Writing a Paper for Me

At university, the primary reason for using a standardized reference format like MLA, APA, or some other style is so that a professional peer (in the same discipline as the writer) can understand the syntax and relocate the writer's sources.

Which should you use? Ask your teachers which style they want you to use. If they have no preference, you can use any or follow these guidelines:

APA (American Psychological Association): psychology, education, and other social sciences.
American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association. 5th ed. Washington: APA, 2001.

a. Basic form of a quotation:
Ordinarily, introduce the quotation with a signal phrase that includes the author's last name followed by the year of publication in parentheses. Put the page number (preceded by "p.") in parentheses after the quotation.

(a) Critser (2003) noted that despite growing numbers of overweight
Americans, many health care providers still “remain either in
ignorance or outright denial about the health danger to the poor
and the young" (p. 5).

If the author is not named in the signal phrase, place the author's name, the year, and the page number in parentheses after the quotation: (Critser, 2003, p. 5).

(b) Yanovski and Yanovski (2002) reported that “the current state of
the treatment for obesity is similar to the state of the treatment
of hypertension several decades ago" (p. 600).

Note: APA style requires the year of publication in an in-text citation. Do not include a month, even if the source is listed by month and year.

b. Basic format for a summary or a paraphrase:
Include the author's last name and the year either in a signal phrase introducing the material or in parentheses following it. A page number or another locator is not required for a summary or a paraphrase, but include one if it would help readers find the passage in a long work.

According to Carmona (2004), the cost of treating obesity is exceeded only by the cost of treating illnesses from tobacco use (para. 9).

The cost of treating obesity is exceeded only by the cost of treating illnesses from tobacco use (Carmona, 2004, para. 9).

Entry in References

Carmona, R. H. (2004, March 2). "The growing epidemic of childhood obesity."
Testimony before the Subcommittee of Competition, Foreign Commerce,
and Intrastructure of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Retrieved October 10, 2004 from http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t040302.html.

Yanovski, S. Z., Yanovski, J. A. (2002). Drug therapy: Obesity [Electronic version]. The New England Journal of Medicine, 346, 591-602.

MLA (Modern Language Association): literature, arts, and humanities.
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Mod. Lang. Assn., 2003.

An in-text citation names the author of the source, often in a signal phrase, and gives the page number in parentheses. At the end of the paper, a list of works cited provides publication information about the source; the list is alphabetized by authors' last names (or by titles for works without authors).
In text citation. There are three ways to do this. You can use parenthetical citation, a footnote or an end note. Let's compare:
- With endnote: Let's say that I'm going to use an endnote. The note here is that little hot buttoned 1 at the end of the sentence.
  Drivers with cell phones place an estimated 98,000 emergency calls each day and that the phones "often reduce emergency response times and actually save lives."¹
  [Click on the number to see the actual note.]
- With parenthetical citation: Most writers and readers find parenthetical citation quicker and easier.
  Drivers with cell phones place an estimated 98,000 emergency calls each day and that the phones "often reduce emergency response times and actually save lives" (Sundeen).
  [Note: if your material covers two or more sentences, put the parenthetical information outside the final punctuation.]

The entry in Work Cited list would look like this.

Sundeen, Matt. "Cell Phones and Highway Safety: 2000 State Legislative Update." National Conference of State Legislatures. Dec. 2000. 9 pp. 27 Feb. 2001. Web.

AMA (American Medical Association): medicine, health, and biological sciences.
Iverson, Cheryl, et al. American Medical Association Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 9th ed. Baltimore: Williams, 1998.
Turabian: designed for college students to use with all subjects, but actually not used very often these days.
Chicago (Chicago Manual of Style): used with all subjects in the "real world" by books, magazines, newspapers, corporations, and other non-scholarly publications. Actually an extension of Turabian.
CSE Style (Council of Science Editors) Used in biology and the other sciences.
The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 2003. Council of Biology Editors. Scientific Style and Format: The
CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 6th ed. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Note: There are plenty of style books/sheets that are very discipline specific.
Examples:

Business: American Management Association. The AMA Style Guide for
Business Writing. New York: AMACOM, 1996.
Journalism: Goldstein, Norm, ed. Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing
on Media Law. Rev. ed. New York: Associated Press, 2005.
Linguistics: Linguistic Society of America. “LSA Style Sheet." Published
annually in the December issue of the LSA Bulletin.
Science and Technical Writing: Rubens, Philip, ed. Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Researching in the Humanities and Social Sciences: My own preferences

I. Linguistics is not an area of study that can be located and labeled as belonging to the humanities, social sciences, or even physical sciences. Given the area of concern, it may locate itself in any or all of these areas. Papers for me are laid out like rather like science papers and may, should you prefer, employ APA (American Psychological Association) style, though I am entirely amenable to MLA format if it's more convenient to you. Just pick one and be consistent.

Linguistics interprets and analyzes various aspects of human language, sometimes considering animal communications as well. It generally uses empirical methods of research. Though original data gathering and analysis are central to linguistics research, researchers also use library and Internet resources to

obtain raw data for model building or analysis
locate information about a particular model, theory, or methodology to be used in a research project
review the literature to place new research in context

Subjects of study in the social sciences sometimes cross disciplines and may be difficult to locate using the typical subject headings in indexes and abstracts. In addition, new theories may take some time to circulate in the literature, especially in print sources. Consequently, the researcher should be prepared to

identify potential search terms by scanning indexes and abstracts in relevant works
use the references in published articles and books to trace connections among theories and ideas
work from most recent to older sources

A review of the literature for a linguistics research project not only should identify what research has been done but should compare and contrast the available information and evaluate its significance.

II. Literature papers have many of the same parts, except that the primary research involves one or more texts, audiences, and/or performances. The format is MLA (Modern Language Association).

Here, I use the term 'texts' in the semiotic sense of anything that can be 'read,' be it print or other media, clothing, tattoos, behavior, what have you.
This site primarily discusses MLA format. The OWL at Purdue has the best discussion of APA format that I know.
Research in literature/textuality generally involves interpreting of text, whether that is a print (or digital/film, etc.) text or an oral artifact, often placing it within a historical and cultural context, making connections, exploring meaning, uncovering contradictions. Scholars in literature/textualities typically do research to:
- obtain primary sources to be interpreted or analyzed
- find secondary sources to put primary sources in a critical context
- seek answers to specific questions that arise during research

Research in the literature/textuality is often interdisciplinary, crossing boundaries between texts and history, philosophy and art, or music and religion. Because the subject areas are harder to categorize, the terminology used in humanities research may be less solid and agreed upon than in other fields. Researchers in the humanities are more likely to draw material from texts and artifacts than from original data gathering and experimentation. They must be prepared to be

flexible, both in search terminology and in search strategy

tolerant of multiple perspectives on the same object of study

prepared to use citations in relevant texts to locate other material and clarify connections among works.

Research, after all, is a process. That is why we need to focus tightly and take such small research bites each time we set up a research project. The subject matter is potentially so large that it would be easy to absolutely drown in data if we aren't careful to set up the task in a very narrowly defined way.

III. A good consumer of research needs to be evaluative. Most of you will do a large portion of your research on the web, whether it be through the library's website or directly on a search engine such as Google or Google Scholar. The University of California's discussion of the need to evaluate websites explains the situation quite well:

Rationale for Evaluating What You Find on the Web

The World Wide Web can be a great place to accomplish research on many topics. But putting documents or pages on the web is easy, cheap or free, unregulated, and unmonitored (at least in the USA). There is a famous Steiner cartoon published in the New Yorker (July 5, 1993) with two dogs sitting before a terminal looking at a computer screen; one says to the other "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The great wealth that the Internet has brought to so much of society is the ability for people to express themselves, find one another, exchange ideas, discover possible peers worldwide they never would have otherwise met, and, through hypertext links in web pages, suggest so many other people's ideas and personalities to anyone who comes and clicks. There are some real "dogs" out there, but there's also great treasure.

Therein lies the rationale for evaluating carefully whatever you find on the Web. The burden is on you—the reader—to establish the validity, authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you find. Documents can easily be copied and falsified or copied with omissions and errors -- intentional or accidental. In the general World Wide Web there are no editors (unlike most print publications) to proofread and "send it back" or "reject it" until it meets the standards of a publishing house's reputation. Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view. Even within university and library web sites, there can be many pages that the institution does not try to oversee. The web needs to be free like that!! And you, if you want to use it for serious research, need to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism, of questioning everything you find with critical thinking.²

As you begin to do research, consider the following:

Check for signs of bias

Does the author or publisher have political leanings or religious views that could affect objectivity?
Is the author or publisher associated with a special-interest group, such as Greenpeace or the National Rifle Association, that might promote one side of an issue?
Are alternative views presented and addressed? How fairly does the author treat opposing views?
Does the author's language show signs of bias?

Assessing an Argument

What is the author's central claim or thesis?
How does the author support this claim — with relevant and sufficient evidence or with just a few anecdotes or emotional examples?
Are statistics consistent with those you encounter in other sources? Have they been used fairly? Does the author explain where the statistics come from? (It is possible to “lie" with statistics by using them selectively or by omitting mathematical details.)
Are any of the author's assumptions questionable?
Does the author consider opposing arguments and refute them persuasively?
Does the author fall prey to any logical fallacies? What does that term mean? A logical fallacy is an incorrect conclusion derived from faulty reasoning. It may just be inaccurate, but often such arguments are intentionally misleading.
Examples: ³
- Logical: Socrates was human. All humans are mortal. Therefore, Socrates was mortal.
- Illogical:
  - Take it or leave it.
    (Why not change it?)
  - If you build it, they will come; you did not build it, therefore, they will not come.
    (To make this work, you would have to prove that "to build it" is the only way to make "them come".)
  - A good person is someone who does good things. If I do good things, then I am a good person. (Hitler or serial killer Theodore Bundy may have helped little old ladies across the street or given money to charity. So what? Circular reasoning doesn't work.)

Evaluate the Web sources you come across.

TIP: If the sponsorship and the authorship of a site are both unclear, think twice about using the site for your research.

Authorship: Is there an author? You may need to do some clicking and scrolling to find the author's name. If you are on an internal page of a site, for example, you may need to go to the home page or click on an “about this site" link to learn the name of the author. Take a moment to look at the bottom of this page. Do you see that I have provided full information about who I am, when the web site was originally created and last edited, and how to get in touch with me? All trustworthy web sites provide that information. If you can't find it somewhere on the site, back away fast.

Some sites do not have an author listed. That is particularly true of organizational sites (a library, educational institution, corporation, government) in which a number of people over time add to and look after the site. If there is an author, can you tell whether he or she is knowledgeable and credible? When the author's qualifications aren't listed on the site itself, look for links to the author's home page and institution, which may provide evidence of his or her interests and expertise. Still can't find the information? Google the person. Try it. Be careful to focus on the details, though. It is easy to get confused when many authors and institutions have similar (or even the same) names.⁴
What's the author's expertise and professional affiliation? It should be noted that just having a degree doesn't mean that the author is trustworthy or knowledgeable in his or her field. If I told you to buy a particular over the counter remedy for athlete's foot, red eyes, or hemorrhoids, labeling myself a doctor, I'd hope you'd take a moment to check to see what my degree is in. Yup, I have an earned doctorate and am a professor in the English department at Millersville University. I was trained as a medievalist at the University of Iowa, and work with medieval and linguistics materials. So, if you go buying some expensive ointment on this Dr. Duncan's say so, you're nuts!

All authors have a particular perspective. We write out of our own belief systems, prejudices, and training. The better authors are self-aware, and try to insure that their writing is as fair and balanced as possible. But, as an educated reader you need to shop carefully. Ask yourself: Is the author
- A professor at a college or university? If so, where? ⁵

Another kind of expert, such as a physician whose experience is more practical, but still substantive?
A reporter for a newspaper or magazine? That's not awful, but it suggests that the article is more likely to be written for a popular audience by a non-expert.
A government official, or official web site, providing information to all citizens. (That doesn't mean the site is unbiased. ALL documents are writing from some bias, as they are products of their own time, with all the short sightedness that implies.)
A person trying to sell you things on a commercial site.
A private citizen, perhaps with a hobby, perhaps riding a biased hobby horse, pushing ideas on a private, or clearly biased web site with a particular focus or ideology.

Has that author published other things? Where? Are the journals scholarly, jurored, reputable? Is there a way to get in touch with the author if you have questions?
Where is the article indexed? For example, is it on Google Scholar or just Google?

Sponsorship:

Who, if anyone, sponsors the site? The sponsor of a site is often named and described on the home page. Can't figure that out? Hmmm. Red flags should go up.
What does the URL ending tell you? The URL often specifies the type of group hosting the site: commercial (.com), educational (.edu), nonprofit (.org), governmental (.gov), military (.mil), or network (.net). URLs may also indicate a country of origin: uk (United Kingdom) or jp (Japan), for instance.

Purpose and authorship

Why was the site created: To argue a position? To sell a product? To inform readers?
Who is the site's intended audience? If you do not fit the audience profile, is information on the site still relevant to your topic?

Currency

How current is the site? Check for the date of publication or the latest update.
How current are the site's links? If many of the links no longer work, the site may be too dated for your purposes.

To learn more about evaluating web resources:

Widener University has a nice presentation on evaluating web resources.
Cornell University has a nice web page, Evaluating Web Resources, which is quicker and more straightforward, though not as technologically advanced.

________________________

Notes

1. Matt Sundeen. "Cell Phones and Highway Safety: 2000 State Legislative Update." National Conference of State Legislatures. Dec. 2000. 9 pp. 27 Feb. 2001 [back]

2. "Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask" (n.a.) University of California Berkeley. July 13, 2008. Date found: July 16, 1008 at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html [back]

3. For more examples, see Dennis Jerz' site on Logical Fallacies in Writing (Seton Hill).
[back]

4. Beware mistaken identity. Seton Hill/Hall: On this web page, I mention a web page by Dennis G. Jerz. His site suggested he's at Seton Hill, but when I googled him, the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire also popped up. (He'd worked there 5 years before moving on.) I established that he was no longer at Wisconsin, but misreading, I pulled up the Seton Hall web site and drilled down to the English Department. No Dennis Jerz. Now, I know there's a Dennis Jerz out there, as I've run into him professionally before, and so I thought he had perhaps recently left Seton Hall (professors do move around). I left his web page on my site, but a bit later he wrote me with the correction. Seton Hill University is in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and very much not Seton Hall, the New Jersey school, he explained. So, I was a bit embarrassed, but did make the correction. The mistake was entirely my own, and caused by my seeing what I expected to see rather than what was actually on the page.

When you do research for your own papers, though, you'd have every reason to be leery when running into a problem of this sort. So, why did I make this information a footnote rather than leaving it in the text? Because everyone may not want or need to read this material. It's a bit of an aside that could sidetrack my main argument. Hence, the note. [back]

5. All colleges, universities, and scholars are not created equal, and it matters that, say, Steven Pinker's at Harvard, Dennis Jerz is at Seton Hill, and I'm at Millersville. They're all good schools, but Harvard can outspend Seton Hill and Millersville, attracting the very best senior scholars in the world, and often freeing them of all undergraduate teaching responsibilities, leaving them with lots of time to think and do well funded research. Want to see what I mean? Go to Amazon.com and search on each of them to see what each of us has written. Or, google Steven Pinker Harvard and then go to his site. You'll see the difference immediately. Pinker is a full professor with a named chair at Harvard. He's famous, has published perhaps nine books and countless articles, and comes close to being a media star. [back]

Work Cited

The AMA Style Guide for Business Writing. New York: AMACOM, 1996.

American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association. 5th ed. Washington: APA, 2001.

Beck, Susan. "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources." New Mexico State University 1997. Date found: July 16, 2008 at http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html

Carmona, R. H. (2004, March 2). "The growing epidemic of childhood obesity."
Testimony before the Subcommittee of Competition, Foreign Commerce,
and Intrastructure of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Retrieved October 10, 2004 from http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t040302.html.

The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 2003. Council of Biology Editors. Scientific Style and Format: The
CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 6th ed. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994.

Cornell University Library. "Evaluating Web Resources." Cornell University, 2005. Date found: July 16, 2008 at http://campusgw.library.cornell.edu/newhelp/res_strategy/evaluating/evaluate.html.

"Fallacy." Wikipedia. (n.d.) Date found: July 16, 2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Mod. Lang. Assn., 2003.

Goldstein, Norm, ed. Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing
on Media Law. Rev. ed. New York: Associated Press, 2005.

Iverson, Cheryl, et al. American Medical Association Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 9th ed. Baltimore: Williams, 1998.

Jerz, Dennis G. "Logical Fallacies in Writing." 1998 (2005) Seaton Hall. Date found: July 16, 2008 at http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/argument/fallacies.html

Linguistic Society of America. “LSA Style Sheet." Published annually in the December issue of the LSA Bulletin.

"List of serial killers by country." Wikipedia. (n.d.) Date found: July 14, 2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_country

Pinker, Steven. Web site, Department of Psychology. Harvard University. (n.d.) Date found: July 16, 2008 at http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/

Ponsford, Bennett Claire. "Citing Internet and Print Resources." Cornette Library. West Texas A&M University. 10 March 2008. Date Found: July 16, 2008 at http://www.wtamu.edu/library/webguides/citingweb.shtml

Rubens, Philip, ed. Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Sundeen, Matt. "Cell Phones and Highway Safety: 2000 State Legislative Update." National Conference of State Legislatures. Dec. 2000. 9 pp. 27 Feb. 2001 <http://ncsl.org/programs/esnr/cellphone.pdf>.

Univeristy of California Berkely. "Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask" (n.a.) July 13, 2008. Date found: July 16, 1008 at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

Wolfgram Memorial Library. "How to Evaluate Information on the Web." Widener University. The tutorial is mounted on a larger site, just called "Evaluating Web Pages." (n.d.) Date found: July 16, 2008 at http://www3.widener.edu/Academics/Libraries/
Wolfgram_Memorial_Library/Evaluate_Web_Pages/659/

Yanovski, S. Z., Yanovski, J. A. (2002). Drug therapy: Obesity [Electronic version]. The New England Journal of Medicine, 346, 591-602.

2002; Last revised July 16, 2008
Dr. Bonnie Duncan
bduncan@millersville.edu
1-717-871-2080
English Department
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551

Other Contacts:
Millersville Information Technology Help Desk:
1-717-871-2371, 1-800-509-9605

Blackboard Help Desk:
Help Desk # for B' board
1-866-334-9174