated otherwise: “Voters must recodnize [sic] the implications of this new legislation.”

Before using sic, however, consider that it weakens the credibility and authority of the person or institution being quoted. If using this person’s words as proof of your own point, you may not want to draw attention to the error. More importantly, you may consider not using the quote at all. Conversely, if you are arguing against the position of the person you are quoting, showing the error may strengthen your own counterargument.

Set Off Dialogue If you are writing a narrative, a fictional story, a news story, or even a standard essay, you may want to include dialogue (sequential quotes of two or more people talking back and forth). In dialogue, the normal quotation suggestions given above still apply, but each time the speaker changes, a new paragraph should be introduced.

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Julie. “He wouldn’t react that way.” “Sure he would!” laughed Marta. Julie scrunched up her face in confusion. “What makes you think so?”

If one speaker speaks for a long time, the speech may be broken into paragraphs to give the reader some visual footholds in the text on the page. If you have such a long quotation, begin each paragraph with an opening quotation mark (“), but do not use a closing quotation mark (“)

until the end of the quotation. This means that all the other paragraphs within that speech will have no closing quotation marks. This alerts the reader that the quotation will continue in the next paragraph.

Set Off Quotes Within Quotes Sometimes you will find a small quote already present within the material you are quoting. Use single quotation marks (‘ ‘) to identify these.

The woman took the podium and said, “In the words of the late, great Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘I have a dream!’”

Notice that regular quotation marks still surround the larger quote.

Set Off Long Passages of Prose or Poetry Especially when writing research papers and essays, you may encounter situations in which you need to quote long passages of prose or poetry. (For purposes of this discussion, prose is any writing that is not poetry.) For MLA style, if an extended prose quote consists of four or more lines, indent the entire passage as a block quote instead of setting it off with quotation marks. This makes the quote easier to see and allows your reader to quickly differentiate between your words and someone else’s. Indent the quote ten spaces (one inch). Quotations of this length are often introduced with a colon.

Others, however, disagree. One such person is Mildred Kansi of the Roehringer Institute, who said this about the trial:

One doubts whether or not this could actually be the trial of the century, as our pundits have so glibly named it. My question to them is this: Really? If you stop to think of the truly big cases this century, Brown or Roe, for example, this murder trial seems less universally important. I certainly do not imply that murder is to be taken lightly, or that this victim and her family have not suffered. Justice should be sought, to be sure. But the media blitz is rather appalling. It is a bored nation which resorts to celebrity murder to entertain itself, a nation close to crumbling under its own decay and weight, like Rome. (47)

Before employing a long quote, however, think about its value to your paper. In the flow of your ideas, does the quote seem intrusive? Does it interrupt your own line of thought? If not, does the whole quote need to be included? Can you think of a way to use a shorter section from the large quote more effectively and paraphrase the rest in your own language? For more information about documenting the sources of quotes and ideas of other people, see Chapter 5 on “Using Sources.”

To quote more than three lines of poetry using MLA style, indent the lines ten spaces (one inch), the same as block quotes of prose, as mentioned above.

In fact, the epic verses which open The Lord of the Rings set a riddle that refers the reader to both the mythical past of Middle Earth and the uncertain future:

Three rings for the Elven­Kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf­lords in their halls of stone, Nine for mortal men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

Include line numbers in parentheses at the end of the quote if you have not given the entire poem. (No line numbers were given in the example above, because the entire poem was quoted.)

For three lines of poetry or fewer, however, quote the lines within regular quotation marks. Separate two or three lines with a slash between each line, including a space on each side of the slash.

Ferlinghetti draws close to the conclusion of “Starting from San Francisco” with his amazing line: “Who stole America?” (116).

Later lines of “The Rape of Lucrece” prove that this is not true: “Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise, / Whose inward ill no outward harm express’d” (83­84).

How to Use Other Punctuation with Quotation Marks You will almost always use quotation marks in conjunction with other punctuation marks. Here are guidelines for how to handle these situations.

• Periods and Commas Always place periods and commas inside the quotation marks (both single and double quotation marks). In the following example, the final period of the quote comes within the final closed quotation marks.

When approached with such an argument, Alicia VanMeter, a mother of three young children, replied, “You never know what your kids will understand and what they won’t. Regardless of whether or not they get the jokes, they may still repeat them.” (From Robin Elmerick’s “Shrek – a Film for All Ages?”)

Commas work the same way. This will occur when your quote ends before your sentence does.

“Dogs have always been better than cats,” said my uncle.

• Colons and Semicolons

Always place colons and semicolons outside quotation marks.

The report claimed that “American cars are safer than they have ever been before”; however, seatbelts are still necessary equipment.

• Question Marks and Exclamation Points Question marks and exclamation points are placed either inside or outside quotation marks, depending on which part of the sentence they correspond to, the quote or the larger sentence itself. If the question mark or exclamation point goes with the quote, then it stays inside the quotation marks. If, however, it goes with the sentence itself, it goes after the quotation marks. This requires reading the meaning of the quote and the sentence to see which one questions or exclaims.

Was it George who called you “a fabulous moron”? Mindy asked, “Which ring do you like best?” I yelled down the street to the elderly woman, “Look out!”

Setting Off Certain Titles For a discussion of which titles to place in quotes and which to italicize (or underline), see the section on italics.

Setting Off Special Uses of Words If a word is used unusually, set it off with quotation marks.

In the factory, a “jogger” was the person designated to move the overhead motors to the correct conveyor line as the parts moved from station to station.

If you coin a new phrase or word, put it within quotation marks.

We started to call Cliffie “The Toilet­Man” after his ipecac episode.

If you need to use a word as a word, do not use quotation marks. Instead, italicize (or underline) it.

Stain is a nasty­sounding word, when you stop to think about it.

Dashes, Parentheses, and Brackets

Dashes, parentheses, and brackets all do similar work: They all allow you to insert extra information into your sentence without working it into the main structure itself. And yet the three serve subtly different functions. For example, parentheses allow you to insert information that you consider less important than the rest of the sentence, dashes allow you to highlight the information you add, drawing extra attention to it, and brackets allow you to add information to a quote to clarify meaning.

Use dashes to: • Insert extra information into a sentence • Set off an appositive more strongly than commas • Alert your reader of something to come at the end of a sentence

Use parentheses to: • Insert new but minor information into a sentence • Mark numbers or letters which order a series

Use brackets to: • Insert missing information into quotes

Dashes Dashes allow you to add information to a sentence just as parentheses do, but dashes highlight the information instead of downplaying it.

A special glass enclosed frame containing an active bee colony—complete with queen, drone, and workers—travels with him to these different institutions where he explains the importance of the honeybee in our everyday lives. (From Thomas Brelage’s “The Keeper of the Bees”)

Normally, an appositive—a restatement of a noun or pronoun—is set off by commas, but dashes add special emphasis to an appositive, making it more visible than commas would. Also, they cut down on confusion if the appositive itself is a phrase already containing commas.

Tony’s girlfriend—the musician with the crazy, orange hair—was not at the party.

Dashes can also alert your reader of something to come, like a list or a reworded version of what you have just written.

All we lacked to complete our machine of mass destruction were two key ingredients— tennis balls and gun powder.

Joan was always a loner anyway—a moody thinker who could spend entire

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afternoons by herself, buried deep in meditative reverie.

Parentheses Use parentheses to insert worthwhile but secondary information into a sentence.

The siege (the longest in the war) lasted for nearly eight years.

If you use numbers or letters to clearly mark a sequence, enclose them in parentheses.

Here’s what he wanted us to do before dark: (1) clear the brush and weeds away, (2) set up the tent, (3) gather some dry wood, and (4) begin roasting the meat on the fire.

Brackets For a discussion of brackets, see “How to Clarify Quotes with Extra Material in Brackets.”

Capitalization

Capitals normally tell your readers, “This is a name of some kind” or “This is a beginning of some kind.”

Use capitalization for: • First words of sentences and quotes • Proper nouns and adjectives • Titles when used as part of a name • First, last, and major words of titles and subtitles of writings, works of art, and music • Single letters when used in special ways.

First Words of Sentences and Quotes

• Sentences begin with capital letters.

Sure enough, this sentence begins with a capital.

• Quotes often begin with capitals, as well, unless the quote blends with the rest of the sentence.

Jay shuffled up to me and said, “Man, I’m sorry about what happened to your car.”

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Stacey said that she “wanted to stay up to watch Letterman.”

• If a quote opens a sentence, it should be capitalized.

“Even when reading through a magazine for the third time, I’ll find something I didn’t know before,” he says.

Proper Nouns and Adjectives Most of us know that proper nouns are capitalized, but exactly what constitutes a proper noun is sometimes a difficult question. One very important rule to remember is that a proper noun involves a specific item. For example, the planet is not capitalized, but Venus, a specific planet, is capitalized. Here is a list of some common forms of proper nouns.

• Specific People: Joe, Carol, Janet Reno, Frederick Douglass, Dick Lugar

• Places: Yosemite National Park, Park Avenue, South America, the Southern Hemisphere, the Andes Mountains, Los Angeles, Wayne County, the Suez Canal

• Celestial Bodies: Mars, the Milky Way

• Geographical Regions: the North, the South, the East, the West (Note: Do not capitalize these words when they indicate a direction instead of a region, such as in “Turn south on I­69.”)

• Events: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the World Series, UniverCity, Marathon Reading

• Eras, Historical Periods: the Jurassic Era, the Bronze Age, the Renaissance

• Not Centuries: the eighteenth century, sixteenth­century drama

• Months, Days: February, Saturday

• Not Seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter

• Court Cases: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education (Note: Names of court cases are also italicized.)

• Structures and Ships: the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Titanic, the U.S.S. Enterprise

• Ethnic Groups, Nationalities: Asian, African American (Note: Do not capitalize more generic words that describe race, such as black, white.)

• Religions and Faiths, Sacred Writings, Figures: Taoism, the Quran, Jews, Buddha, the Bible

• Teams and Groups: the Chicago Cubs, the Rotary Club, the Republican Party, the American Civil Liberties Union

• Trade Names: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Word, Soft Scrub, Mountain Dew

• Institutions: the House of Representatives, the State Department, Ball State University

• Academic Course Names: English 103, Psychology 367

• Proper Nouns Turned Adjectives: Georgian architecture, Spenserian stanza, Hoosier hospitality, Thai cuisine

Titles When Used as Part of a Name Titles can be used alone or in conjunction with a proper name. In the latter case, capitalize them; otherwise, don’t.

The judge issued a simple warning. Judge Raymond warned the attorneys to be thorough.

First, Last, and Major Words of Titles and Subtitles of Writings, Works of Art, and Music Works of art come in many forms—paintings and sculptures, for instance. Likewise, music can take the form of a song, an album, a concerto, a symphony, and so on. Depending on the form, you will use italics or quotation marks to set off the title—see the section on Italics below to clarify when to use italics and when to use quotation marks.) Whatever the form, the first, last, and major words should be capitalized. This includes all words except articles (like a, an, and the), prepositions (like on, of, in, etc.), and coordinating conjunctions (such as and or but). If the first or last words are articles, prepositions, or coordinating conjunctions, they are still capitalized.

The Mill on the Floss “Imagine” Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” The Crying of Lot 49 The Ecstasy of St. Teresa

Single Letters when Used in Special Ways. Single letters used for special purposes are capitalized.

Vitamin C, Size D, the B­team

Capitalize the word O, but not the word oh.

Where is the light, O darkened sky? I’d say he had, oh, about twenty dollars when he left.

Italics

Italic type is thinner and curvier than regular or “Roman” type. Italic type is also slanted to the right. Consequently, when words in italics are mixed with Roman type, they stand out visually to your reader, setting off the italicized words as units. Titles, for example, are not treated as individual words within a sentence. Instead, they are treated as single nouns, and italics let your reader understand this.

Most word processors, word processing software, and even some typewriters can produce italic type. If you are writing by hand, or if your typewriter cannot do italics, simply underline the words:

Ender’s Game is my favorite novel, or, Ender’s Game is my favorite novel.

Use italics to: • Set off titles of longer writings, works of art, or music (not to set off titles of shorter works,

which require quotation marks) • Set off the names of ships, trains, aircraft, and spacecraft • Set off foreign words and phrases • Set off words, letters, and numbers mentioned as themselves • Emphasize words within sentences.

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Set Off Titles of Longer Writings, Works of Art, or Music Longer writings, works of art, and music are set in italics, while shorter ones are enclosed in quotation marks. Any larger work that includes smaller pieces should be italicized, while the pieces themselves should be in quotation marks. For example, the title of a rock CD would be italicized, but one of the songs on the CD would be encased in quotation marks.

“Southbound Pachyderm” is perhaps the most experimental song on the Primus recording Tales from the Punchbowl.

Book titles are italicized; chapter titles are in quotation marks. The Tipping Point; “The Three Rules of Epidemics”

Magazine titles are italicized; article titles are in quotation marks.

Cosmopolitan; Maxim; “Top Ten Ways to Know if He’s Right for You”

Long works like movies, plays, long poems, and television programs are all italicized. Short poems are in quotation marks.

Much Ado About Nothing; Fear Factor; “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”

Set off the Names of Ships, Trains, Aircraft, and Spacecraft Names of all major, publicly known vehicles are italicized. Note that the article the is neither capitalized nor italicized.

the Spirit of St. Louis the Hindenburg the Eagle the U.S.S. Yorktown

Set Off Foreign Words and Phrases Foreign words not commonly used in English should be italicized to help your reader identify them.

When he heard that the program’s funding had been terminated, Alan muttered, “Que será, será.”

Set Off Words, Letters, and Numbers Mentioned as Themselves Sometimes you may need to mention a word, number, or letter as itself. Italicize it.

The paragraph used fabulous about four times.

He always signed his name with a simple, lower case j.

The word corn had been scrawled across every fifteenth page of the book.

Emphasize Words within Sentences As you write essays, you may be tempted to begin emphasizing certain words and phrases by underlining words or setting them in italics or boldface. While italics can be valuable to highlight a word or phrase, be careful not to overuse this technique; if everything is italicized, nothing stands out at all, and you defeat your original purpose.

Hyphens

Hyphens are used to link words or parts of words. They often provide clues about the meanings of words.

Use a hyphen to: • Split a word at the end of a line • Create compound words • Divide fractions and compound numbers.

Split a Word at the End of a Line Generally, try not to break words at the ends of lines. However, some very long words occasionally make this necessary. Only break the word between syllables. Check your dictionary if you are unsure where the syllables end. Many dictionaries indicate the syllable breaks by inserting bullets into the word like this: syl•la•ble. Place a hyphen directly after the break.

She knew the instant he walked in that he had sus­ tained some injury during last night’s game.

If you are typing your essay on a computer, remember that most word processing software will hyphenate your lines automatically when needed.

Create Compound Words Hyphens can join words to make compound words. Here are some examples:

bluish­black, four­part, space­age, chip­toothed, seven­year­old

Hyphens can also connect strings of words so that they function as one. In this example, the

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string acts as a single adjective modifying attitude.

His how­many­times­must­I­say­this attitude proved he had no patience while explaining the radically difficult concept.

Some compound words, such as forthright, have been used enough to be considered one word. If you have doubts about whether or not a compound word needs a hyphen, check your dictionary.

Divide Fractions and Compound Numbers Use hyphens to join both parts of fractions.

three­fourths, two­thirds, nine­sixteenths

Also use hyphenation to join numbers below one hundred.

fifty­one, twenty­seven, eighty­nine

For more information about writing numbers, see “Abbreviations.”

Abbreviations

Abbreviations shorten a longer word or group of words.

You must abbreviate: • Certain titles or degrees • Certain organization names • Temperatures, times, and years.

Do not abbreviate: • Days or months • Units of measurement • Names of places • Names of people • Company names • Reference information (unless within a parenthetical reference)

Do not abbreviate by using: • Symbols • Latin abbreviations in the text of your paper

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While abbreviations are handy in everyday handwriting—jotted notes and so forth—they can sometimes lead to confusion or a lack of fully developed explanation in academic writing. For example, a writer could lean too heavily on the shortcut etc. (an abbreviation of the Latin term, et cetera: Et = 'and', cetera = 'remaining things') and leave readers uninformed.

The proposed combination vaccination would cover such diseases as polio, etc.

The reader does not have enough information to understand what remaining things are referred to. What have we missed?

The proposed combination vaccination would cover such diseases as polio, chicken pox, measles, and rubella.

The guide below points out which abbreviations are helpful and which abbreviations leave your reader confused or partially informed. Other words are simply spelled out to maintain a standard in academic writing, which is also an attempt to communicate with clarity.

Abbreviate: Certain Titles or Degrees Some titles are abbreviated.

Judith Akahel, Ph.D. Dr. Judith Akahel St. John Ms. Layla Anoli

But others, in academic writing, are not abbreviated.

Professor Drey Trumble Reverend Lovejoy Senator Dan Coats General Schwarzkopf

In non­academic writing, some titles may be abbreviated when used with the person’s full name.

Rev. David Lovejoy Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf

Certain Organization Names Many organizations are sufficiently well known to be referred to by their initials alone.

the FBI the CIA the NAACP the NBA the NCAA NASA

You may refer to lesser­known organizations by their initials once the full name has been spelled out the first time it is mentioned in your paper, and the acronym that you intend to use is provided in parentheses.

The Beer Emissions Limitations Council Helpers (BELCH) was formed just last year. Since then, BELCH has been very active in the fraternities on campus.

Temperatures, Times, and Years These items are commonly abbreviated.

4:00 p.m. 10:00 a.m. AD 760 2500 BC 212° F 50° C 250 CE 1300 BCE

Write “a.m.” and “p.m.” in lower case letters. Also, notice that “AD” appears before a date, whereas “BC” appears after it. However, “CE” and “BCE” are preferred usage, which both follow a date (reference to CE [Common Era] and BCE [Before the Common Era] have come into usage in academic settings as a way to separate from the religious connotations of AD and BC). Neither AD, BC, CE, nor BCE need periods between the letters.

Do Not Abbreviate: Days or Months Write out words like Friday and December for days and months.

Units of Measurement Write out words such as gallons, feet, meters, cubic inches, and years.

Names of Places Write out words in place names such as Fifth Avenue (not 5th Ave.) or Los Angeles (not L.A.).

Names of People Do not abbreviate personal names such as Robert (not Robt.), Frank (not Fr.), or Charles (not Chas.).

Company Names Write out company names precisely as the companies themselves write them. Do not substitute an ampersand (&) for the word and unless the company does so. Do not abbreviate company to co. or corporation to corp. unless the company does so.

Reference Information (unless within a parenthetical reference) Unless you are creating a parenthetical reference (see “Documenting Sources”), spell out reference information such as page (not p.), pages (not pp.), and chapter (not chpt.). This is primarily a matter of tradition, the argument being that writing out the words when they appear as part of your sentences allows the reader’s eye to flow through them instead of stopping to notice the abbreviation.

Do Not Abbreviate by Using: Symbols In most college writing—with the possible exceptions of mathematical, engineering, or scientific courses—do not use symbols such as $, %, #, ­, + in the body of the paper (the text). In the body of the paper, spell them out as dollars, percent, number, minus, and plus.

However, you may use symbols in charts, tables, and graphs. You may also use the $ symbol if you are mentioning a specific amount of money, such as $5.34.

Latin Abbreviations Do not use Latin abbreviations in the text of your paper. As discussed above, many writers have grown accustomed to using Latin abbreviations in their writing, but English equivalents written out in full are preferred.

Abbreviation Latin English cf. confer compare e.g. exempli gratia for example et al. et alii and others, and all others etc. et cetera and so forth i.e. id est that is N.B. nota bene note well

Et al is used, however, in a few instances for documentation in MLA style

Numbers

Numbers can be represented in words or numerals. In academic English writing the general guideline is to write out the word when it can be done so conveniently. (In scientific and business writing, when numbers are used often, the convention is to use more numerals.)

• Spell out numbers when they can be written in one or two words • Use numerals for any number requiring three or more words • Use numerals, not spelled­out numbers, in a variety of other circumstances

Spell Out Numbers When They can be Written in One or Two Words Numbers like five, fifty­two, twelve, and ninety­nine should be written as words, not represented with numerals, since they can all be written in one or two words.

Use Numerals for any Number Requiring Three or More Words Any number requiring three words or more should be represented by simple numerals like 122, 555, 894, and 204.

Exceptions: If a passage (say, a paragraph or closely related paragraphs) contains various numbers, some

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of which require three words or more and others which require only two, it is best to simply represent them all in numerals, for consistency’s sake.

If one number modifies another number, write out one and express the other in numeral form.

Only two 12 th Street businesses signed the petition.

Use Numerals for a Variety of Other Circumstances

• Addresses 1422 Greenbeard Avenue, Yorkshire, New Jersey 02032

• Precise representations of currency $34.15; $4.00; $8,003.27

• Dates 1917­1945; December 8, 1842; 19 January 1997

• Precise times 5:45 a.m., 7:00 p.m., 8:13 a.m.

• Volume, chapter, and page numbers in prose works Volume III, chapter 5, page 356

• Act, scene, and line numbers in dramatic works Act 3, scene 2, lines 22­27

• Line numbers in poems Line 12

• Chapter and verse numbers in the Bible Matthew 7:7

• Scores, ratios, and statistics 7­17, 10:1, the median score was 78

• Numbers that identify items Number 9, Track 14, Interstate 70, Locker 112

Timed Writing Strategies

Throughout this handbook we have emphasized the ways that writing is a process and we have encouraged you to take time to write and rewrite, and then to rethink and write again. However, not all writing tasks, particularly in academic settings, allow for such time. For example, many instructors give essay exams where you are expected to write well in a short period of time. In English 101 and 102 all students take a timed writing about halfway through the semester as part of the course requirement. Also, the University requires all students to pass a writing proficiency exam, which is to be written within a designated time. A timed writing or an essay test can be a high­pressure situation, especially since a grade is generally attached to the performance. However, viewing timed writings as a unique rhetorical situation can help give you some control. Timed writings will probably always include some stress, but the good news is that you can use several strategies to increase your success.

How Do I Prepare?

When athletes prepare for an important game, they make sure to sleep well the night before, eat energy­producing food, and run some drills before they hit the field. Musicians preparing for a concert dress in their professional concert clothing, review difficult sections, and warm up on some scales before they step onto the stage. Students planning to take an essay test can learn from athletes and musicians about the importance of preparation.

As much as you can, prepare before the test as well. If you know the general topic of the timed writing, make sure you understand it well. Spend some time researching it further, learning about what other experts are saying about the topic. Another good idea is to talk about the topic with another student; listening to another’s impressions will help you discover new aspects of the issue you may not have thought about, and discussing your own ideas will give you experience articulating what you think about it. Then, take some time to practice writing about an aspect of the topic that interests or confuses you, or respond to questions that you think may appear on the exam. This experience writing about the topic may generate some ideas or understanding that you can incorporate into your answer.

Don’t forget the practical aspects of taking a test too. Sleep well the night before; eat a healthy meal; wear comfortable clothes; and wear a watch or sit in view of the clock. You may also want to arrive in the room early, so you can choose to sit at a desk or computer that feels comfortable to you. Distractions like a growling stomach or scratchy clothes can inhibit your ability to think

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and therefore produce an insightful answer. And most importantly, approach the test with confidence. This is your chance to demonstrate that you have unique and thoughtful ideas about the topic.

How Do I Manage My Time?

Because of the added pressure of limited time, students often dive immediately into essay tests, writing furiously for the full period. However, pausing to use the strategies of the writing process, even under pressure, will usually result in a more effective essay:

When you first receive the question, consider it carefully. Make sure you understand it, and then spend 5­10 minutes brainstorming. Even if at first you feel that you have nothing to say on the topic, brainstorming may help you discover that you have many ideas to present. Use the invention strategies work well for you, such as making lists, freewriting, or clustering. You may even want to develop a brief outline of the ideas you want to address in your answer. In this step, you will also want to formulate at least a tentative thesis statement, which you can always revise later.

Next, spend most of your time drafting your answer. Respond to the question, referring to your notes or outline to keep you on track. Sometimes it helps to give you an allotted period of time for each major idea. For example, if you have three main points and about 30 minutes, give yourself 10 minutes to address each point. (Often each major point will become its own paragraph, too.)

Save the last 5­10 minutes to look over your answer for revision. Focus on big picture concerns, such as whether your essay has a strong thesis, organization, and development. Check to see that all of your points are covered and supported with examples. This important step allows you to make sure that all of the ideas in your mind have made it onto the page. With just a minute or two left, focus on minor mechanical and grammatical changes, paying special attention to patterns of mistakes you usually make. If nothing else, at least run the spell checker. (You won’t have enough time to catch everything!)

If you do run out of time to finish your answer, jot down an outline of the rest of your answer. While not ideal, this often will help an instructor understand where you were heading with your response.

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What Do Instructors Want?

In timed writings, instructors are looking for your ability to argue your own opinions effectively. They also want you to demonstrate that you can think critically and analytically about the topic, not merely recall factual information. Sometimes instructors will use an essay test to ask you to relate a topic to your own experience or observations of the world. Make sure that you choose your position carefully and develop it clearly, providing specific examples to support your ideas.

When writing about literature, students are often tempted to provide plot summary of the work. Resist this temptation! While it makes sense to write a few sentences of plot summary, this should not be the bulk of your answer. Instructors are most interested in reading your analysis of the work. (Remember, your instructor has already read the work and knows its plot. Your instructor does not know what you think about it.)

Lastly, instructors want you to demonstrate that you can incorporate the parts of an essay into your answer under pressure. Even though it’s a timed writing, work to develop an interesting introduction, an informative thesis statement, supportive body paragraphs, and a compelling conclusion. An essay with this structure, even if you weren’t able to say all you wanted to, is usually better than a more thorough but unstructured response.

Ten Tricks for Taking an Essay Test

The following list was adapted slightly from the list developed by Jon Plaisted and published online in SUNY Stony Brook’s Assignment Sourcebook for Writing Teachers.

First: Warm up beforehand by writing something. We all perform better once we've got the rhythm. A smart test­taker writes a letter to a friend while waiting for the test to begin.

Second: Get excited. If you can get excited by what you're saying and become energized by your own performance, the way an actor gets energized just by being on stage in front of an audience, you'll have won half the battle. As always, the easiest way to excite yourself is to say something that matters to you and to write directly to someone with the intent of moving him. Of course, many essay test topics make this difficult. Do your best, and remember, a car salesman isn't excited by the car; she's excited by the selling.

Third: Get down to cases. You may feel you don't have time, but that's like thinking you're in such a hurry to leave town that you don't have time to gas up. No idea can be fully presented without some concrete examples, so however short the essay is, you must use them. If your test answer is two sentences long, make the first sentence into a thesis and the second an example.

The rest of the tricks all have to do with saving time.

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Fourth: In essay tests time is short, so take a moment to pre­write. The urge is to go right to your first paragraph, but two or three minutes spent mapping will usually pay for themselves by giving you a sense of direction early. Too many writers discover the real direction of their essay on page three when it's too late.

Fifth: Get on with it. Make sure that your first sentence jumps into the heart of things. Skip all essay etiquette like a leisurely introduction. Never repeat yourself.

Sixth: Write in your own language. It takes time to translate your thoughts into someone else's language, and you don't have time.

Seventh: Write only one draft. You won't have time to rewrite. If you write a few lines and then disown them, just cross them out and keep on writing. Almost any instructor will accept such messiness.

Eighth: Be aware of the time. Make sure you know how much time you have to write and keep track of the time as you go along. An unfinished good essay is worse than a finished okay essay.

Ninth: Proofread for garbled meaning. You'll hate to spend the time, but hasty writing is often garbled in ways that will crack up your instructor. Just skim to see if you wrote the words you intended. It takes less time than you think–perhaps twenty seconds to proofread a thirty­minute exam.

Last: Proofread your mechanics. Look only at your pet problems. Proofread for them alone. You don't have time for a thorough editorial polishing.

There are as many different ways to approach learning as there are different students in the world. As a university student, you ought to actively explore numerous study methods and work habits so you can find the ones that fit you best. In other words, you should be trying to learn who you are as a learner and worker, so you can become more effective at accomplishing all sorts of tasks. In that spirit, this chapter offers you a few tips for success in Writing Program courses.

Make Time for Success

The best writing develops over a course of time; therefore, the most successful writers give themselves enough time to think, write, re­think, and re­write. You will almost always find that the more you revise, the more the quality of your writing increases. And revision takes time. Simply put, if you want to write well, you need to spend quality time with your writing.

Most students have been guilty of waiting until the night before to begin a writing project. “If I only had one more day on this paper,” some students find themselves saying, “I could really make it great.” But the thing is those students had another day. Lots of other days! They just didn’t get started early enough. Sometimes last­minute papers turn out okay, but they are usually slapdash and sloppy, and they are always stressful to write. These papers tend to lack development, coherence, and organization. On top of all that, last­minute writers rarely have time to proofread, so their work usually abounds with embarrassing typos and misstatements. Instructors do notice: To someone who reads student papers regularly, there is an obvious difference in quality between a last­minute paper and a revised and improved paper.

Don’t fall into the “last minute” trap. By getting started early—thinking about what you want to write about, starting your research and/or prewriting, and producing a rough draft well ahead of the due date—you will assure yourself enough time to re­read, re­think, and revise your papers. Then, you’ll be able to turn in work you are proud of rather than work you didn’t really finish.

Tips for Success CHAPTER

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Prepare For Class; Participate In Class

The alarm clock goes off at 7:00 a.m. Your instructor asked you to read an essay before your 9:00 a.m. composition class, but you’re still tired from the night before. Do you wake up and read the assignment? Or do you slam the snooze button for another hour­and­a­half so that when you get to class you feel the need to duck behind the student in front of you and avoid eye contact while the rest of the class investigates the essay?

It’s easy to think that you can get away with not completing a daily assignment. But not only do you risk irritating your classmates when you show up unprepared, you also cheat yourself out of much of the day’s learning. The more you participate in a course by reading, completing assignments, and contributing to class discussions, the more you can benefit from the course.

In math, it’s easy to know you’re behind when you miss a step or two, but in English (and in other humanities courses), it’s sometimes difficult to see missed steps, even when they are important. In Writing Program courses, when you don’t read an assignment, you’re missing steps. When you “zone out” during a class discussion, you’re missing steps. When you choose not to work at your writing, you’re missing steps. When you miss or ignore your instructor’s advice and suggestions, you’re missing steps.

Writing program courses offer you a rare chance to have a professional writer give assignments and analyze your writing with the sole purpose of helping you become a more effective writer. If you need help with your writing, be sure to get that help during your Writing Program courses. Even if you are already an experienced writer, you can still benefit from making your good writing even better by thinking about logic and organization, working on development, and learning the tricks of the trade that can turn a pretty good paper into an excellent piece of writing. Even if you choose not to follow all of your instructor’s suggestions, trying out his or her advice will teach you something about writing, show you more about who you are as a writer and learner, and make you aware of the writing options open to you.

Listen Closely to the Assignment

Before you start investing time in writing an assignment, make sure you understand it. Students sometimes spend extensive time writing a paper and find out later that the assignment asked them to write a different kind of paper. Read closely and listen carefully to your instructor’s assignments. Ask questions if the assignments aren’t clear. Also, Writing Center tutors enjoy talking about writing assignment prompts; consider stopping by the Writing Center (RB 291) after your teacher gives you an assignment.

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Write About What Interests You

You probably have many more things that interest you and/or are important to you than you realize. Part of the process of inquiry involves exploring familiar topics and working to understand them and our position on them better. Another part of inquiry involves exploring new topics, or topics that you have only thought about infrequently. When you open yourself up to new ideas you open yourself up to what we described in Chapter 3 as the exigencies that lie dormant within you. Through inquiry you discover that you do have opinions on issues and that your view of the world challenges and is challenged by other people’s views on issues and the world.

So when you think about “what interests you,” do not limit yourself to a small set of issues or ideas with which you are familiar and well­versed. Those areas can often be good starting points for writing, but they can be limiting. Think also of things that you do not know too much about but would like to. Attending Ball State University gives you numerous chances to encounter new issues and new views; take some time to explore and understand them. Your instructor may invite you to explore certain topics or certain angles of exploration that seem unfamiliar at first. However, through further inquiry you will certainly find some topic or some angle that awakens a question you will want to investigate. You will find something you want, or even need, to say.

You will write more easily about subjects that catch your attention, and your “authority” and “voice” will be stronger. When you are excited about your topic, your papers will turn out more interesting, more meaningful, more believable, and more powerful. Just remember to allow yourself the time to discover new interests and the patience to explore new angles.

Think Critically

Often people think that writing well means following all of the “rules”—using the correct verb forms and putting commas in the right place. While grammar and punctuation do influence a reader’s perception of a piece of writing, good writing involves much more. Communicating effectively requires articulating a focus clearly, organizing thoughts logically, and developing ideas thoroughly. In fact, you will find that your Writing Program instructor pays more attention to these aspects of your writing than your grammar and punctuation.

In order to strengthen these aspects of your writing, you will have to develop your critical thinking skills, which refers to a rational and logical way of thinking. Critical thinking requires scrutinizing your own and others’ ideas in order to test their soundness. This process usually

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includes two steps: examining assumptions and testing evidence.

Ideas are always built on other ideas, and you have underlying assumptions that help you form these ideas. Sometimes the assumptions are true, and point logically to the conclusion. Other times, however, the assumptions are faulty, which makes the conclusion weak. For example: A person might argue in favor of the death penalty because of how much it costs to pay for a criminal’s life of imprisonment. This sounds rational, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, however, it’s built upon a faulty assumption. The writer has presumed that a person’s lifetime of food and lodging costs more than putting that person to death. With some careful inquiry and exploration of the many angles on this topic, the writer might discover the greater medical and legal costs associated with capital punishment, which actually make it more expensive than life imprisonment.

In your writing, critical thinking demands that you evaluate whether your conclusions are built upon sound assumptions. Always follow the lines of inquiry to explore your assumptions and evaluate them in terms of the other possible positions on an issue.

The second part of critical thinking involves testing evidence. This mean making sure that the ideas can be supported with facts, and that the supporting information has not been taken out of context. This step also requires taking a close look at counterevidence, to make sure that your argument holds up. Let’s return to the example of the death penalty. Another person might argue against the death penalty, stating that it does not effectively serve as a method of crime prevention. This person found statistics from a reliable source demonstrating that the death penalty does not deter other criminals. However, upon a closer look, the researcher realized that the statistics were only gathered in one state; therefore, they could not be used to address the national effectiveness of the death penalty. The researcher also discovered that even though some prisoners in this state receive a death penalty sentence, few executions have actually occurred, which might also reduce the penalty’s effectiveness in preventing crime. The researcher tested the evidence, considering it critically before using it, and when the evidence was found to be incomplete, the researcher was able to research further and develop a more accurate—and therefore more convincing—argument. As you make claims in your writing, examine your evidence to ensure that you meet the demands of critical thinking. Your reader is sure to question your assumptions and conclusions; by anticipating those questions you can craft an essay that responds to them and provides a carefully­considered, persuasive explanation.

Links to Resources: On­Campus and Online

Campus Resources

The Writing Program is located in RB2115.

The Writing Center is located in RB291. The Writing Center provides free assistance and feedback to all Ball State students regarding any aspect of their writing: focus, exploration, revision, reflection, development, and organization. Their goal is to help students become aware, confident, and reflective writers over time.

Academic Calendar Blackboard eBallPoint Email Services Student Code Student Services Web Gradebook

Computer Labs If you need to use a computer while on campus, the university provides a number of labs where you can write, surf, scan, or do whatever computing you need to do.

The Bracken Library has many resources on and offline.

Online: Although we know that the Internet may be your first stop for information, don’t let it be your last. The Library has an incredible search directory too: Directory.

Do you Google? Is that all you do? There are many search engines available and each will provide different results. Try the same search in a couple of different engines and see what happens. The library has provided a list of some major engines available on the Web: Search Engines

And more: Ebooks Electronic Resources Main Page

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On and Offline Ask a Librarian…………………………………………………….…….Chat, Email, In­person

(Librarians like to talk, just give them a chance.)

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Technology Resources

Tutorials Learning to use Technology is an important part of the Writing Process. BSU has a number of excellent resources for you to use.

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ElementK provides free software training for BSU students; learn to use FrontPage, DreamWeaver, and much more. ElementK tutorials are easy to use and are organized in blocks, so you can work on the tutorials for 15 or 30 minutes at a time if you wish. Follow these INSTRUCTIONS (you’ll have to scroll to the bottom of the page) to access ElementK.

UCS Tutorials: University Computing Services also provides online tutorials for many software applications.

TechTime Do you need FREE help fixing your computer? TechTime staff will help you resolve technical issues with your operating system, application software, and network connections.

University Computing Services (UCS) has additional resources to assist you with the technological aspects of your writing process. Check out the main page or visit the UCS Help Desk.

Among other things, UCS provides:

Beginning Fall Semester 2005, UCS is providing all students, faculty and staff with 2GB of storage which can be used for academic or personal use. MORE...

Individual web account space on iWeb has been increased for the 2005­2006 academic year. MORE...

Increase Your Email Quota Limit Students can now request an increase to their email quota by sending an email to [email protected]. MORE...

A new software product, ePrint, is available to all students, faculty and staff. ePrint can create a PDF file from any application that supports printing. MORE...

Student Services' Hours Extended In collaboration with several key administrative areas working with a cross­functional distributive programming group in UCS, several student services are now available until 11 p.m. MORE...

Information Technology Find more about what is going on with technology at Ball State.

Adaptive Computer Resources Contact Adaptive Computer Resources if you have need of adaptations to use technology

When we talk about writing, the conversation often becomes more beneficial when we have an example in front of us. To that end, we have compiled some essays that provide the opportunity to reflect on the kinds of writing that have been discussed throughout this handbook. Each of the essays below represents strong, though not perfect, responses to the exigence of writing. These samples are from former students whose writing has excelled such that their instructors recommended their work for presentation in BallPoint. Each essay is introduced with a brief discussion of the ways that essay meets the expectations for writing at that level.

Sample Essay: English 101/102

In “Opening You Eyes,” Nicole Mikolay describes what happened in part of a weekend. By choosing just part of the weekend, Mikolay demonstrates the skill of focusing her writing to a particular moment. By choosing to narrate some of her own experience Mikolay chooses writing and situations that are accessible to her, but she does not limit her writing to just relating a tale. She knows, as any skilled storyteller does, that stories are told for a reason; essays are written for a reason, for exigence and audience. Mikolay learned something about herself and about the world around her during this weekend and that was her exigence, her reason to write.

While this essay is a strong example of 101­level writing, it also contains elements that are distinctly 101­level. Certain aspects of the writing would change as Mikolay becomes more experienced. For example, Mikolay uses exclamation marks to show her emphasis. While some instructors consider exclamation marks completely taboo and others understand their occasional use, in any case a more skillful writer can use language, arrangement, and style to provide emphasis rather than relying simply on punctuation.

Mikolay also relies on questions to guide her narrative and instruct her reader. Again, using questions is a rhetorical choice that experienced writers also use, but the difference lies in the level of reliance. Mikolay uses her question to anchor her introductory paragraph and she follows it with a strong set­up of her topic. So she has a solid introduction; the inexperience is revealed in the perhaps overly straight­forward approach.

A careful editor will also notice a few typos such as “suppose” instead of “supposed” near the end of the third paragraph.

None of these signs of inexperience take away from what is a strong 101 performance and no doubt as a reader you will clearly understand what this weekend meant to Mikolay and why it was that she felt the need to share it with you.

Sample Essays CHAPTER

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“Opening” 1

Nicole Mikolay

English 101 Section 7

Fall 2005

Marita Edwards

Opening Your Eyes

Have you ever unfairly judged someone that does not quite conform to the norms of

society? Maybe because of the way he or she dresses or wears his or her hair, you decided what

he or she would be like. We all do it! It seems to be human nature to judge people that look a

little bit different. Starting with when we are children, we have to be constantly reminded to shy

away from making those types of judgments. Our parents seem to endlessly remind us to look

beyond how people look and get to know the person inside. My experience is that this is easier to

say than to actually do. I was as guilty as the next person, until the trip I took with Paul and his

family.

It was supposed to be my family's girls­only weekend. This tradition started because the

guys in the family take a fishing weekend every year. They will not allow any of us on their trip.

So we decided it was only fair that we get a break as well. We were going to head to Cleveland,

Ohio to meet with my grandmother and my aunts. Then travel to Pennsylvania where my

Grandmother has a vacation cottage. We had a great weekend planned. We were going to shop,

eat out, and have a special movie night of girl movies, the type you never get to watch with the

guys around. My mom was so excited, and I was too.

At work one day, my mom was telling her friend June about how she was looking

forward to our trip. June's family was planning a weekend to Cleveland that very same weekend.

She and her two sons planned to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and take in a Cleveland

“Opening” 2

Indian's baseball game. June thought we could save on gas and go together and kind of invited

herself to come along. My mom is one of those people that has a hard time saying no. I was

disappointed from the start. I had looked forward to the four hour trip with just my mom. We

usually talked, sang songs to the radio, and just generally enjoyed being together. I knew this trip

would not be the same. After all, it was suppose to be a break from my two brothers!

"Think positive," my mother kept telling me. It was really hard to do when I saw the big

red van coming towards my house. I felt my heart drop. June has two sons. Joe is a stereotypical

son with blonde hair, blue eyes, and is athletic. Paul's hair is colored purple and cut in a

Mohawk, and he has tattoos and body piercings everywhere.

When they arrived to pick my mother and me up, Joe, the stereotypic son, told my mom

to sit in the back seat because he was already sitting in the front passenger seat. Paul grabbed Joe

and gently, but firmly, pulled him to the back. Well, that was good for my mom, but that left me

sitting in the far back seat with a purple­haired, tattooed, pierced boy, Paul. I had never talked to

Paul in my life, and now I was suppose to sit next to him for the next four hours!

As much as I tried to fall asleep, Paul wanted to make conversation. Ever have that

feeling when you know you should not be staring at something, but your eyes are glued to it?

Well, that what was happening to me when Paul kept talking to me. I could not keep from

wondering what would posses him to do that to himself. I was so caught up in the way he looked

I barely heard a word he was saying. Even though he was being nice, I still felt uncomfortable

sitting next to him. All I could think was, "Why didn't my mom just say no?" This was a crazy

idea and seemingly was going to ruin our whole trip. It would not have cost that much more to

drive by ourselves.

We were just about forty­five minutes into a four­hour trip, when the trip started taking a

“Opening” 3

turn for the worst. Imagine that, things getting worse. Joe had just awakened from his forty­five

minute nap, and he was hungry and obnoxious. He was not just hungry for any type of food; he

wanted and demanded to eat at McDonald's. We had just passed the first rest stop which had a

McDonald's restaurant. The next rest stop with a McDonald's restaurant could be miles away.

We continued down the turnpike while Joe took it upon himself to announce every mile marker

along the way. When he was not shouting the mile marker, he felt compelled to let us all know

how hungry he was. Paul kept apologizing for his brother's obnoxious behavior. He even offered

his walkman for me to use. He was embarrassed and tried to drown out his brother's voice.

Thirty­four long miles later, the next rest stop was in sight. Much to all of our

disappointment, it did not have a McDonald's. June had hardly stopped the van when Joe was

jumping out and running into the rest area, complaining all the way to the door that it was not a

McDonald's. Paul on the other hand, waited for us, opened our doors, and walked us inside. That

is when it hit me! I had it all wrong! The boy I was so afraid of turned out to be the gentleman.

He was kind, considerate, and caring. Suddenly, I found myself not noticing his tattoos so much.

When we got back into the van, I realized we had less than three hours left in the trip. We

were barely on the turnpike again when Joe stared. He began to sing a new tune, "Are we there

yet?", which began to echo repeatedly throughout the van. In between those questions, which

made me cringe, was his never ending announcement of every mile marker on the turnpike,

which just added to the length of the trip. Joe was so annoying it took every ounce of my

strength to keep my mouth shut.

After a while, I found myself not paying so much attention to Joe. His endless ranting

seemed to blend in to the background, like listening to an oldies music station in the car when

nothing else will tune in. After a while, you do not even hear it anymore.

“Opening” 4

I do not know when or how, but suddenly I realized I was in a rather pleasant

conversation with Paul. Somewhere behind all the piercings, tattoos, and the purple hair was a

very interesting guy. My rude start turned into amazement. I was now preoccupied with Paul.

The thought of how wrong my first impressions were was now overwhelming. Do not get me

wrong. Even though I had become comfortable with Paul, when we finally pulled up to my

grandparent's driveway, it was I who was jumping out of the van before June could stop!

Paul unloaded our luggage from the van. Joe, as you may have guessed, sat in the van

mumbling to himself. After this lengthy trip, I could not help but notice that no one was

listening to him. Paul and I finished our conversation over a cold soda. I think he needed a break

from his brother, too, even if it was for only a few minutes.

After Paul slowly finished his soda, he slowly, but surely got back into the van. For my

mother and me, our girls weekend was about to begin. The weekend flew by; both the families

got to do what they attended to do that weekend.

It was soon time to take the trip back to Fort Wayne. I had totally forgotten about the ride

home. I was so worried about getting to Ohio that I did not even think about how the ride home

would go. Surprisingly enough, it went very well. Joe was so tired from his busy weekend that

he fell asleep for the whole ride home, and Paul and I just talked the whole time about our

weekends.

After spending this time with Paul, I have changed my perception of people. At least

now, I dare to think twice about my first impressions. I found out that even though someone

might look different, they could be the coolest person I will ever meet. I am not saying I do not

judge people anymore because that would be a lie, but now when I judge someone, I cannot help

but think back to this trip, an experience where I was forced to sit by a purple Mohawk, tattooed,

pierced boy, and how it opened my eyes.

Sample Essays: English 103

The English 103 essays below offer insights into the writing process. Although they are not uniformly strong in terms of the level of writing that is expected for English 103, they do provide a glimpse of the kind of writing expected in English 103, and the challenges sometimes incurred in doing so. The two essays below represent writing that is successful in many aspects expected for English 103. However, in specific areas these essays also fall short of the successful shift to more complex writing of more experienced writers.

Students in 103 are expected to have the experience to move more quickly to more complex levels of writing. The samples below reflect the increasing levels of sophistication possible in 103 writing. Gardner uses her own experience but extends those experiences by connecting with outside research. The level of reflection deepens as Gardner presents her experience in connection with, and in terms of, some of the reading she has done. Her citations reflect exploration of social issues involved as well as the practical issues of travel experiences. Thus Gardner takes a step into the genre of travel narratives. Like Mikolay (above), Gardner considers issues of the other.

Also like Mikolay, Gardner demonstrates writing that, while more advanced, also shows a lack of experience. She does not blend the research and the narrative as smoothly as a more experienced writer might. Also, the “I” of the narrative is much more pronounced than it might be if a more experienced writer were relating this experience and exploring these issues. Most compositionists agree that the use of “I” is appropriate and beneficial in many writing situations. The inexperience revealed in Gardener’s use is a matter of balance; this contributes to a lack of audience appeal. The reader probably becomes engaged at the level of hearing about Gardner’s experiences and many readers may also be interested in the social issues affecting South American farmers. The reader may also be interested in the travel tips. However, the inexperience of the writer surfaces when these levels of information, and somewhat connected ideas, do not come together for a clear point.

The focus of EN103 is persuasion and a successful writer in 103 will present a clear issue about which she sees the need to persuade a particular audience. For Gardner, this goal comes out in the conclusion where she encourages Americans to travel because it will expand their horizons. A more experienced writer would have used the content of the essay to more clearly lead the reader towards this conclusion, rather than simply presenting each different element in turn and then relying on the last few sentences to carry the persuasive theme.

By the end of English 103, writers should be able to handle the complexities of such a narrative. Where in Mikolay’s essay for English 101 (above) the strictly linear relating of the experience works quite well, in Gardner’s essay the piling on of information and experiences reveals a weakness that is not expected at the 103 level. Thus, Gardner’s essay is more complex than Mikolay’s, but is not as strong for the level of writing expected.

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Pamela Gardner “Whole World” 1

Eng 103 sec. 054

11/1/05

Essay 3

There is a Whole World to Explore

In the fall of 2003, I was asked if I was interested in going on a mission trip to Brazil. I

remember being so excited and telling myself, "Finally!" A few years prior to being asked, I had

been trying to persuade my youth minister Brian Meier to organize a youth mission trip to our

sister parish São Jose in Imbau, Parana, Brazil. When he finally asked me if I wanted to go with

a group of adults, I was thrilled! I asked other teens in my youth group and we gathered a group

of 4 teens and 6 adults to travel over 4,000 miles to Brazil. Many people think that traveling

outside of the country is not important. However, I believe that many times when you travel you

have life changing experiences that make yourself grow into a culturally diverse person who has

an impressive amount of knowledge, experience, and respect for others.

In the fall of 2002, my best friend, Laura Marshall, told me about a mission trip that she

went on that past summer to Mexico and how it changed her life. I went to church (St. Louis de

Montfort in Fishers, IN) that Sunday and heard a man speak about his experience of living in

Imbau, Brazil for several months. He then announced that a group of adults will be going there

for a ten day mission trip to establish relationships with the church, São Jose. After mass, I told

Brian Meier, my youth minister, that we should gather a youth group to travel to Brazil. At first

he said, "Right, and how are we going to do that?" Eventually he saw that it was possible and

planned a trip for a few teens to travel with other adults there in the summer of 2004. In 2005, I

planned another trip to Brazil because we four teens who went there the past year, wanted to see

“Whole World” 2

everyone we had met there again. Against the odds, and people telling me that it was impossible

to do, I planned a twenty­four day trip for just me and two other eighteen­year olds to return (the

fourth teen from the 2004 trip, could not go back). I planned where we would stay,

transportation, the costs, and the dates of the trip.

After traveling to Brazil, my outlook on life and other people changed dramatically. I

thought if someone was poor in Brazil then that meant they were sad all the time and lived in a

two story house that was falling apart. Reality set in when I was driving to the town we would be

staying in. Along the way there were tiny shacks made of old wood and holes for windows. I was

educated from the people I interacted with and learned from them that it does not matter how

much money you have, you could still have a rich life. While in Brazil, our group built houses,

played with children, created a bond between the Brazilian and American teenagers, and

promoted involvement with the church. In Figure 1.1, we are interacting with the children and

“Whole World” 3

going to play soccer in a nearby field. I learned lessons such as: family really is the most

important part of a person's life, be kind to others, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not

sweat the small stuff. I now enjoy the little things in life such as watching a sunset or even going

to the store with my mom and I think about my Brazilian friends daily. I like to look at the sun

on a sunny day, and think that 4,000 miles away in Brazil, my friends can see the same sun that I

see­then the world doesn't seem as huge.

People can have many positive experiences when they travel out of the country. You can

learn another language or culture, make friendships, and my favorite, going shopping for exotic

clothing or decorations for your house. I had not learned any Portuguese before traveling to

Brazil, but as soon as we arrived I started to learn the basics with just trying to hold a

conversation with a Brazilian. However, during those conversations, we had to have a translator

with us. During the second trip in 2005, I retained the basics and ended up being able to hold a

conversation by myself with a Brazilian who knew very little English.

Obtaining knowledge from a country you travel to gives your personality depth. For

example, when you meet someone in the United States and the conversation gets awkward, just

do what I do; say as an ice­breaker, "So...I have been to Brazil twice." Then you can spend days

answering their questions, and you look like an expert on that country. People who travel have a

broader understanding of the world around them, and they have religious tolerance. You now

have knowledge of how other people live their lives and how they worship; you realize that your

way (or the American way) is not the only way. Racism is another issue that can disappear in our

lives if we realize the heritage of other people. To me, once I realize someone's heritage and

culture I have a new, fonder respect for them. I have never been racist, but my respect for

"different" people has grown through traveling.

“Whole World” 4

As well as traveling to Brazil, I was fortunate enough to travel to Argentina also. In this

country, I found similarities to Brazil. Other than sharing borders, the people here were just as

loving toward one another and found joy in the "so­called" insignificant things in life that we as

Americans are too busy to notice. For example, most people do not stare at the stars on a regular

basis, but in Brazil and Argentina, people stop to look and gaze into the heavens every night and

reflect on the day.

Another positive aspect of traveling outside the country is that you begin to find your

identity. No matter what your age, we are always searching for who we are. Some never realize

who they are; others (like me) find it through traveling outside the United States. In Travel and

Leisure magazine, Ramiro Lopez Serrot told Mitchell Owens of his travels to Buenos Aires,

Argentina. He is quoted here saying, "In New York, he advised investors; in Buenos Aires, the

long­troubled capital of an equally troubled country, he found something else to invest in­his

own culture, his own identity." (Owens, 112). Serrot found who he was by immersing himself in

another country. Seeing their pride in Argentina and seeing their love for one another, he found

himself searching for and finding his own identity. He found that he is proud of his Argentinean

roots and discovered that there is more in life than just his work.

In Brazil you are completely opened up to a whole new world. I never knew how lucky I

was until I visited the Landless of Brazil. These people are still, in 2005, in a revolution to regain

land that was taken from them. They were forced to move into slums because in the 1950s rich

coffee farmers bought out thousands and thousands of acres of the land in Eastern Parana. There

was a large overflow of the coffee plantations and not enough land in the northern states of

Brazil. Anyone who lived on that land (that was being bought out for the coffee) had to move.

Because the state of Parana is one of the southern­most states of Brazil, it has major frosts since

“Whole World” 5

it is farther away from the Equator. The frosts killed the coffee plantations for good in the late

1960s. Since this time, those who were forced to move off the land decided to take it back since

the reason they were forced off of it no longer affected their homeland. Mass groups of these

people would camp on the land until the Brazilian government recognized that the land indeed

was not being rightfully used by the richer owner, and granted the campers the land. The

excitement of regaining the land is told by Adelina Ventura Nunes, a Landless member in 1999.

"We were all very hopeful. We'd been told we were going to be given our plots very soon.

INCRA [Instituto Nacional de Colonizadio e Reforma Agraria] had inspected the land, and said

it was unproductive. We were so sure that we'd be settled over the next few days that we'd

brought all our belongings into the camp" (Brandford and Rocha 148). Later in this story, we are

told that these people are still struggling to regain the land and after violence and persistence,

they eventually received it, after much loss.

Figure 1.2 shows a picture of the living conditions of the Landless camps. Nunes

experienced deaths of her friends and family as a result of this revolution (Brandford and Rocha

148). After traveling to these camps and seeing the living conditions and seeing how happy these

people were after all they had been through, you really learn to examine your own life and

realize what is truly important. Our translator on our mission trip translated what one woman

said to us. She said that they are happy for all that they have­they have shelter, food, clothing,

and most importantly­family, religion and community.

I asked students in my English class if they ever wanted to travel outside of the country.

Three out of the five said they would. However, when I asked them if they would hop on a plane

and travel to a different country right that second, they said, "No." Why, I asked? Because it took

too much time, money, and effort to plan it. Many people will argue that traveling outside of the

country is dangerous, expensive, and hazardous to your health. Maybe so, but if you know how

to travel smartly, you will be amazed and have the time of your life. One concern amongst

students and adults is kidnappings. In Travel and Leisure magazine, Mitchell Owens addresses

this issue in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "In 2002, the peso, long pegged to the dollar, was abruptly

adjusted and lost 300 percent of its value, and for a while kidnappings­sometimes for as little as a

few hundred dollars in ransom, just enough to pay (116) the rent or feed an family for a week­

became a relatively common place" (150). In large cities, of course there are kidnappings

everyday—same as in the United States. You just have to realize you cannot travel alone ever in

a large city, especially at night.

“Whole World” 6

Of course going to a four­star resort in Naples, Italy overlooking the Mediterranean is

expensive! You can gain just as much, if not more, life experience by traveling a little less

extravagant. When I traveled to Brazil I spent about $1000 total for ten days; including roundtrip

airfare, hotel, and food. You don't need to show off all that money that you don't have on a trip

like that (even if you aren't on a mission trip). Besides, you are most likely only there one to a

few times in your life and you will not even be spending all your time in your four­star hotel. I

found that if I travel again to another country, I am not going to dish out several thousands of

dollars; all I need is a simple hotel and enough food for a few meals a day. In the book,

Everywoman's Guide to Travel, the author Donna Goldfein says that you do not need a first class

hotel to offer an amazing trip; look for third or fourth class hotels in a different country for the

same accommodations and comforts for less money (33).

If you are worried about catching a disease, do not worry. I have traveled to the poorest,

most unsanitary areas of Brazil (twice) without having a vaccine for anything and I am perfectly

fine. I was told I did not need a vaccine, either time that I traveled to Brazil (the first time for ten

days, the second for twenty­four days). It is just not necessary to receive a vaccine if you do not

plan on remaining in another country for more than a few months. The likelihood that I would

have caught yellow fever (from mosquitoes) or dysentery (from unsanitary conditions) was very

slim.

Brazil holds a special place in my heart. Even though I will some day like to travel back

there, I will also travel to other countries. I love having the knowledge, experiences, and respect

for other cultures that I have now. Don't worry if you cannot travel now, or to more than one

other country (besides Canada)­you have your whole life to do it, but do it!

“Whole World” 7

Works Cited

Branford, Sue and Jan Rocha. Cutting the Wire; the Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil.

London: Latin America Bureau, 2002.

Gardner, Pamela. Photo of Children. 2004.

Gardner, Pamela. Photo of a Landless Village. 2004.

Gardner, Pamela. Interview of English Class. October 20, 2005.

Goldfein, Donna. Everywoman's Guide to Travel. Millbrae, California: Les Femmes, 1977.

Owens, Mitchell. "Buenos Aires Steps it Up." Travel and Leisure. July 2005: 110­117.

Like the essay above, Lindsay Putof’s essay demonstrates a combination of personal experience and library research to explore an issue of concern to her. However, Putof’s essay represents another step of complexity because the experience from which her writing arises involves a discussion of an issue that is important to her. As a result her essay begins at the level of the issue, rather than at the level of personal experience.

This essay demonstrates the difficulty of that move from personal expression to analysis. Although she does not say so directly, the reader of Putof’s essay gets the sense that the panel discussion that she attended forms the center of her knowledge and experience on this issue. She experienced this panel and this motivated her to explore and write more about the issue. This is the type of writing that 103 encourages; it involves inquiry: Putof is stepping outside her own biographical experiences to engage with an issue of concern to her. She still incorporates her experiences, but this essay represents a more conscious effort to go out and gain experiences, to inquire into the world around her. Putof then combines her experience of the panel discussion with her own perspectives and with other reading and inquiries that she makes into the subject. However, she shows inexperience in a couple of important ways.

One thing missing from Putof’s essay that should be clear at the 103 level is a fuller presentation of why this is a significant issue to the reader. Putof refers to the decline of newspapers as a “crisis,” but fails to engage her audience enough to persuade them that the decline of newspapers should concern them. Thus her references to a “solution” are not part of a coherent argument and the reader may miss the exigence of the situation. Putof makes it clear that younger people read newspapers less, and then suggests that younger readers are best suited to change that. However, she does not clearly explain why or how that could be accomplished. A discussion of the solution will not become important to her readers until Putof convinces them that the crisis is real, is of significance to the reader, and that something should be done. She demonstrates that this is a problem for newspaper owners, but is less successful at persuading an audience of a problem beyond that. Despite this difficulty with audience, Putof’s understanding of the issues, her use of language, and her experienced incorporation of quotes recommend this essay as a strong 103 essay.

Another area in which this essay reveals a lack of experience is the use of graphics. The graphs that she uses are not integrated into the discussion, but instead are placed seemingly randomly, one at the beginning of the essay and one at the end. A more experienced writer may have chosen to place the graphics closer to where they are discussed in the essay and also have considered what an appropriate size might be for these graphs. Another factor involves the types of arguments these two graphs make. Figure 1 demonstrates the decline in the number of newspapers. Figure 2 charts a decline in readership.

A complex reading of these statistics would explore the ways in which they are, and are not, connected and what implications can and cannot be made based upon these readings. While English 104 focuses more directly on research, and such a complex reading would be expected there, yet English 103 introduces students to research and it is reasonable to expect a strong 103 essay to demonstrate an awareness of that complexity.

Lindsay Puthof

Dr. Martha Payne

Essay 4: Crisis

English 103

Where Have the Newspapers Gone?

Fig. 1. Chart illustrates how newspaper circulation has been in decline for years (Jost).

Newspapers: Once a coveted right fought violently for and anxiously bought up on street corners,

newspapers have been losing readers for years as they turn away from the corner sellers and towards a

wide array of internet news (Fig. 1). How could an institution of society, commonly referred to in the

journalism world as the "fourth estate" (in reference to the fourth branch of government), seem to be

diminishing? Several reasons have been offered including those that point to a surplus of information

or rise in competition in the form of television, radio or other broadcasts (Ipods) and the internet.

Others suggest cultural changes such as the "I don't have time" logic which points to the current

impatient and fast­paced climate. Similarly, a tech­savvy generation raised in the midst of the

information age would rather hop on their laptop and find news online, if at all. So, how can

newspapers survive the information wars and gain back readership? One must review not only the

causes listed above, but also recent efforts and what experts speculate for the future in order to reach

a solution to the crisis of "the vanishing newspaper," as author Philip Meyer refers to it in his book

of the same title.

As of the year 2000, the world wide web contained 6, 800 newspapers and a mass market base

of 77 million, expected to rise to 132 million by the end of 2000. With numbers like that, the internet

seems to be capturing readers previously loyal to print publications (Outing, 9). The ease of a few

simple clicks replacing the search and rustling of newspapers in print form contributes to the growing

propensity toward online sources. According to a poll of ten Ball State University students, half of the

students received news from not only one source, but rather a combination of locations. Six claimed

to find news online, two of those six received news from a combination of online and television. The

second most common combination included newspapers and online news sites. The reasons cited

ranged between convenience (six out of ten) and being online a lot (three out often). The only other

resource students cited related to the "word of mouth" of friends and acquaintances. Such statistics

prove evidentiary in the claim that too much competition in the industry is hurting the once chief

news source, newspapers. Secondly, such a survey of college­aged students encourages the idea that

a generation gap between the tech­savvy young generation and older ones not raised in such an

information­crazed environment is to blame (fig. 2). In response to such numbers, newspapers are

increasingly converting print news to online databases. Can newspapers really survive the change?

While advertisements are similarly transferred online, newspapers have yet to perfect the

system and continue to contemplate how to match online revenues to the 20 percent profit margins of

print without charging (Jost). The debate centers around how much online sites should charge for

stories or subscriptions, if at all, in order to survive declining print circulations. Popular and well

accredited newspaperWall Street Journal charges $29.00 per year to print subscribers and $59.00 per

year to electronic database subscribers. In contrast, another well­known news source, USA Today,

offers free access to articles and boasts an overall circulation of 1.7 million, with internet visits to

their sites at a close 1 million a day. While nearly doubling readership with their online database, a

majority ofUSA Today's revenue still stems mostly from the other half (in print). New York Times,

with an overall revenue of $29 billion receives only a small chunk of that from its some 40 web sites,

$24­26 million (Outing, 9). With inconsistency in the market and experimentation in the works, one

must wonder how the newspaper industry can survive in such an environment.

Newspapers are not only moving their news online, they are also making design changes as to

the look of newspapers. In efforts to compete with the flashy graphics of television, magazine, and

online news, newspapers are adding more color, graphics, illustrations, and pictures to their layouts

in place of a previously text emphasized version. A pioneer in such a technique is USA Today, which

in 1982 introduced "...overall design that was inspired by television and easy to read." (Pavlik and

Macintosh, 78­79) The only visible problem with such a technique is that some newspapers do not

design properly and end up becoming too commercialized and trivial (Pavlik and Macintosh, 83). An

example of such design errors arose during a Professional in Residence discussion at Ball State

University, during which experts such as Tony Majeri, former editor for the Chicago Tribune,

commented that newspapers are trying to

be too much to too many people when they simply need to present the news. Majeri added however,

that due to constant bombardment of news and information, a younger generation has become jaded

and newspapers still need "to be able to engage audiences." The only risk with conforming to this

younger and hipper generation is that many news consumers are unfamiliar with some of the

techniques used, leading to confusion and in some cases a loss of credibility. This was highlighted by

another expert at the same panel discussion, Jenn Palilonis, the current Journalism Graphics

coordinator for Ball State University. Palilonis commented that the term "photo illustration" is an

unfamiliar one to those outside the journalism world and often the public does not recognize that a

"photo illustration" refers to a Photoshop image or one created on a computer and not necessarily an

actual photo. This lack of knowledge in the public leaves readers feeling betrayed when they do come

to find the truth (Majeri and Palilonis).

So what exactly can be done to salvage the sometimes grim picture? According to Philip

Meyer, author of The Vanishing Newspaper, the solution lies in future generations of journalism

professionals, with "professionals" being the operative word. Meyer suggests reform starts in

journalism classrooms. Teachers should be preparing students with a wider knowledge adaptable to

future media forms rather than being "craftsmen." The difference between "craftsmen" and

"professionals" is the moral concern involved. Meyer claims "craftsmen" view only the bottom line,

"print the truth and let the chips fall where they may," whereas, "professionals" must be caring public

journalists who anticipate reaction from audiences, which shows in the "topics and modes" of

reporting used by such public journalists (Meyer, 231­33). Meyer's sums his solution with the idea

that we need not wait for current publishers and editors to change and adapt, but rather we need to

start preparing the next generation who will easily adapt and change newspapers in the direction fit to

compete in today's superfluous information field (Meyer, 244).

Others in the news lend support to Meyer's solution. Tom Rosenteil, leader for the Project for

Excellence in Journalism and former Los Angeles Times reporter, stated newspapers are "...going to

have to let go of that print focus...to really build a better journalism you have to think of the Internet

as the better platform." Some experts direct further attention to younger generations blaming the

addition and emphasis of getting information "... by computer keyboard and screen." Sacramento Bee

editor, Richard Rodriguez stated, "They want it where they want it, when they want it, how they want

it, and they don't want to pay for it," of the same tech­savvy generation. Author of Digitizing the

News, Pablo Rodriguez seems to best summarize the solution by stating that the future of

newspapers lies in the blending or re­invention of print editions rather than completely turning

towards online edition (Jost). It seems, no matter how it’s stated, the general consensus among

experts points to need for change directed towards grabbing the attention of swarms of the young who

have strayed from traditional print news (Fig. 2). Who better to grab that attention than aspiring

journalists who have and still are growing up during the information age?

Works Cited

Jost, Kenneth. "Future of Newspapers." CQ Researcher 16.3 (2006) 20 Jan. 2006

<http://library.cqpress.coni/cqresearcher/search.php?>

Majeri, Tony, and Jenn Palilonis. Professional in Residence Panel Discussion, Ball State University

Muncie. 22 Mar. 2006.

Meyer, Philip. The Vanishing Newspaper. London: University of Missouri P, 2004.

Outing, Steve. Newspaper and New Media. Pittsburgh: GATFPress, 2000.

Pavlik, John V., and Shawn Macintosh. Converging Media. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.

Sample Essays: English 104

The goal of English 104 is to introduce students to the wide array of research methods and options. According to the Master Syllabus,

English 104 applies the fundamentals of rhetoric to the research process. This class introduces students to the methods of research; the rhetorical nature of research; and the elements, strategies, and conventions common to research writing, including the visual as well as the verbal organization of new knowledge.

The first two samples below involve library research while the third and fourth report an ethnographic research study.

Meg Thornburg’s essay “New and Improved” presents an informative synthesis. Thornburg clearly and concisely presents the rationale for and the benefits of the new USDA food pyramid. This research report represents the type of writing that will often be used in academic situations as well as workplace scenarios. Thornburg explains the difference between the two pyramids, organizing her essay in such a way that she passes quickly over the old pyramid and provides emphasis on the new pyramid. Her experience as a writer is evident in that she is able to provide this balance without having to tell the reader that is what she is doing. Thornburg also uses graphics effectively, incorporating them into the body of the essay in the places where she is discussing them. The clip­art image at the end of page 6 is a bit gratuitous, but does not seriously detract from the rest of the presentation.

Chad Jacob’s “Caloric Restriction” is also a successful research report. Jacobs does an excellent job of setting up the discussion and of quickly engaging his audience. He uses questions to begin his essay, much as in Mikolay does in her English 101 Essay. However, Jacobs’ use of questions is briefer and better balanced, thus revealing a more experienced use of language. However, even though Jacobs effectively uses questions as a rhetorical device to open his essay, some instructors may feel that four questions on the first page is too much. The strength of Jacobs’ questions lies in the fact that he sets out to answer them in his research report, thus allowing the questions to become more than just a rhetorical device to grab the reader’s attention.

Another way in which Jacobs’ essay demonstrates the work of an experienced writer is in the seamless integration of source material. As an experienced writer, Jacobs blends the language of his source material into his own voice so that the entire presentation offers substantial claims backed by direct evidence without overwhelming the reader with quotes or references to source material.

Jacobs also considers the other side of the argument throughout the essay and incorporates his responses to the critics into his presentation. Thus the views of the detractors serve to bolster his argument. In short, the readers of this essay will become informed about calorie restriction and if they are not persuaded to try it, at least they will be encouraged to consider the possibility of its benefits.

Louis Jordan’s essay models two goals of English 104 particularly well. One is working with the research question. While it could be argued that Jordan becomes occasionally too conversational in his discussion of his research question in the paper, he combines it with a voice that matches the rhetorical situation of the paper. For readers, his discussion of what he was looking for and how he came to write his responses to his question help the process to become transparent; thus his paper serves as a model for the research question. Jordan’s essay also makes use of visual rhetoric. His subject is so visual that to only rely on words would be a disservice to the reader. Thus Jordan integrates the visual.

Likewise, Chelsea Hall’s ethnographic study, “Beyond the Money,” demonstrates the level of writing expected in English 104. Hall makes use of headings to organize her narrative, and her ability to weave sources into her essay allows Hall to support her conclusions.

3

Thornburg 1 Meg Thornburg

Dr. Laura Snyder

Informative Synthesis

English 104.19

New and Improved

The USDA has changed the food pyramid for the first time since 1992 with hopes of

having Americans take steps in the right direction for better food choices. The new food

pyramid, creatively named My Pyramid, was uncovered to the public in April 2005. The new

food pyramid has been implemented due to increasing dissatisfaction with the old food pyramid.

By understanding why the USDA changed the food pyramid, what the new food pyramid looks

like, and what "My Pyramid" offers and hopes to do, we will be able to see if this change is a

step in the right direction to promote better food choice for the individual.

When the old pyramid was made, it was a "one size fits all" deal. It suggested that all Americans­

­no matter what their size, age, or gender­­should eat the same amount of food. According to the

old food pyramid, each person should eat six to eleven servings of the bread group, three to five

servings of the vegetable group, two to four servings of the fruit group, two to three servings of

the dairy group, two to three servings of the protein group and a sparing amount of oils, fats, and

sweets ("Food Guide").

Thornburg 2

However, one size does not fit all and because of that old mentality many Americans

have become Super Sized. An estimated 68 million Americans are obese or overweight

("Pyramid Scheme" 1). 1 Diseases and deaths are on the rise in the United States because of this

severe "fat" problem Americans have (Hellmich 1).

Clearly the old pyramid might have been "contributing to obesity and health problems in the

USA" and was "severely out of date," according to Walter Willett, chairman of the department of

nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health (qtd. in Hellmich 1). To illustrate, an eighteen­year­old

woman who is five­three and one hundred and twenty five pounds should eat the same amount as an

eighteen ­year­old man who is six­three and one hundred eighty pounds. This makes no sense. If

this eighteen­year­old woman ate as much as this eighteen­year­old man, she would gain weight

indefinitely. This man's body, because of its size, needs more food to grow and to function. The

_______________________________________

1 There are three classifications that Americans who are above recommended body mass index (BMI) can fall into: overweight, obese, and morbidly obese. These three classifications are defined this: overweight, having a BMI of 25 to 29.9; obese, BMI of 30 or higher; and morbidly obese, BMI of 40 or above. (Owens).

Thornburg 3

makeup of a man's body is different than that of a woman's body; they need different amounts of

food, and the old food pyramid did not acknowledge this need. An average eighteen­year­old

woman's body needs around two thousand calories a day, whereas an eighteen­year­old man's body

needs around three thousand calories a day ("Helping").

The USDA aims to fix this growing problem and make the food pyramid more "fit for the

times" (Hellmich 1). Instead of the traditional horizontal orientation, the new food pyramid, My

Pyramid, has a vertical orientation. Six vibrant colors in vertical stripes represent the different food

groups on the front of the pyramid. Each of the different colors represents a different food group. The

widths of each stripe symbolize the percentage that each adult should consume of each food group

on a daily schedule. On the left side of the pyramid there is a male figure running up the stairs of the

pyramid, putting a much­needed emphasis on exercise. All together, these components are

suggesting that how we eat, what we eat, and how we exercise have equally important roles in our

health.

("Steps")

If changing the food pyramid is such a big deal, then why not change the symbol itself? The

current shape works and as the USDA's Christensen states, "Changing our symbol to something else

would be like shooting ourselves in the foot" (qtd. in Hellmich 3). The USDA's John Webster states

that, "It's probably the most recognized nutrition symbol that's ever been developed" (qtd. in

Hellmich 2; Squires 2).

Thornburg 4

One main concern that has been expressed is that My Pyramid is a wordless graphic that says

nothing of what food group corresponds to which color. How will Americans who are not informed

about My Pyramid read it, seeing that it does not hold any words, only colors? At the very least,

"people might...look at it [the new food pyramid] and think the different colors mean they should

have lots of different colored food in their diet," nutrition consultant Susan Moores hopes (qtd. in

Arnst 2). Like Moores, nutrition experts know that My Pyramid, just like the old food pyramid, will

be plastered everywhere from children's classrooms to bread bags at the grocery store. The hope is

that the USDA will have a written explanation under the pyramid giving Americans the website

address for MyPyramid.gov.

Another objection is that in today's world people are just too busy, or just too lazy, to take

the time to sit down at a computer and read about My Pyramid. However, the main people who will

be using this website will be those who are educating children, people who are faced with health

problems, or the very motivated people.

The USDA’s website gives users an inside look at the pyramid and a chance to learn about

the different components that are included in each vertical stripe. My Pyramid acknowledges the

differences that the old food pyramid did not. If we take a look back at the eighteen­year­old woman

and the eighteen­year­old man, we will see how My Pyramid caters to both of their different needs.

Like I mentioned before, the old pyramid works on a one size fits all scale; My Pyramid works on a

percentage scale. After typing in the woman's information under the "My Pyramid Plan" link on the

homepage, My Pyramid shoots back how many cups and ounces of each food group she should be

eating. The woman, with at least 30 to 60 minutes of exercise daily, will need six ounces of gains,

two point five cups of vegetables, two cups of fruits, three cups of milk and dairy, and five point five

ounces of meats and beans. This puts the woman on a 2,000 calorie diet. My Pyramid also tells the

Thornburg 5

users how much oil and discretionary calories to aim for. In the woman's case, she should be aiming

for about six teaspoons.

The eighteen­year­old man, with thirty to sixty minutes of exercise daily, has a completely

different plan. The man will need ten ounces of grain, three point five cups of vegetables, two point

five cups of fruits, three cups of milk and dairy, and seven ounces of meat and beans, which puts him

on a 2,800 calorie diet. The man should be aiming towards eight teaspoons of oils and discretionary

calories. As users can see, this is a significant difference. This difference should impact people

enough to start making better food choices for their individual needs.

Thornburg 6

Hopefully the greatest impact will be in the future. Right now almost thirty three percent of

children are either overweight or at risk for becoming overweight in the United States (Gavin and

Hassink). My Pyramid sees obesity as a problem and that this problem is on the rise. By revamping

the food pyramid, the USDA has made a positive step toward the future in fixing America's "fat"

problem. By reconstructing the pyramid and promoting a user friendly website, the USDA has taken

an initiative in the fight against obesity.

Work Cited

Arnst, Catherine, "Putting the New Pyramid to Work." Business Week. 05 May 2005. Academic

Search Premier. Bracken Library, Muncie. 06 Nov. 2005. <http://web28.epnet.com/

DelieveryPrintSave.asp?tb=l&_ua=shn+18+308E&_ug= id+AA2F.html>.

"The Food Guide Pyramid." National Agricultural Library. 16 Nov. 2005 <http://www.nal.usda.gov>.

Gavin, Mary L., and Sandra G. Hassink. "Overweight and Obesity." Kid's Health for Parents.

Nemours Foundation. 15 Nov. 2005 <http://kidshealth.org>.

Hellmich, Nanci. "Scales Tip in Favor of New Food Pyramid." USAToday 05 Nov. 2002. Academic

Search Premier. Bracken Library, Muncie. 06 Nov 2005. <http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=aph&an=JOE031673 875602>.

"Helping Teen with Weight Management." Healthy Place. 16 Nov. 2005 <http://healthyplace.com>.

"The New (and Improved?) Food Pyramid." Pediatric Alert 30 (2005): 43­44. Academic Search

Premier. Bracken Library, Muncie. 6 Nov 2005.

<http://www.bsu.edu/library/databases.html>.

"The New Food Pyramid." Better Nutrition 66 (2004): 19. Academic Search Premier. Bracken

Library, Muncie. 6 Nov. 2005. <http://www.bsvi.edu/1ibrarv/databases.html>.

Owens, Thomas A. "Medical Encyclopedia." Medline Plus. 3 June 2005. American Accreditation

Health Care Commission. 17 Nov. 2005 <http://nim.nih.gov>.

"Pyramid Scheme." New Republic 232 (2005): 8­9. Academic Search Premier. Bracken Library,

Muncie. 6 Nov. 2005. <http://www.bsu.edu/librarv/databases.html>.

Squires, Sally. Food Pyramid Gets New Look. Washington Post 20 Apr. 2005. Academic Search

Premier. Bracken Library, Muncie. 6 Nov. 2005 <http://www.washingtonpost.com>.

"Steps to a Healthier You." My Pyramid. United States Department of Agriculture. 10 Nov.

2005 <http://mypyramid.gov>.

Chad Jacobs Caloric Restriction 1

English 104

Dr. Snyder

April 19 th , 2006

Caloric Restriction: Free Fountain of Youth?

What if there was a drug that could add up to forty years to your life and make you look and

feel dramatically younger at every age? Furthermore, what if you were told that this drug might

substantially reduce your need for sleep and save you tens of thousands in food bills over the course of

your lifetime? There is good reason to believe that such a "drug" exists in the form of caloric

restriction with adequate nutrition (CRAN). What's more, not only is it freely available to almost

everyone, but its use should also facilitate dramatic savings in the form of reduced food consumption,

lower incidence of chronic disease, and subsequent increased productivity (Ingram, “Dietary” 162­

163).

What is caloric restriction and why should I believe it will help me?

Scientists first realized the profound benefits of caloric restriction on slowing the aging process

over sixty years ago when Clive Mccay at Cornell University found in the 1930's that mice fed a

diet with thirty to fifty percent fewer calories than those mice that ate as much as they wanted lived

much longer and had dramatically reduced incidents of diseases such as diabetes associated with

aging. Not only was the average life span of the mice increased but also many of the calorically

restricted mice lived longer than the oldest lived animals in the control group, demonstrating not only

an extension in average life span but also maximum lifespan (Mccay 63). Indeed, as this graph copied

from the Calorie Restriction Society's webpage illustrates, there is a direct correlation between the

degree of caloric restriction and how long mice live in laboratory

Caloric Restriction 2

studies, with mice on the most restricted diet living the longest. It also demonstrates that even

modest caloric restriction can provide significant life extension.

(“Welcome”)

Many scientists at the time were quite skeptical of these observations noting that

nutritional deprivation seldom leads to good health or long life in everyday observation.

Consider that there are many impoverished peoples around the world who consume a diet that is

restricted by circumstance rather than desire, and their lives tend to be short and miserable.

However, there is a dramatic difference between simple caloric malnutrition and caloric

restriction with adequate nutrition. The concept of CRAN has been described as "under nutrition

without malnutrition" by pioneering researcher Roy Walford (Walford The Antiaging Plan 16).

A CRAN diet seeks to ensure that every vitamin and mineral necessary for optimal health is

present in the diet in abundant levels, but to achieve this with the fewest calories possible.

Obviously, for such an approach to be feasible so called "empty calories", the highly processed

sugary foods to which many of us our accustomed must be absolutely minimized in favor of

more nutritious choices.

Animal studies have demonstrated that the ability of CRAN to optimize physiology and to

Caloric Restriction 3

ameliorate disease processes extends to virtually every body system. Diseases ranging from

cancer to neurological degeneration have been either forestalled or entirely prevented even in animal

breeding lines designed specifically to be especially susceptible to such diseases (Hansen and Bodkin

1810). The observation of such dramatic effects over such a diverse array of physiological processes

has caused scientists to ponder what underlying processes could explain CRAN's effectiveness.

A possible hint to the conundrum of how CRAN is able to achieve such results came to

scientists when they observed that mammalian longevity was inversely proportional to metabolic

rate. Thus, we witness that animals with a very high usage of energy as a proportion of body weight

such as a shrew tend to live much shorter lives than do animals like the sea turtle that survives on a

comparatively spartan diet (Ingram, Lane, and Roth 104). This observation has led many scientists to

conclude that free radicals generated by aerobic respiration are the primary villain in the aging

process. According to this hypothesis, caloric restriction exerts its power by reducing the amount

of energy present for cells to conduct energy­generating respiration. Body cells must adapt by

becoming more efficient, and since they don't burn as much oxygen they generate less free radical

''pollution" (Holloszy and Schechtman 1529­1530). More recent evidence points to possible

''starvation survival genes" that become activated when food is scarce and prompt the body to

produce enzymes that promote cell longevity (Clancy 104­105). Whatever the precise method might

be by which caloric restriction functions, it has been observed to produce results in every animal on

which it has been tried.

Critics of the idea of using CRAN to extend human life span have long admitted that it is

effective in lower order animals and even in smaller animals. However, they have asserted that

"there is no evidence so far that dietary restriction will extend life in humans or other longer lived

Caloric Restriction 4

animals" (Papalia, et al. 328). While it is true that such evidence is difficult to obtain in humans because

of our extended life spans (compared to rats and mice) there is a growing body of data fromCRAN

experiments started in the late 1980's upon primates that we too can radically benefit from caloric

restriction.

The pivotal primate studies conducted by the National Institute of Health

The study of CRAN in primates is somewhat more workable than in humans due to their

shorter lifespan, but even rhesus and squirrel monkeys live an average of thirty to forty years (Ingram.

Cutter and Weindruch 156). Therefore, in order to know if caloric restriction is being effective in a

reasonable period of time scientists are forced to evaluate the change in certain so called biomarkers

(lower levels of DHEA, higher levels of blood glucose and insulin) which research has shown to

correlate with the aging process (Kemnitz, Weindruch and Roecker 16). We know for example that

as people (and other animals) age they almost always tend to have higher levels of insulin in their

blood (Hansen and Bodkin 1809). Thus, scientists observe the circulating blood levels of these

biomarkers known to correlate with the aging process and make conclusions as to the effectiveness of

caloric restriction in slowing the aging process. Of course the increased observation of certain

diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular and renal disease are direct evidence of aging

associated decline, but these conditions take many years to develop in primates fed any reasonable diet.

It was with these factors in mind that the National Institute of Aging ( a subdivision of the National

Institute of Health) began a landmark study of the effects of caloric restriction on two hundred Rhesus

and Squirrel monkeys in 1987 ( Ingram, Lane and Roth 105). These animals that share over ninety five

percent of their DNA with humans were placed on a diet consisting of thirty

Caloric Restriction 5

percent fewer calories than would be normal for their weight and age.

In addition, to ensure that the diet was CRAN, rather than simple malnutrition, their "monkey

chow" was enhanced with forty percent more vitamins and minerals than normal, (Ingram, et al.

“Dietary”160). Furthermore, to avoid undue stress both physical and psychological to the monkey this

diet was implemented over a period of eight months.

Scientists noted physiological differences between the free feeding control monkeys and the

CRAN monkeys within months. In general the CRAN monkeys gained weight slower, and entered

puberty an average of one year later than controls (Walford “Biosphere II” 1536). In addition, the

restricted monkeys exhibited an average body temperature almost two degrees less than control

monkeys and slept about thirty minutes less per day (Roth and Lane 391). Also, blood profiles were

substantially altered within months with noted reductions in triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, and blood

pressure (Roth and Lane 392). By the tenth anniversary of the study it had become clear that most of

the effects observed in rodents, and which were normally associated with the reduction of age related

diseases, were in fact present in the primates subject to study. A slower decline in DHEA along with

lower fasting blood glucose and insulin levels were all noted almost without exception (Roth and

Lane 392). In addition, studies at the University of Wisconsin in early 1990's obtained similar results

to the NIA study providing further evidence that caloric restriction does work in larger animals (Lane

and Ingram 2094).

Going beyond the monkeys, the limited but tantalizing evidence for CRAN in humans.

Although data for the effectiveness of CRAN in humans is difficult to find, tantalizing

glimpses into its potential have emerged. The famed Biosphere II experiment that was designed to

measure the feasibility of a man made Martian colony offered an unintended view into the

Caloric Restriction 6

ramifications of caloric restriction. Due to miscalculations, one third less food could be grown than

originally expected. This necessitated a restrictive eighteen hundred calorie diet, and the physiological

profiles of the eight volunteers were carefully monitored. Scientists were surprised to note that the

volunteers who were already in excellent physical shape still experienced dramatic improvements

in risk profiles for chronic disease (Walford “Biosphere II” 1536). On average their blood pressure

dropped from 109/74 to around 89/58. Average weight loss was around twenty­six pounds for the

already fit men and around fifteen pounds for the women. Most interestingly their average blood

glucose levels dropped from ninety­two to less than seventy­four mg per deciliter (Walford

“Biosphere II” 1537). This is especially important given that circulating blood glucose along with

insulin and DHEA levels are considered by many researchers to be key signposts along the aging

highway (Hasset 1810). To see such dramatic improvement in risk profiles among those who

would already be considered to be among the fittest in society surprised even those scientists who

already believed that calorie restriction would work in humans.

Critics of the Biosphere II data point out the small sample size and the highly controlled

conditions prove almost nothing. Among "free living" and therefore free feeding peoples there is

only one ethnic group in the world that comes anywhere close to practicing CRAN techniques in

their daily lives. The Okinawans are taught from an early age to stop eating before being

completely full. Researchers estimate that the average Okinawan consumes about ten percent less

calories than people on other Japanese islands (Suzuki and Wilcox 61). Furthermore, these people

live to be an average age of eighty­six for women and seventy­five for men, three years more than

Japanese (already the most long lived people in the world) who live on the mainland

Caloric Restriction 7

islands despite having extremely similar genetic backgrounds. What is even more impressive

than the increased life expectancy is the dramatic reduction in premature deaths from heart attacks

that is some five hundred percent lower than that in North America (cancer and diabetes rates are

also dramatically lower, though not so much as is heart disease). In addition, dementia is rare and

Okinawa also has the highest rate of Centenarians in the world (Suzuki and Wilcox 15­17).

Critics counter that local genetic factors are at play, but studies of Okinawan emigrants

show that their life expectancy normalizes with the nation's that they migrate to within a single

generation (Suzuki & Wilcox 280). The following two graphs taken from the Okinawan Study

webpage illustrate the dramatic differences between populations. Note perhaps the greatest benefit

seen in the following graphs is not so much an extension in absolute lifespan (although that too is

present), but a dramatic reduction in pre­mature death. Indeed, it is this aspect of

(Okinawa Centenarian)

CRAN—specifically, the ability to exponentially reduce our risk of dying early of diseases like

heart disease, cancer, and stroke—that perhaps offer the strongest reasons for considering this

Caloric Restriction 8

approach. That is because even though average lifespan in the United States is seventy­two for

men and seventy­six for women, many millions of Americans will die in their 40's, 50's and 60's

of diseases such as heart disease which a CRAN­type diet will almost always prevent.

Sources: WHO 1996; Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare 1996 (Okinawa Centenarian)

A few pioneering spirits have decided not wait for more research.

In the course of my research I encountered a group of people that have decided to put CRAN to

use in their own lives now. They have formed the CR Society and have a website

www.calorierestriction.org where they exchange information and resources ranging from low calorie

recipes to lists of doctors that have indicated a willingness to oversee this ambitious endeavor. One of

their members, John Woodman, conducted a survey of those who had been practicing CRAN for at

least two years and found that the only major negative side effects were increased sensitivity to cold, a

propensity to develop constipation unless dietary fiber was closely controlled, as well as of course

being more hungry and thinner than before. Interestingly, a large number of members reported a

substantial decrease in their need for sleep and higher overall energy levels. Some reported that the

hunger they sometimes experienced actually enhanced their enjoyment of the food that they did eat

(Woodman). Furthermore, many people reported that they could alleviate their hunger almost

completely when they were careful to eat foods high in complex carbohydrates and fiber.

Caloric Restriction 9

Perhaps the greatest challenge raised by critics to CRAN­style approaches is the hunger that

they say makes these diets completely unworkable. They argue that a diet that calls for continual

deprivation will soon be ignored since people can only go without indulging their desires for so long.

Given the high rate of failures with most diets this is indeed a powerful criticism. One alternative that

is now being looked at to CRAN which attempts to address this issue is an approach termed alternate

day fasting. This calls for eating nothing save for water and diet drinks on fasting days, but allows for

completely normal food consumption every other day. Recently, a small study was completed on

human volunteers which seemed to show that this approach yielded improvements in aging biomarkers

(such as circulating insulin levels) that equaled or exceeded those of every day caloric restriction

(Heilbronn, Smith, and Martin 73). Researchers were amazed at these results since the average calorie

consumption over a two day period in the fasting individuals equaled that of someone eating a

completely normal diet. Alternate day fasting may allow people to metaphorically "have their cake and

eat it too," at least every other day.

Even if we discount the enormous potential in life extension from CRAN, the benefits from the

probable reduction in the incidence of early death and chronic disease are virtually incalculable. The

United States economy loses untold billions in health care expenses and lost productivity to diseases

such as diabetes and heart disease, which could almost certainly be drastically reduced by caloric

restriction with adequate nutrition practices. Furthermore, it doesn't raise some of the ethical issues

that other approaches to life extension might since it seems to not just extend life, but to extend

productive, working life as well. While it might be true that few would elect to follow a diet that calls

for such sacrifices the public should at least be made aware of the profound benefits to their health that

could be obtained from the effort.

Caloric Restriction 10

Works Cited

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Substrate Protein." Science 6 (2001): 104­07. Hansen, B. C., and N. L. Bodkin. "CRAN Will Prevent Diabetes Even in Monkeys Genetically

Predisposed to Develop it." Diabetes 42 (1993): 1809­1814.

Hasset, B. "Human Trials are in the Early Stages". Mechanisms of Aging and Development 81

(1996). 79­94.

Heilbronn, Leroy and Scott Smith. "Alternate Day Fasting in Non­Obese Subjects: Effects on Body

Weight, Body Composition, and Energy Metabolism." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

81 (2005): 69­73.

Holloszy, Jack, and K. B. Schechtman. "Interaction between Exercise and Food Restriction: Effect on

Longevity of Male Rats." Journal of Applied Physiology 70 (1991): 1529­35.

Ingram, O.K., R. G. Cutter, and R. Weindruch. "Dietary Restriction and Aging; the Initiation of a

Primate Study." Journal of Gerontology 45 (1998): 148­163

Ingram, O.K., M.A. Lane, and G.S. Roth. "Compelling Evidence in Humans’ Closest Relative: Caloric

Restriction in Monkeys." Life Extension Magazine 22 April 1998: 66­88.

Kemnitz, J.W., R. Weindruch, and E.B. Roecker, "Dietary Restriction of Adult Rhesus Monkeys:

Preliminary Findings from First Year of Study." Journal of Gerontology 48 (1993): 17­16.

“Welcome to the Calorie (CR) Restriction Society.” Calorie Restriction 10 April 2006

<http://www.calorierestriction.org>.

Lane, M.A. & D. K. Ingram. "DHEA: a biomarker of primate aging slowed by caloric restriction."

Journal of Clinical Endocrinal Metabolism 82 (1997): 2093­2096.

McCay, C. J. "Diet and Longevity." Journal of Nutrition 10 (1935): 63­79.

Caloric Restriction 12

''Okinawa Centenarian Study." April 10 2006. <http://www.okinawaprogram.com>

Papalia, D.E., Sterns, H.L., Feldman, R.D. & Camp, C. J. Adult Development and Aging. New

York: McGraw Hill, 2002.

Roth, G.S. & M. A. Lane. "Caloric Restriction in Non­Human Primates: A Progress Report."

Aging­Milano 3 (1996): 1391­393.

Suzuki, M. & B.J. Wilcox. Evidence­Based Extreme Longevity: The Case of the Okinawan.

New York: Random House, 2001.

Walford, R. L. "Biosphere II: Accidental Caloric Restriction." Professional Nutrition Association

Journal 92 (1989): 1533­1537.

Walford, R. L. The Anti­Aging Plan: Strategies and Recipes for Extending Your Healthy Years

of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Woodman, “Results of Calorie Restriction Side Effects Survey. Retrieved April 17, 2006 from

<www.calorierestriction.org>.

Louis Jordan

English 104

Sec. 036

11/17/05

'My Body Is a Canvas': A Search for the Meaning of Drag

The stage looked lousy. There was a vague 'crime­scene' theme that consisted of yellow

'police line' tape, and two red siren­lights, but it looked hastily put together and generally pointless,

and rather boring. Fortunately, the stage had nothing in common with the creature that now occupied

it. Tall, thin, and wrapped in a sheer gown embroidered with flames of red sequins, Jasmine Taylor

(Fig. 1) exuded an air of tragic, proud royalty. As she lip­synched to the majestic ballad, "Why?" by

Scottish diva Annie Lennox, each gesture was sweeping, dramatic, perfectly timed. Her eyes flashed

with anger as she declaimed, "I may be mad/I

may be blind/I may be viciously unkind/ but I

can still read what you're thinking." As the

song rose to a climax, she rose to full

operatic height, her eyes huge and wild,

recalling Bette Davis or Greta Garbo in their

heyday. After the last whispered line, Ms.

Taylor dropped her arms to her sides, like a

machine that had just been switched off, and

the audience burst into applause. They knew a

good drag queen when they saw one.

Supposedly, a drag queen is a gay man in a dress. That's what I'd always assumed, what I'd

always seen on television and in magazines. I always thought of drag queens as amusing but

pointless diversions, men who were too feminine to be taken seriously as a male performing songs

by gay icons like Barbara Streisand or Cher. I didn't understand why anyone would want to see a

person lip­synch to a pre­recorded song. I had entered high school at the height of the Britney

Spears craze, and subsequently though of lip­synching as being synonymous with "no­talent

bimbo". Also, being both gay and somewhat of an iconoclast, I wanted to distance myself from

the clichés of gay culture as much as possible, and to me, drag was right up there with

hairdressing and Broadway musicals on the list of ridiculous, outdated, gay stereotypes.

The act of a man dressing as a woman to perform theatrically can be traced all the way

back to ancient Greece in 5 th century B.C.E. (Senelick, 40). The most famous examples of

historical drag are the young boys who played women onstage during Shakespeare's time

(Baker, 35). However, the modern concept of 'drag queen' is much more recent. The roots of

drag are firmly planted in the art of 'female impersonation' (Senelick, 295), which began to gain

popularity around the mid­Victorian era. Prior to this, many cross­dressers performed as frumpy

old women. Female impersonation consisted of men attempting to look like extremely glamorous

women, through the expert use of clothes, makeup, voice, and movement. Female impersonators

often do impersonations of famous 'gay icons' such as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, or

Madonna (Senelick, 386). Eventually, female impersonation took on popularity as performance,

usually confined to the stages of gay bars. Outfits became wilder and wilder, and with the advent

of the gay liberation movement in the 70's, drag began to show a truly outrageous side, referred

to as 'camp drag'. (Tyler, 370) Camp drag is exaggerated, colorful, loud, funny, and generally

more self­deprecating than 'female impersonation'. In my research I had seen pictures of these

different types, but I had not had much experience with them up close; this was a situation I was

hoping to change.

However, I wanted to not only watch the shows, but also get to know the queens

themselves, as people, not just as performers. I wanted to find out what drag meant to the drag

queens themselves. Why did they do it? What was attractive about it? Did it hold some sort of special

power? I also wanted to confront drag stereotypes, and see just how close to the mark they are. Are

queens really vain, bitchy, and shallow? Most importantly, I wanted to find out what the phrase 'drag

queen' really meant. It often is used very broadly, in relation to transvestites (to whom women's

clothing is more of a sexual fetish), transsexuals (both post and pre­operation), and men who perform

in women's clothes onstage. Drag didn't seem to be so much a definition as a diaphanous concept. I

had to dig down beneath the surface of drag, and see once and for all, if there was truly anything

underneath.

I originally attempted to observe drag in its natural habit, namely, a gay bar. The familiarity

between the audience and the queens, the bitchy stage banter, the smell of poppers (a popular gay

club drug) hanging in the air....but alas, this was not to be. The gay clubs in Muncie have obviously

seen their share of cute teenage boys, and were not willing to let you in on a wink and a smile. Or

even a call, and a letter, and a meeting. While their decision was quite understandable for a bar in a

college town, it didn't leave me in the most comfortable of positions. I had to track down a couple of

drag queens, and fast. Thank god for the Ball State Annual Drag Show.

Every year, Ball State's local GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian Bisexual, Transgendered, and

Questioning) group, Spectrum, holds a drag show to raise money for a charity they think is in need of

funding. However, this is just the official reason. At the Spectrum meeting held two days before the

show, less than half of the students who were involved with the show actually knew that it was a

benefit for the Damien Center, in Indianapolis. Generally, they were more interested in making sure

they could track down some fabulous last­minute accessories for their outfits. Over the years, there

had been varying degrees of students performing in the show, and this year the ratio was about half

professional and half amateur. I decided to concentrate more on the professional side, as they would

most likely give me a more accurate idea of what drag queens were like. After the meeting, I got the

contact information for the headlining queens, Jasmine Taylor, and Alana Steel. As soon as I got

home, I started going through my closet, looking for something to wear to the show. Seeing how

much effort everyone else was putting into their outfits, I felt like I had should at least look somewhat

interesting.

Dressed in a green suede jacket with black jeans, and sporting flaming red eye shadow

(applied by my friend Rachel so that I could, according to her, "get into the spirit of things"), I felt

properly armed to take on the entire drag show by myself. I arrived well before the show was

supposed to start and managed to sneak backstage, to observe the processes and effort that it goes into

making these girls look their best. Valerie Swanson, who was already dressed and made up, greeted

me. She complimented me on my makeup, and told me to sit in the corner and try to avoid the flying

underwear. I looked up and, sure enough, underwear was being flung all over by a nervous student

who couldn't find his bra. Most of the professionals had already finished, and at this point they were

mostly helping the students with their makeup and costumes. The professional queens wouldn't let me

take pictures, as many felt that was akin to revealing a magician's secrets, but I was allowed to take

notes. The process of making themselves up takes almost an hour, sometimes more if they are going

for elaborate effects. They use professional grade makeup and all sorts of techniques for applying it

that I had never seen before. Paste and makeup were applied to eyebrows, to give them the appearance

of being shaved, and high, arching eyebrows were later penciled in. Elaborate eye makeup was

applied with a stunning variety of brushes. Jaw lines and noses were contoured with powder brushes,

so as to appear narrower. Lip­liner was used to make thin lips looks larger and fuller. Glitter was

applied, well, pretty much everywhere.

Then came the body modification; while most of the professionals had shaved bodies, some

of the amateurs put on two layers of danskin body stockings to give the appearance of smooth skin.

Tucking, which I didn't really feel comfortable asking to watch, was the practice of tucking the

genital between the thighs, and securing them with tape over the underwear. Shoulder pads were

strapped to the outer thighs for 'hips', falsies or balloons were shoved under body stockings to create

breasts; some queens even had fake butts. Hair was pinned down and secured under stretchy 'wig

caps,' over which the wigs were placed. Next came the dresses. Some of them cost several hundred

dollars each, and were either professionally made or created by the queens themselves, so of course,

they would not let me lay a hand on them. The gowns were elaborately beaded and bejeweled, and

many looked like they had taken quite some time to make. Jasmine Taylor's gowns were especially

impressive. Around this time, the queens needed to 'warm up', (whatever that meant) and I was

ushered out of the dressing room. By that point all of the good seats were taken, so I pulled out my

camera and muscled my way in among the newspaper photographers by the stage. I hoped no one

would ask me for a press pass. However, I wouldn't have to worry, because the show was just about

to get started.

The lights went down and the crowd began to cheer. Everyone's eyes were focused on the

red satin, glitter­trimmed curtains at the back of the stage. After a few seconds, the opening bars of

"Toxic" by Britney Spears began to boom through the sound system, and Alana Davis stepped

out of the curtains in an exact replica of Ms. Spears' "sexy flight attendant" costume from the

song's video. After slinking down the

aisle, she began to lip synch the words

and perform a very funny and sexy

'Britney­esque' dance routine (Fig. 2),

before venturing out into the crowd to

interact with the audience. (Fig.3). By

the end of the number, she was

practically humping the floor, and the

audience was screaming. I was amazed at what a good dancer she was, and how well

choreographed the number was. Then, I found out that she gets paid $40,000 a year at a club in

Indianapolis to this sort of thing every weekend.

After the song was over, Alana gave a little monologue, which, unfortunately, I was

unable to record. The audience repartee part of a drag show seemed to me to be almost as

important as the performance. She joked with the crowd a bit, and explained to them that, "it's

amazing, but under this stewardess jacket beats the

heart of an all­American boy." Dropping her voice

an octave, she rumbled, "That's right dude, I'm a

guy." Back to her 'Alana' voice, she elaborated,

"And that doesn't mean I am a man who wants be a

woman. I don't want to be a woman. It's too much

work," she said. "I am simply an entertainer, and

you are here to be entertained."

The crowd cheered.

Alana turned the mike over to the MC of the night, Valerie Swanson. Valerie, wearing a

pink swimsuit and thigh high go­go boots, explained that all the tips given to performers during

the course of the show were going to be donated to the Damien Center in Indianapolis. She

elaborated on how the Damien Center supports people infected with HIV/AIDS who do not have

the income to properly treat their disease and pay for rent and food.

"So, basically, y'all better tuck some bucks!" she shouted.

She also indicated towards two judges (in drag, of course) who sat off to the eastern side of

the room. They would analyze the performances and give out awards at the end.

In total there were three drag kings and nine drag queens (four of which were professionals,

and the rest Ball State students), each usually performing twice. A few highlights included amateur

drag queen Britney Queers' energetic rendition of "Oops! I Did It Again!" (which won her "Best

Ass" at the end of the show), and the drag king Mr. Big's performance of "Faith" by George

Michael, which featured a parody of Mr. Michael's infamous arrest in a public restroom for

exposing himself to an undercover cover officer. This time the officer was played by another drag

king, and the arrest culminated in a passionate kiss between the two 'men'. The audience's screams

echoed for miles, I assure you. Also, one of the highlights of the second half was Jasmine Taylor's

aforementioned performance of "Why?"

Overall, the mood of the show was very friendly, with a tinge of playful sexuality. Nothing

was really over PG­13, but sex appeal and sexual jokes were featured prevalently a great number of

the non­ballad songs. This was especially evident in Valerie Swanson's fiery closing number, a

medley of Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and Beyonce's "Crazy in Love". This was, arguably the highlight

of the entire night. Performing the first part in a cape, she threw off the cape in the second part to

reveal a skintight black and white outfit, and proceeded to dance about wildly (Fig. 4), rolling on the

floor with abandon. Finally, she was joined onstage

by a bevy of shirtless male dancers to do her big

finish. That earned a lot of tips.

As the show came to an end, the awards

were handled out ("Best Heels", "Best Dress",

"Best Ass", etc.), and the drag queens and kings

took their final bows. One by one, they came out in

their finery, received their awards, curtsied low,

and waved to the crowd like beauty pageant

winners. When Jasmine Taylor's name was called,

however, a short, slight man appeared from behind the curtain. He had thinning hair, angular

features and appeared to be about 35 years old. He reminded me a bit of an elementary school

gym teacher for some reason; perhaps it was the blue tracksuit. Accepting the trophy for "Best

Dress", he took the mike from a surprised Valerie and laughed, "Sweetie, do you think I wake up

looking like that?" (Fig. 5)

After the crowd had thinned out a bit, I headed out to

track down Jasmine Taylor. Jasmine's real name is Bill

Richards. He works for the Indiana Educational Resource

Center, which is a resource center for special needs

children. He's the current reigning Miss Gay Muncie 2005,

and believes very strongly in the cause of donating to the

Damien Center. They've helped him out several times when

he had trouble paying his utilities, because the treatment for

his HIV became too expensive for him to afford. Bill Richards is HIV positive and is not shy

about it. In fact, he seems to want to make a point of it, steering the conversation to the topic of

HIV/AIDS in Indiana and his experiences living with HIV almost every chance he gets. I'm

wasn't exactly sure what sort of political point he was trying to make, but listening to the

interview again, I'm starting to suspect he wasn't trying to make a point at all. I think maybe he

was trying to warn me.

Bill is small and birdlike, with delicate features and a royal air about him, which can be

quite intimidating. He speaks in proper, clipped tones, and seems intelligent, compassionate and

narcissistic. Bill had been in the 'art' for thirteen years, and he considers himself more of a 'female

impersonator' or "Pageant Queen" rather than a drag queen. I must admit, I can't argue. During the

"Why?" number, he really did look like a very glamorous, poised woman. He refers to himself as an

illusionist, and fears that the art of illusion is being lost in drag. He's never used hormones, silicone

injections or surgical alterations to make himself look more feminine or hide signs of aging, unlike

many of his contemporaries, he says. He thinks that if they can't hide it with makeup, they shouldn't

be wearing the makeup in the first place.

He views drag as more of a hobby than a profession, but he won't perform unless it's a special

benefit, or he is getting paid. He says it's just too expensive to do otherwise. During the course of the

interview, he seemed to try to steer the conversation in the direction of politics, mostly major gay

issues, such as AIDS, gay marriage and the crystal meth epidemic that is ravaging urban gay

communities. His responses often seemed calculated, as if he had been interviewed many times

before. (Valerie/Kyle told me that there is a lengthy interview process done in pageants, so perhaps

he was using some material from his Miss Gay Muncie interviews.) However, to his credit, he

certainly seemed to be doing it with noble intentions. He didn't just want to talk about drag, he

wanted to educate me about the dangers I faced as a young, gay man. It seems that he does this with

his audiences in Indianapolis as well, telling them stories a bout his life, so that hopefully they will

not make the same mistakes that he did. Despite being somewhat difficult to control as a subject,

he inadvertently forced me to see him as person, and not just an extension of drag culture.

I had done a quick interview with Kyle Gaigen (Valerie Swanson) the previous day at a

Spectrum meeting. Kyle was a slightly femme, gay, twenty­something and just about as normal

looking as they come. He had a day or two's growth of beard and he was dressed in a black

sweatshirt, the 'preppy casual' look. I would never have given him a

second glance if I had not known that he was going to MC for the drag

show. To say that his transformation from Kyle to Valerie was stunning

would be an understatement, and not only the way that he looked, but

also the way that he acted. Kyle was sweet and friendly, with a slight lisp

that whistled a bit through his teeth. Valerie was loud, bawdy, and full of

energy. She flirted with frat boys and proudly showed off her "all

natural" spandex­clad curves (Fig. 6). The two could not have been more

different.

The show marked Kyle's second year anniversary doing drag. He

got into it as a way to continue performing after his high school theatre

career was over. He didn't seem to care much about the revolutionary

aspects of it; he just loved being onstage, despite the difficulties that go along with the job. As he

put it, "It's not too fun tucking. It's a pain in the ass, literally. The heels kill you....I mean it's just

so constricting. You totally manipulate your body. So other than performing, I don't really see

any other way, at least for me, that I enjoy it."

Besides physical discomfort, Kyle has also had dealt with prejudice against drag queens,

often from other gay men.

"It's more of an underground culture. 'Cause even the gay community itself tries to steer

clear of the drag community. I don't know why, but it's this bad thing. Once someone finds out

you're a queen, your social life is done. People won't talk to you anymore. I had a few friends who

found out and that was it, they were done."

While some of the more traditional female impersonators regularly play to straight

audiences, and glamour queens such as RuPaul have achieved a certain level of celebrity, drag has

never been fully accepted by straights. Unfortunately, gay men looking to project a more 'normal'

and 'all­American' image have also criticized drag queens, calling them relics of a bygone era, and

shunning them. As gay people move closer to acceptance, many try to distance themselves from the

more 'controversial' aspects of gay 'culture. Of course, drag queens feel somewhat betrayed by this

backlash, as gay culture has been a haven for drag for hundreds of years (Cole, 50). Kyle declined to

elaborate on the situations in which drag had lost him friends, but he did talk about the ways in which

drag queens suffer a stigma when even when out of drag,

"It sucks. I mean, there's so much stereotyping that goes along with drag. Like, [everyone

that does drag] are bottoms, they're sissies. I know these three drag queens that are so fuckin' butch,

out of drag. Once they put that costume on, they're a total different person...but it's a separate thing.

We're not women."

I felt like I had learned a lot at the drag show, but as I transcribed my interviews, I couldn't

shake the feeling that I wasn't getting the whole picture. The queens were willing to give me details

about the technicalities of drag, and even tell me about some of their experiences, but when I asked

them what drag actually means, or what drew them to it, they would become a bit defensive and skirt

the question (no pun intended). They seemed to be offended if I even implied that they might enjoy

putting on women's clothing, which seemed a rather odd contradiction to me. I felt no closer to

figuring out what drag really was, which had been my goal all along. I obviously needed

someone who had much more experience with drag queens. To get a more complete picture of

drag I decided I had to track down more subjects; people who would represent the exact opposite

of Jasmine Taylor's 'female illusion'. What I needed was a crazy camp queen with four­foot high

hair. As luck would have it, I happened to know of someone back home who fit that description

to a T.

Bradley Bogart refers to himself, professionally, as "One of

Nature's Most Creative Anomalies". It may seem pretentious, but

only until you see him onstage. When he comes out in a dress that

somewhat resembles the planet of Saturn, balancing a gigantic

yellow Tina Turner wig on his head (Fig. 7) as he dances in six inch

platforms, singing, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", and then

proceeds to hump an audience member's head while hitting a high

note, you know that you are not watching anything approaching

ordinary. Bradley, who uses his own name as his drag name, doesn't

really attempt to hide his maleness. He never tucks, letting his

obvious bulge serve as a contrast to the intentionally odd looking falsies stuffed into his dress. At

first glance, I would more expect him to say, "Take me to your leader" rather than start belting "I

Will Survive".

According to Bradley, his first forays into drag were as outlandish as his onstage persona:

I started out as stripper, [but] stripping starts to get old, you can only strip so many ways.

I wasn't really into looking like woman, but I saw these older queens doing comedy drag

and I saw that they made money doing it and had fun at the same time. You can

exaggerate more. It not just looking like a girl; it’s a lot more exaggerated. It's more one and

one and more personal to me than stripping.

He began to perform regularly at a South Bend gay bar/nightclub called Truman's, and soon gained a

sizable fan base, eventually becoming Truman's main attraction. He's quite aware of the complicated

nature of his type of drag, but he could care less. “If you think about it, it is dressing like women, but

the last thing that I want to be is a woman. You know? But is just so much fun. It is just like a clown;

you put on all this makeup up and become another person. And I am allowed to say what I wouldn't

normally say and do things that I wouldn't normally do.” Sometimes his outrageousness provokes

interesting reactions.

A few weeks ago, there’s this woman sitting in the audience, and she loved the queens that

looked like girls but she just hated me. She couldn't figure out what I was about. She just

couldn't figure it out. And she did not like me; she did not accept me...She says 'Why do you

have big hair?' cause I was doing Tina Turner and 'you need to shave your arms, and your

have your dick [practically] hanging out there. What's that about?' She had a real problem

[because] she couldn't define me.

As we talked, I began to see just how much power drag had to subvert gender. It didn't have to

be a man dressed as a woman. In fact, you didn't have to be a man or a woman. You could just be a

thing, and it didn't matter. This completely threw me for a loop. I had always thought of people in

terms of male and female. The idea that you could be a man dressed in women's clothing, but not

necessarily a man or woman was downright confusing. To help me sort this dilemma out, I

decided to interview a friend of mine who has had more experience with drag than anyone else I

know.

When Katie Madonna (Fig. 8) enters a room, everybody knows it. Loud, brash, funny and

glamorous, she's incapable of not attracting attention. A dead ringer for her hero, Debbie Harry

(singer of the rock band 'Blondie'), Ms. Madonna has a fashion sense that mixes

the edginess of punk with 1980's day­glo colors and Victorian­era elegance. She

exudes intelligence, but never seems to over­analyze her responses; Katie runs

on instinct. I've known Katie Madonna for several years, and we have become

close friends since the day she asked me to act in a short film she was directing.

Because of the extensive experience she has had with drag queens and drag

culture while living as a 'club kid' (a radically stylish young person who's life

revolves around dancing in the most glamorous 'clubs') and a street performer in

Chicago and Boston during the mid to late nineties, I hoped that she could

answer a few of my questions.

However, one doesn't really interview Katie Madonna, as much as give her a topic to run

with, and then proceed to shut up and listen. A very engaging storyteller, Katie has a much less

traditional conception of drag than the Mid­western queens I have interviewed.

To me, drag queens are perfect and loud and sassy. They're there to get you and to claw

you and you'll let them because they're humorous and amazing. The drag queens who

really broke through, like Lady Bunny and RuPaul, have all been inspired by Joan

Crawford, Bette Davis, Diana Ross....There's something very pure about each of those

performers, and also very androgynous. A woman in drag is not necessarily a drag king.

All those women (Joan Crawford, et al.) were drag queens. [Drag] is not just about dressing

up 'like a woman'. If you dress up like a woman that looks like she works at Wal­Mart, then

you are not a fuckin' drag queen. It's about glamour. It's all about glamour and style.

This was starting to get at the root of the problem. I asked her, point blank, "So, then what the hell

is a drag queen if it's isn't a man in a dress?" Ms. Madonna rolled her eyes, laughed at my naiveté,

and launched into another monologue.

Look. Drag queens are entertainment. I'm a drag queen! When I get in my makeup and

perform on the street, I'm a drag queen. That's something I hated, (the idea that) in order to

be a drag queen you have to be a guy dressed up as a girl, even though a lot of those guys

look nothing like women. And the people they impersonate are women dressed up like drag

queens, with exaggerated features of a female. Like, Gwen Stefani (singer for the pop group

No Doubt) is totally a drag queen. She doesn't naturally look that way! It takes a lot of work

for her to look that way. It's not natural; it's a performance. If you have to put more than an

hour into the way that you look, before you go out, then you're a drag queen. Period."

I believe that right now, drag is a more complicated concept than it has ever been. When it's socially

acceptable, as it is these days, for boys to wear hip­hugging 'girl's jeans' and eyeliner out on the

street, and for women to wear boyish, baggy clothing, the line between masculine and feminine

becomes thinner and thinner, and the point of actual 'drag' can be hard to identify. A few days ago, I

was wearing pants and a shirt that belonged to my friend Lissa Huddlestun. I looked 'normal', it was

only tight jeans and a t­shirt, but wasn't I still technically cross­dressing? Also, classifying drag

meets with further problems when you consider the people that are doing drag. As Katie

Madonna Lee put it, "Once you have these guys with all these cheek implants and injections, and

transsexuals living as women, and straight men, and even actual women performing as drag

queens, you can't define it anymore. You can't say that a drag queen is a gay man in a dress. It's

not that simple. It's a part of gay culture, yeah, but that's not what defines it.''

So, drag isn't a man in a dress. Then what is it? Who is a drag queen? According to Kyle

Gaigen (Valerie Swanson), "There are a million little drag queens running around and they

don't even know it. Like, those boys who go out to a club, and they're wearing girl's jeans,

eyeliner, and glitter? Well, I'm sorry honey, but you are a fuckin' drag queen."

It only hit me while transcribing Katie Madonna's interview; drag has absolutely nothing

to do with being gay. Sure, it's been adopted as a part of gay culture, and is often practiced by

gay men, but just because something is widely associated with gay culture does not make it gay

by definition. Following that logic, there should be millions of little old ladies who love watching

Barbra Streisand musicals, hanging out at gay bars around the country, trying to pick up on some

hot boys. No, drag is more of a fringe art than a gay art, something practiced by creative people

on the edges of society who can appreciate the act of turning oneself into a canvas. According to

the radically camp queen Zondra Foxx, "To me, being a drag queen is being on a social edge,

being acceptable, not being acceptable. Being able to express yourself. Being able to be a

performance artist any time you want to walk out the front door" (Brown, 43).

Works Cited

Baker, Roger. Drag: A History of Female Impersonating In the Performing Arts. New York: New

York UP, 1994.

Brown, Susan. Persona: Portraits and Interviews with Drag Queens. New York: Rizzoli International

Publications, 1997.

Cole, Shaun. Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men's Dress in the Twentieth Century. New

York: Berg, 2000.

Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Newton, Esther. Mother Camp. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979.

Senelick, Laurence. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theater. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Tyler, Carole­Anne. "Boys Will Be Girls: Drag and Transvestic Fetishism" Camp: Queer Aesthetics

and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1999.

369­392.

All photos of Ball State Drag Show photographed by Louis Jordan

Photo of Katie Madonna courtesy of Katie Madonna. Photographer unknown.

Photo of Bradley Bogart courtesy of www.trumans.com. Photographer unknown.

Chelsea Hall

Professor Dalton

English 104.029

April 23, 2008

Beyond the Money

“A man’s idea in a game of cards is war—cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady’s idea of

it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary” (“Card Game Quotes,” par. 5).

American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne said this quote, and before I began

observing my community, I agreed with him. I thought the game was inappropriate and foolish—

spending too much time playing a game could lead to a great loss of money. I thought men threw

their lives away when they started getting into a routine of playing poker. The community I

observed is a group of six to twelve college guys that get together on Monday and Wednesday

nights to play poker and other card games. As I attended these poker nights throughout the

semester, my view on regularly playing cards began to change. I discovered the significance of the

poker community goes beyond my assumption of an addiction and a way of making some extra

money for the weekends. The meetings provide socialization, relaxation, and an escape from the

demands of life each week.

How to Play the Game

Before I leave for my first meeting, I decide I should do some research on the game of

poker. I have always known poker consisted of cards and playing off the deck, but I never knew

the specifics of poker. According to Shute, poker originated in New Orleans in the late 1700s.

Gamblers, mainly from Persia, France, England, and Germany, played different “betting­and­

bluffing games” (Shute, par. 7). There are different methods to playing poker, but it has two

central types: draw poker and stud poker. One reference site briefly describes each kind:

2

In draw poker, players receive five cards face down and then, after a round of betting, may

discard up to three cards and draw replacement cards from the cards not dealt… In stud,

players receive one card or two cards face down. Betting is done round by round as the

remaining cards are dealt face up; players surmise the odds by viewing the exposed cards.

(“Poker,” par. 3)

My community plays the popular Texas Holdem, which is a version of stud poker. In Texas

Holdem, players are dealt two cards, and each can use these cards as well as the five cards laid on

the table from the deck to win. Here is a list of card hands, ranking from highest to lowest: royal

flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pairs, one pair,

and high card. From my research of how the game of Texas Holdem is played, I now feel prepared

to attend the guys’ card nights.

Take a Look Around

Notebook, check. Pen, check. Camera, check—I make sure I have everything I need as I

wait for the door to the guys’ dorm complex in Noyer at Ball State University to open. A women

walks out the door, and I walk in. As I head up the stairs, I wonder what to expect from my

community. I enter the fourth floor and walk down the hallway, turn the corner, and finally reach

the room. The wooden door has a blue paper guitar cutout taped to it, and it stands wide open. One

of the residents here must play guitar. As I walk into the room, I’m greeted by smiles and hellos:

“I see you found it okay. Have a seat! My bed won’t bit.” Steve Smith*, the resident of the room,

nods to his bed, and I take a seat.

As the guys get settled, I decide to take a look around. Smith’s dorm room is about 4.5 m x

6.5 m. The left wall has two sets of light wood closets, and to the left of these are two overflowing

trashcans. Cans of Mountain Dew, bottles of water, and scraps of paper creep over the top of the

trash bag. To the right of the closets is a small table where an XBOX, video games, and movies

3

lay. In the back left corner, a TV sits on top of another small, round table. The TV is always on—

right now South Park is playing. The high voices of Eric, Kenny, Kyle, and Stan serve as the

background music of this dorm room. A bed with a navy blue comforter takes up the rest of the

back wall. On the right wall, a small fridge sits between two wooden desks. The desks are

crammed with books, DVDs, homework, laptops, and other various items. This is definitely a

guy’s room. To complete the tour of the room, we end at the bed I am sitting on, which is next to

the front wall. Superheroes such as Spiderman, Batman, and Iron Man race at me as I sit on

Smith’s Marvel superhero bedspread. Posters of guitars, John Wayne, the movies Gladiator, and

Dumb and Dumber splatter across the white cement walls to give the room personality. The dorm

room allows the group to play in a laid­back atmosphere, which makes it easy for the guys to relax

for the evening.

I count eight guys that are here tonight. They all sit around the large poker table located in

the middle of the room. I ask the group where it came from, and sophomore Aaron Williams* tells

me he bought it and brought it up here. It is a Texas Holdem poker table, and it can seat up to 12

people and can fold up to take up less space. The plastic, black border encloses the bright green,

felt­like center of the table. Bottles of water and bright green cans of Mountain Dew sit in the cup

holders on the black border of the table. An array of green, white, blue, and red plastic poker chips

lay in a bunch at the center of the table, while stacks of them sit in front of each player. Green

chips signify a dollar, blue chips are 50 cents, red chips are 25 cents, and white chips are ten cents.

Clicking and shuffling of poker chips is echoed throughout the room—the guys fiddle with their

chips while they’re thinking and waiting for their turn. Most can even do tricks with the chips,

such as shuffling them or flipping them around their hand. When I make a note of this, all the guys

tell me they don’t even realize they do it anymore; now it’s a natural habit. Their hands and the

poker chips are one.

4

The Rounders

“Rounder” is a term used for the name of an individual who commonly plays poker. It is

also the title of a movie, which my community referred to many times throughout the semester.

Even sophomore Kaleb Brick* laughs to the group, “Why do we always end up quoting

Rounders?” Noting this, I borrow the movie from Smith and watch it myself one night. It wasn’t

my favorite movie—I enjoy more action in mine than just watching people sit at a poker table.

However, I can now catch the movie quotes during the meetings, such as “The key to the game is

playing the man, not the game” and ‘If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table,

then you are the sucker.” These quotes and many more were recited during the card game nights.

The guys have common characteristics that bring them together to play cards weekly. Gale

mentions in his article, “The use of leisure time activity is a cultural universal, that is, it is found in

all cultures. Often the activity parallels or reflects values in the economy of the culture” (Gale, par.

2). Poker and other various card games possess hidden values that connect the players whether

they realize it or not. Some of these values may be that they’re sociable, quick­thinking, and are

willing to take risks. I’ll briefly introduce the rounders of my community.

I’ll start with the host, sophomore Steve Smith*. He is about 5’9 with a lean athletic build

and buzzed dirty blonde hair. He’s a political science major, in the military, and I’d call him the

leader of the group. Smith handles the poker holder, which holds the players’ money and the poker

chips. Before each night begins, he takes the players’ money and distributes the chips. (Players

must have at least $5 to play, and announce their departure 30 minutes early, so they cannot just

leave after a big win.) Also, he was the guy who helped me out the most with my project.

Sophomore Peter Fields* is about 5’10 with a lean athletic build and short brown hair.

He’s a music major, and he introduced me to the community. He is a player who really

understands the game of poker. He told me, “A lot of people don’t think about actual chances of

5

poker—all the outs they have. They need to analyze the suits, money, pot; you must be totally

aware of everything going on around you.”

Sophomore Kaleb Brick* is about 5’11 with a lean athletic build and buzzed brown hair.

He’s in the military, used to model, and is a loud poker player. He comments on every hand he

receives and makes jokes constantly throughout the night. He also randomly breaks out in song a

lot.

Sophomore Gerry Merkel* is about 6’1 with a chubby build and short brown hair. He’s in

the military and I note him to be a quiet, aggressive poker player. He makes a decision and sticks

to it during a round. Smith comments, “He really makes me question my cards whenever he places

a bet.” Brick responds, “He bets big no matter what, and he’s lucky as hell half the time.” He’s a

player where others aren’t sure if he’s bluffing or actually has a good hand.

Sophomore Jared Martin* is about 5’9 with an average build, long brown hair, and a

scruffy beard and mustache. He usually is a cautious poker player—he only bets when he knows

he has a good hand. He usually has food at the table, mainly sunflower seeds.

Sophomore Michael Newcomb* is about 5’10 with a skinny build and buzzed golden

blonde hair. He is Martin’s roommate, and they usually arrive together. He spends most of his

time during the games watching whatever is on TV.

Junior Patrick Anderson* is about 5’10 with a chubby build and dark brown hair. He’s

majoring in teaching, and constantly recites movie quotes. He’s a quiet, conservation poker player,

and doesn’t enjoy the risks.

Sophomore Aaron Williams* is about 5’10 with an athletic build and buzzed brown hair.

He is a quiet poker player, and only talks when it’s a smaller group. He is also a cautious player,

and normally only plays with good hands. He makes comments on the game, and sometimes asks

for homework help.

6

All eight players come play cards with a hope of going home with more money that night;

however, this is not the main reason for attending the meetings. Anderson said, “What I appreciate

the most is just the people I play with. It’s not a casino—no drinks, no smokes, we’re just having

fun. If you find the right group, you’re there to stay.” The original members of this group have

been playing together for awhile, and if my assumptions are correct, it will continue up through

college until they all part ways for their individual futures.

Back for Another Round

Card nights have come and passed. During my first few nights of observation, I focused on

the atmosphere and the individual players. Tonight, I decide to focus on how they interact with

each other. As I come back and take my place on Smith’s Marvel bedspread, I am greeted by

Newcomb, “Hey, it’s poker girl!” I suppose I have a nickname now, and I smile at this

comment—I feel like I’m starting to become part of my community. Smith, Brick, Williams,

Newcomb, Martin, and Merkel are all here tonight. As Smith hands out everyone’s chips, the

group socializes about their lives. Brick and Williams tell a story about a time when they went to a

sports bar in Canada, and how the bar had workers who escorted guests to the bathroom.

Everyone’s eyebrows, including mine, raise a few inches—what a strange scenario.

Once everyone has his chips, the games begin. Texas Holdem is the most popular game

they play, but they also play games titled In­Between the Sheets, Guts, Bitch, Screw Your

Neighbor, and Black Maria. The group usually starts with Holdem, which is what I am observing

now. During this round, everyone folds except Smith and Merkel. Both keep raising the bet, and

finally Merkel raises a big two dollars. Smith sits and ponders for a while. His eyes meet Merkel’s

and Merkel stares back, and I would even classify his stare intimidating! Finally, Smith decides to

accept the bet and throws chips into the pot. Good choice—Merkel had been bluffing.

7

Many side conversations occur between every round, either between two people or the

whole group. The guys talk about politics, video games, movies, and their own personal lives. The

topic I hear now is the basketball game they watched the other night between Kansas and

Memphis. As the games continue, cards slide and flip across the green table, chips are tossed into

the middle—rounds are going, and money is being shuffled from one person the other. Martin

comments, “I love how these [poker chips] sound like little plastic pieces of nothingness.” I laugh

as I write this down, because it is complete sarcasm.

“Even she laughed at that one,” Smith says as he fiddles with his chips.

“She’s been laughing at a lot of things,” Brick says. “She’s the strong, silent type over

there, just writing her paper, quietly observing.” I smile and tell them laughing is what I do best.

Suddenly, a guy stops at their door to say hello and a card whizzes past my face. The guys erupt

with laughter and Smith says, “If you guys would not kill Chelsea that would be awesome.”

Brick points and Merkel and says, “What are you doing? She’s here trying to write a paper,

and you’re trying to take her eye out! Don’t give a bad impression!”

I laugh, and feel slightly flattered that they care. However, I note the greeter at the door.

He has stopped by to chat and has no intention of playing cards tonight, but the guys at the poker

table stop playing and talk to him. This demonstrates that the community is important for

socialization. Studies have shown that socialization with others is essential for an individual’s life:

Berkman [Ph.D. chair of the department of health and social behavior at the Harvard School of

Public Health] has found that interacting with others lowers a person’s overall risk of dying…it’s a

good argument for getting out with your friends, no matter how busy you are” (Rosen, par. 14).

Getting together weekly for a card game gives the community the time to take a break from

college and socialize with their peers. Brick comments, “It’s a nice way to relax (Smith interjects,

“Until you lose, like, 40 dollars later!”). The interaction between other people is my main reason

8

for coming.” The guys like the game, but the thing they look forward to most is socialization with

friends.

Not only do they socialize among themselves, but they also talk to others who stop by the

room. During my observations, along with my noted visitor, many people stopped by for a short

chat, and the guys at the table enjoyed the visitors. Leaving the dorm room open symbolizes that

interaction is welcome. Along with room visitors, they made sure to include me in their

community by talking and goofing around with me. Socializing and interacting with each other, as

well as other people, is the main reason my community meets weekly.

As I finish up my observations for the night, I notice I am spending more time watching

the game than writing my notes. I’m starting the join the yells after a big win occurs, laugh about

jokes made that only poker players would understand, and pay more attention to how the game is

played. I feel as if I am becoming closer to my community.

My Seat at the Table

It’s my last day observing my community, so the guys pull up an extra seat at the table—

this time I’m in the game. Tonight, I’ll be playing with Smith, Brick, Martin, and Williams. I hand

Smith my five dollars, and he hands me a stack of four blue chips, eight red chips, and ten white

chips. I grasp the stack of chips, and immediately pick the stack up and let them drop, one chip at

a time. It must be a natural reaction to do this with a stack of poker chips. They are heavier than I

thought, and I am baffled at how this stack of chips now holds a handful of my money. Suddenly,

the game becomes more serious now that I’m in the seat at the table, my money’s out of sight, and

chips are out in front of me.

Smith deals the cards—one card slides toward me, then the other. I glance at my cards: a

three of clubs and a four of diamonds. I toss some chips to the pot to stay in the game, and watch

as the dealer reveals the flop (first three cards flipped from the deck): two of clubs, five of

9

diamonds, and a six of clubs. My initial thought is that these are low cards, and they won’t get me

much. The bet is raised two dollars, and that is a lot of money to me, so I fold. The last two cards

from the deck are a six of hearts and a jack of spades, and the round ends as Martin takes the pot.

“Can I look at your cards, Chels?” Smith asks. He flips over the cards I have and takes in a

sharp breath. The others all say “Oooh…” in unison as soon as they see my cards, and I

immediately know I did something wrong. “Never ever fold a straight! You would have won that

pot.” Needless to say, I learned my lesson.

As the round continues, I get down to one dollar. I start to fold more, because I don’t want

to lose all my money. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to play anymore, and I am enjoying

Holdem. I understand how the game can be addicting—there’s something about it that makes the

individual want to play more. It must be the thrill—the excitement—of not knowing what’s going

to happen. Smith suggests I go all in for this round, and when I check my cards and see a nine and

jack of clubs, I sense it’s a safe move. I push my two red chips and five white chips to the center

of the table, and immediately I experience a rush. My heart starts to pound against my chest and

my hands slightly shake. The guys had mentioned earlier this semester that the first time they went

all in their hands shook. I can now concur with that statement, because my hands are trembling,

and I have no control over it. The flop reveals the ace of clubs, king of spades, and queen of

hearts. My heart beats faster—all I need is a ten and I have a good chance of winning the pot, and

I’d still be able to play! My eyes are glued to the cards as Martin flips over the last two cards—six

and nine of hearts. Darn! No ten, and this feeling of sadness flows through my body. I feel like a

wilting flower as Williams scoops up my last pile of poker chips. The guys apologize, but

congratulate me on playing a better last round than my first one.

Playing the game hands­on really opened my eyes to the game and how much it allows

people to relax and bond with one another. In a strange way, even though the risk of money loss is

10

there, a sense of relaxation comes with playing at the poker table. The casual attitude of the people

and the atmosphere around you create a stress­free feeling. When playing, one experiences the

thrill of the game, not the stress. Also, there’s always something to talk about at any point during

the night. The guys’ favorite part of the nights is being able to socialize with one another and

anyone else who stops by. Fields said, “When I first started playing, I worried about my money,

but now I don’t care as much. The best part is hanging out with my friends and having a good

time.” Based on my experience with the community, I have to agree. I will miss the social,

relaxing atmosphere of the poker dorm room.

11

Works Cited

Anderson, Patrick. Personal interview. 04 April 2008.

Brick, Kaleb. Personal interview. 07 April 2008.

“Card Game Quotes.” Thinkexist.com. 16 April 2008. http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/

keyword/card_game/.

Fields, Peter. Personal interview. 25 February 2008.

Gale, Thomson. “Sociology of Sport.” World of Sociology. (2001). CredoReference. 08

April 2008. http://www.credoreference.com/entry/4785897.

“Poker.” The Columbia Encyclopedia. 2004. CredoReference. 22 February 2008. http://

www.credoreference.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=4293933&secid=.1.

Rosen, Peg. “6 Ways to Live Longer (and Happier).” Good Housekeeping. 234.6 (2002):

53. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Bracken Library. Ball State University.

20 April 2008. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN

=6685860&site=ehost­live.

Shute, Nancy. “Fake & Rake.” Smithsonian. 285 (1997): 42­54. Academic Search

Premier. EBSCO. Bracken Library. Ball State University. 3 March 2008. http://

web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=102&sid=4cc72aa7­9771­40cl­

ae5f­cbf1d179f185%40sessionnmgr10.

Annotated Bibliography

While not always required by all writing instructors, when conducting research, you might want to create an annotated bibliography. Annotated bibliographies allow you to keep track of the sources you are working with as well as help you keep track of your thoughts as you write your essay. In writing your annotated bibliography, you should identify the source’s main purpose, provide a brief description of the source’s format and content, note the author’s credentials, and note the source’s intended audience. Since you will use your annotated bibliography when writing your research essay, it is also a good idea to include your own thoughts about each of the sources in their respective annotations. For instance, you might ask yourself: How do each of the sources support or conflict with your own opinions? Noting your own thoughts in your annotations will provide a good reference point when writing your research essay. The following is an example of annotated bibliography in correct MLA format. As you read the example, pay particular attention to both the form and content.

4

No More Drilling: Annotated Bibliography

“Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” 2/14/06. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. 3/13/08

<http://arctic.fws.gov/issues1.htm>.

This website talks about the history of A.N.W.R. and it gives good pictures of the drilling

locations. It is also a good source because the website takes a neutral stance on what is happening

to the refuge and it gives outstanding statistics. Americans use 19 million barrels of oil each day

and 7 billion barrels of oil each year. There is a 95 percent chance that we could find 1.9 billion

barrels of oil if we drill in the 1002 area, but there is only a 50 percent chance of finding a nine

month’s supply of oil in the 1002 area. There is a broad amount of diverse habitats that occur in

this single refuge of protected land. The 1002 area is essential for caribou and polar bears because

it provides habitats they need. It also talks about how oil exploration is only done during the

winter months, but that would still affect some animals like muskoxen and polar bears that live

there all year round. There would not only be problems for the animals, but for the Kaktovik

village. The Kaktovik natives are a permanent population of 260 located on the 1002 area on the

coast. There would be major restrictions on the Kaktovik resident’s activities. The Kaktovik

natives strongly discourage offshore development because it might affect the Bowhead Whale

migration, which the Kaktovik village depends on for food and other necessities.

Carlton, Jim. “Alaskan Tribal Foes of Drilling Win Top Environmental Award.” Wall Street

Journal – Eastern Edition 239.78 (22 Apr. 2002): C12. Academic Search Premier.

EBSCOhost. Bracken Library, Muncie, IN. 13 Mar. 2008

<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=6577230&site=ehost­

live>.

This article is a good source because it talks about a trio of Gwich’in tribal leaders that are

against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The leaders have traveled around the

world explaining to tow gatherings and school groups how drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain

would endanger the caribou herd. For thousands of years the Gwich’in tribe has relied on the

caribou herd for meat and many other necessities. The proposed drilling will be on the coastal

plains where the caribou herds use as their main caving ground. The three leaders, Jonathon

Solomon, Sarah James, and Norma Kassi are receiving the Goldman Environmental Prize for

campaigning against drilling in the A.N.W.R. They are being honored for their effort in trying to

unite public opposition to the Bush administration. The Bush administration is trying to open the

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil drilling. The trio of Gwich’in tribal leaders also

received 125 thousand dollars to further their wonderful environmental friendly cause.

“Dream Job: Studying the Wildlife Wonders at the Arctic Refuge.” Wilderness (2007): 18­19.

Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Bracken Library, Muncie, IN. 13 Mar. 2008

<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27089125&site=ehost­

live>.

This is a great article to use because it talks about many of the animal populations in the Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge. The Porcupine Caribou population was 123 thousand in 2001. They

migrate annually across the Porcupine River, between the refuge coastal plain and wintering areas

to the south. The caribou have to trek some 400 miles to the coastal plain to calve and if there are

huge oil infrastructures there the caribou will have to find some other place to calve. With the oil

drilling being in the Porcupine Caribou’s calving grounds the caribou’s population will decrease.

Many other populations are already decreasing for other reasons and they don’t need oil and loud

noises detouring them from there habitat. The U.S. Geological Survey studying the decreasing

population of the polar bears have seen recent trends in weight loss, reduced cub survival, some

drowning in open water, and even cannibalism. The thinning ice from the warm weather is

causing difficult situations for polar bears because they generally hunt for seals from the ice.

There is Alaska it is an extreme climate and even small or impermanent changes in the conditions

can have major effects on the animal populations because many animals live on the edge of their

range. If all these changes are happening and affecting the refuge animals that much, just think of

all the changes that will result from oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge. There at the refuge animals

have evolved to deal with the extreme seasonality of the arctic. Some animals stay all year round,

some hibernate, and some birds like the Bar Tailed Godwit migrates 7,000 miles non­stop to New

Zealand. The oil infrastructures might not bother the migratory and hibernating animals that

much, but how are the animals that live in the refuge all year round going to be affected?

Kaiser, Jocelyn. “Caribou Study Fuels Debate on Drilling in Arctic Refuge.” Science 296.5567

(19 Apr. 2002): 444. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Bracken Library, Muncie,

IN. 13 Mar. 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=

6628706&site=ehost­live>.

This database article talks about the impact of drilling on the caribou herd. The article argues

whether drilling in the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will affect the caribou

calving grounds. Ecologist Griffith is doing a study for the U.S. Geological Survey to see if the

drilling in a small area might affect the caribou herds. A study shows that in most years the

calving ground will overlap about 600 thousand hectares of the north part of the 1002 area, where

they were originally going to drill. An actual herd to the west of the A.N.W.R. was affected by the

drilling because the herd would stay about 4 kilometers away from oil pipelines and roads. 19

percent of the mother caribou spend time near the coast where the oil drills are going to be located.

Studies show that if the mother caribou are sending more time avoiding the oil infrastructure, they

may lose weight, make less milk, and they might even fail to get pregnant the next year. Griffith

signed a letter that urged that the 1002 area be protected permanently. Griffith also feels that the

Porcupine herd will not be the only animals affected by the drilling. The drilling will have an

overall impact on many species and the boreal ecosystem that we cannot foresee.

Lovgren, Stefan. “Exxon Valdez Spill, 15 Years Later: Damage Lingers.” March 22, 2004.

National Geographic News. March 13, 2008

<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0318_040318_exxonvaldez.html>.

The website titled Exxon Valdez Spill, 15 Years Later: Damage Lingers is a great source to

use because this source will help back up my argument for opposing drilling in the Arctic National

Wildlife Refuge. This source will also give a good example of what happens when people drill in

Alaska. The website explains how the Exxon Valdez was doing a normal routine run from

Valdez, Alaska to Long Beach, California on March 23, 1989. The huge 986­foot vessel filled

with 53 million gallons of crude oil ran aground on Bligh Reef. This caused the biggest

environmental disaster in United States history because 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled

into the Prince William Sound. The oil spread in the calm seas for three days and despite any

effort of trying to clean up the oil, only 3,004 barrels of oil were recovered before a storm hit. The

storm hurled oil onto the shorelines of Prince William Sound and the Kenai Peninsula­Kodiak

region where it affected salmon, sea otters, and sea bird habitats. Only 2 out of the 26 species

studied, bald eagle and river otter, recovered from the spill. Despite what you hear, there are still

lingering effects of the spill. The Pacific Herring population has decreased and many animal and

humans depend on them. Even fifteen years later there is still evidence of the oil that

contaminated 1,400 miles of shoreline. If there was already a major catastrophe from drilling in

Alaska once, why would we go back and drill in Alaska again?