6. Abbreviations
Posted by Tom Fasano on January 31, 2012 – 9:01 pmIntroduction Use abbreviations primarily in the list of works cited. In the text of your paper, you’ll rarely use abbreviations (except with parenthetical citations). When using abbreviations, be sure to follow the recommended forms listed below. The MLA Handbook allows for abbreviations without periods or spaces between them. Abbreviations made up of all capital letters [Read More...]
Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Avoid It
Posted by Tom Fasano on January 31, 2012 – 7:40 pmPlagiarism is stealing. It is passing someone else’s writing and ideas off as your own without giving appropriate credit. Whether you do this intentionally or unintentionally, it is a serious offense, a breach of academic honesty, and can earn you an F in your course—or even worse. To help you avoid plagiarizing, the following suggestions [Read More...]
Summarizing and Paraphrasing Sources
Posted by Tom Fasano on January 31, 2012 – 7:19 pmSummarizing and paraphrasing are two of the most powerful tools of research. Often these two terms are used interchangeably to mean a restatement of someone else’s words, but they actually designate two different skills. To summarize is to condense the content of a long passage, that is, to capture its meaning in as few words [Read More...]
Quoting Sources
Posted by Tom Fasano on January 31, 2012 – 6:57 pmQuotations must be used selectively, or they lose their impact. Use only quotations that stand out and are interesting in some vivid and relevant way. Also, aim for brevity with quotations. Long quotations and the overuse of them will bore your readers and peg you as a sloppy scholar or lazy thinker—or both. When omitting [Read More...]
Compiling Sources and Taking Notes
Posted by Tom Fasano on January 31, 2012 – 6:32 pmIn today’s world the computer is the writing instrument of choice, but many researchers still use index cards to record all information acquired during their research—bibliographic data on one side and quotations, summaries, paraphrases on the other. The cards are handy and provide all the information needed to compile a list of works cited. If [Read More...]
Evaluating Sources
Posted by Tom Fasano on January 30, 2012 – 7:11 pmMost scholarly work published in print format has gone through a rigorous peer-review process. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about other types of sources. Therefore, researchers need to determine the reliability of the information they collect from their research. If a source cannot be substantiated, you will need to verify the original or find [Read More...]
