Writing a Paper for Me

To make your research logic transparent to your audience so that they can

assess the quality of your paper and its conclusions, and

follow your research path themselves should they wish to know more about the subject and//or check your facts.

To avoid problems of ascription such as plagiarism and breaking copyright law.

That said, you can see that the real advantage to in-text documentation (as opposed to footnotes or endnotes) is not that it saves you a bit of time as you write, but that the reader's eye does not have to leave the paragraph in order to assess the specifics and quality of your sources

All good minds credit others. Tracing the intellectual footsteps you walk in makes you more credible, not less. Nobody expects undergraduates or most early graduate students to do groundbreaking creative scholarship.

Appropriately documenting sources helps your readers locate the original source should they want a firsthand understanding of it, and documentation demonstrates your credibility as a writer. Really, documentation is an ethical issue as well as an audience awareness issue.

Failing to document sources constitutes plagiarism which the MLA Handbook defines as using "another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source . . . . [It] is intellectual theft" (Gibaldi 30). Your audience will not trust you when you fail to acknowledge the sources you have used. The skillful and responsible use of sources in your prose demonstrates your authority in discussing a given issue. Readers are more likely to trust writers who have researched their issue, shown their knowledge of it, and participated in a professional dialogue concerning it. Acknowledgment and discussion of your sources shows your participation in that dialogue.

2002; Last revised July 14, 2008
Dr. Bonnie Duncan
bduncan@millersville.edu
1-717-871-2080
English Department
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551

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