No bibliography = no essay

Remember that long discussion we had, the second day of class, about citation and plagiarism? It seems that I forgot to make one important point: you always need to include a bibliography with your essay: always. Yes, some TAs and professors will be more casual about bibliographies - especially when you are only using texts from class - but this is lazy and potentially dangerous.

Now, how you format your bibliography - even what you call it - might change from class to class, so it's important to ask if your TA or professor has any specific requirements. Most of them will tell you what I'm going to tell you: it's not terribly important how you format your citations and bibliography, so long as you are clear, thorough and consistent.

However, I will here briefly remind you how to format the major sorts of texts you'll be including in a standard MLA bibliography. (Those of you who are in the sciences and the more scientifically-minded social sciences might want to familiarize yourselves with APA instead.)

1. A bibliography entry for a book:
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

2. A bibliography entry for an article from a journal or book of essays:
Heath, Shirley Brice and Vikram Bhagat. "Reading Comics, the Invisible Art." Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts. Ed. James Flood et al. New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1997. 586-591.

3. A bibliography entry for an article accessed through a journal database:
Witt, Susan D. "The influence of televison on children's gender role socialization. " Childhood Education: Annual Theme 76.5 (2000): 322-324. Research Library Core. ProQuest. UW-Madison Libraries. 25 Nov. 2004* <http://80-www.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/>

4. A bibliography entry for a free internet source:
Yang, Gene. "Strengths of Comics in Education." Comics in Education (2003). 12 December 2004* <>

(* This is the date the article was accessed online.)

When you cite a quotation from or paraphrase of a text, you should always give a page number. If an article is available in PDF (Adobe Acrobat), retrieve it that way so your copy retains the same page numbering of the original essay. Several articles that are available full-text but not in PDF still include page numbers, usually in brackets in the text itself: [end of page 322], etc.


Some remarks about formatting bibliographies:

First, it's rarely called a Bibliography any more. In theory, a bibliography includes texts you worked with closely to write your essay and texts that influenced you in more subtle ways: perhaps an article you skimmed early in your research process but never ended up incorporating directly into your argument, etc.

More often, you should just title the page Works Cited: this indicates to the reader that you will be cataloging only the texts you mention in your essay. APA seems to prefer References to Works Cited, although I don't know why - the ways of scientists are unfathomable to me.

Your works cited page shouldn't be double-spaced. Every line after the first, of each entry, should be indented 0.5". There should be an empty line between each entry.


Standard essay formatting:

• Use 1" margins on each side; word processing programs default to 1.25" for the left and right margins, so you will almost certainly need to change them.
• Use Times New Roman (or equivalent, if you're on a Mac); 10 point and 12 point are equally acceptable sizes - for some reason, nobody likes 11 point.
• Number your pages in the header. If you use Microsoft Word, this means doing the following:
• From the View menu, select Header and Footer;
• While your cursor is in the header, align text to the right (either with the Align Right button or by going to the Format menu, choosing Paragraph and picking Right from the Alignment drop-down box);
• Type your last name, a space, and then press the Insert Page Number button on the Header and Footer pane. (Alternatively, you can go to the Insert menu, choose Field, and select Page from the Field Names pane.)
• Your page numbers should look like this:
Schmoe 2


• Use block quotes for any quotation that takes up more than three lines of your essay. When block quoting,
  
• Indent the whole quotation 0.5" on the left (there should be no indent from the right);
  
• Don't use quotation marks at the beginning or end of the quotation;
• Cite the quotation after the period or ellipsis concluding the quotation;
  
• Double-space the block quote as you would the rest of your essay.
  

- posted by Mike @ 8:03 PM

 
To add to your Christmas* list
(* or your capitalist holiday of choice)

If you're as excited about writing as I am--well, you're probably nuts. Still, there's no better way to make an instant impact on TAs and professors reading your essays and on HR drones reading your cover letters than to master clarity and style. Three books tell you pretty much everything you need to know about pumping up your prose:

1. Strunk & White's Elements of Style is simply the standard handbook on American writing. It is also the subject of a growing amount of compositional controversy: several progressive scholars argue that its rules are built on certain masculinist assumptions about language. Strunk's famous dictum--omit needless words--hearkens back to a more ignorant time when beginning writers were encouraged to avoid subtlety and nuance rather than embrace it. However, its tools for paring down sentences are essential: sometimes you just need to be able to present your argument as clear, unambiguous truth. Just remember to use it discretely: don't obey its rules blindly.
   
   
2. Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves was a New York Times bestseller for several weeks, virtually unheard of for a grammar guide of any kind. If you want to master the English comma and begin to explore more exciting punctuation marks (the semicolon being one of the most important, although you shouldn't neglect the colon), Truss's guide is a warm and accessible place to learn the basics.
   
   Of course, ESL has sparked controversy of its own (grammaticians are a famously difficult group to please), but its controversy is of a much more innocent stripe: several grammaticians take issue with the nuances of the grammatical rules Truss offers up. In one particularly vocal critique, a critic argues that her book doesn't obey its own grammar; he then goes on to argue that every good writer has his or her own sense of grammar, apparently unaware that his argument stabs itself in the foot.
   
   Still, in fairness to these critics I will list their preferred alternative: language guru Barbara Wallraff's Your Own Words. I found it a little dry and uninformative, but I'm in the minority.
   
   
3. Constance Hale's inspired Sin and Syntax is a must-read for writers who are sick of academic prose. Her spicy little book organizes itself how to maximize the punch you get out of different kinds of words (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.). For writers looking to awesome-ize their flow (I'm looking at you, Sam), this is probably the place to start.
   

- posted by Mike @ 10:11 AM