Writing Revisions from U.P.S. Writing Center

Research Paper Evaluation sheet

Research Paper Evaluation Sheet

Verb Bulding

Verb Building—All these words are verbs.  Yes, they are also sometimes nouns and adjectives, but look up the verbal meanings and write them down on the lines.  Some have more than one verbal meaning.  Learn the more interesting one.

Abscond  ____________________________________________________________________

Abstract  ____________________________________________________________________

Accept ____________________________________________________________________

Access  ____________________________________________________________________

Admit  ____________________________________________________________________

Admonish  ____________________________________________________________________

Affect  ____________________________________________________________________

Alert  ____________________________________________________________________

Alienate  ____________________________________________________________________

Alleviate ____________________________________________________________________

Amend  ____________________________________________________________________

Anneal  ____________________________________________________________________

Anoint  ____________________________________________________________________

Appraise  ____________________________________________________________________

Assess  ____________________________________________________________________

Augment  ____________________________________________________________________

Bifurcate  ____________________________________________________________________

Blanket ____________________________________________________________________

Bleach ____________________________________________________________________

Bolster  ____________________________________________________________________

Boost  ____________________________________________________________________

Bottle  ____________________________________________________________________

Buoy ____________________________________________________________________

Campaign  ____________________________________________________________________

Cap  ____________________________________________________________________

Challenge  ____________________________________________________________________

Coin  ____________________________________________________________________

Credit  ____________________________________________________________________

Daub  ____________________________________________________________________

Delimit  ____________________________________________________________________

Denigrate  ____________________________________________________________________

Determine ____________________________________________________________________

Delve  ____________________________________________________________________

Depend  ____________________________________________________________________

Detail  ____________________________________________________________________

Devote  ____________________________________________________________________

Dovetail  ____________________________________________________________________

Effect  ____________________________________________________________________

Endear  ____________________________________________________________________

Enervate  ____________________________________________________________________

Engage  ____________________________________________________________________

Enthrall  ____________________________________________________________________

Equip  ____________________________________________________________________

Esteem ____________________________________________________________________

Evoke  ____________________________________________________________________

Ex- ume, tend, tenuate, port, press, tol, plain, etc. ___________________________________

Flag  ____________________________________________________________________

Flair ____________________________________________________________________

Fleece  ____________________________________________________________________

Forgo ____________________________________________________________________

Fray  ____________________________________________________________________

Fringe  ____________________________________________________________________

Front  ____________________________________________________________________

Garner ____________________________________________________________________

Garnish  ____________________________________________________________________

Gnarl  ____________________________________________________________________

Gratify  ____________________________________________________________________

Grieve  ____________________________________________________________________

Ground  ____________________________________________________________________

Grouse  ____________________________________________________________________

Heighten  ____________________________________________________________________

Illuminate  ____________________________________________________________________

Illustrate  ____________________________________________________________________

Impede  ____________________________________________________________________

Impel ____________________________________________________________________

Impinge ____________________________________________________________________

Imply  ____________________________________________________________________

Impugn  ____________________________________________________________________

Impose ____________________________________________________________________

Impoverish ____________________________________________________________________

Incur  ____________________________________________________________________

Infer  ____________________________________________________________________

Intrigue  ____________________________________________________________________

Inure  ____________________________________________________________________

Isolate  ____________________________________________________________________

Lark  ____________________________________________________________________

Leech ____________________________________________________________________

Level  ____________________________________________________________________

Lurch ____________________________________________________________________

Lurk  ____________________________________________________________________

Master  ____________________________________________________________________

Mellow ____________________________________________________________________

Minimize ____________________________________________________________________

Moderate  ____________________________________________________________________

Modulate ____________________________________________________________________

Monitor  ____________________________________________________________________

Moon  ____________________________________________________________________

Narrow  ____________________________________________________________________

Negotiate ____________________________________________________________________

Nestle  ____________________________________________________________________

Notch ____________________________________________________________________

Nullify  ____________________________________________________________________

Opine  ____________________________________________________________________

Oppress ____________________________________________________________________

Opt  ____________________________________________________________________

Orient  ____________________________________________________________________

Originate ____________________________________________________________________

Ossify  ____________________________________________________________________

Outline  ____________________________________________________________________

Pelt  ____________________________________________________________________

Pitch ____________________________________________________________________

Prime  ____________________________________________________________________

Prompt  ____________________________________________________________________

Propose  ____________________________________________________________________

Protract  ____________________________________________________________________

Range  ____________________________________________________________________

Ready  ____________________________________________________________________

Refine  ____________________________________________________________________

Refrain  ____________________________________________________________________

Relate  ____________________________________________________________________

Relent ____________________________________________________________________

Repress  ____________________________________________________________________

Reproach ____________________________________________________________________

Resonate  ____________________________________________________________________

Restrain  ____________________________________________________________________

Resign ____________________________________________________________________

Restrict  ____________________________________________________________________

Retain  ____________________________________________________________________

Revel  ____________________________________________________________________

Revive  ____________________________________________________________________

Roil  ____________________________________________________________________

Rouse  ____________________________________________________________________

Sample  ____________________________________________________________________

Secure  ____________________________________________________________________

Shield  ____________________________________________________________________

Shoulder  ____________________________________________________________________

Shun  ____________________________________________________________________

Shunt  ____________________________________________________________________

Signal  ____________________________________________________________________

Slacken ____________________________________________________________________

Smear  ____________________________________________________________________

Specify  ____________________________________________________________________

Splinter  ____________________________________________________________________

Stabilize  ____________________________________________________________________

Stem  ____________________________________________________________________

Straiten  ____________________________________________________________________

Style ____________________________________________________________________

Survey  ____________________________________________________________________

Suspend  ____________________________________________________________________

Sustain  ____________________________________________________________________

Tail  ____________________________________________________________________

Trace  ____________________________________________________________________

Trans- form, fer, duce, port, pond, etc ___________________________________________

Trek  ____________________________________________________________________

Troop  ____________________________________________________________________

Trumpet ____________________________________________________________________

Try  ____________________________________________________________________

Tweak  ____________________________________________________________________

Type  ____________________________________________________________________

Typify  ____________________________________________________________________

Underpin ____________________________________________________________________

Underscore ____________________________________________________________________

Urge  ____________________________________________________________________

Validate  ____________________________________________________________________

Vilify  ____________________________________________________________________

Warrant ____________________________________________________________________

Thesis & Topic Sentence Considerations

Thesis & Topic Sentences: A Worksheet for Class Discussion
After you have arrived at a thesis statement or a topic sentence for your paragraph, consider the following questions.

Scope—Can I address this idea adequately in a paragraph of twelve sentences or an essay of the required pages? Do I actually want to write about a topic more specific, narrower, in a distinct context?

Specificity—Is the paragraph topic or the essay’s thesis too broad, too abstract, too sweeping? Have I found the correct, accurate nouns and verbs? Is my central idea in the predicate?

Supportability—Is there concrete evidence that I can analyze to advance my argument? Is this evidence strong enough? Too obvious?

Sustainability—Is the idea big enough to require a full paragraph to explain or a full paper to persuade? Is this an idea that will grow through the paper, or will I simply repeat it again and again with different examples?


Practice Sentences Would these sentences be good thesis statements for an essay, topic sentences for paragraphs, or neither? Could they be re-written to be adequate for either a topic sentence or a thesis statement?
1) The Return of the Soldier examines the difficulty of reconciling the dreams of youth with the realities of adulthood.
2) As Jenny learns more about Margaret, her prose is less and less sympathetic of Kitty.
3) Jenny’s observation explains Kitty’s interest in Chris.
4) Although The Return of the Soldier is set during World War I, its subject is not war, but what constitutes “civilization.”
5) The landscape of Chris’s home—and how it has changed—charts the man’s decay from childish dreamer to mature, but resigned adult.
6) West’s equivocal and ambiguous use of the word safe early in the novel prepares her reader for an equally equivocal but devastating use of the word cure at the novel’s end.
7) The novel argues that the lower classes will always be misinterpreted by the upper classes.
8) In this scene, Kitty dresses for her first dinner with Chris.
9) The colors white, red, and green are especially important in this novel.
10) In The Return of the Soldier, the War is a metaphor for growing up.
11) Rebecca West chooses to present her novel in first-person for very important reasons.
12) Because Chris has lost his memory of the previous fifteen years, he wants desperately to see Margaret, a girl he knew in his youth.

What to Do With a Poem (Stolen from Jamie Olson)

What to Do with a Poem

Helen Vendler explains in her book Poems, Poets, Poetry that the reader’s first task when responding to a poem – and especially when writing about a poem – is to recognize that it is more than simply a “message.” Rather, “it is a thing imagined,” she writes, “an artwork like a piece of music or a painting or a dance” (323). You must discover “how the theme of the work is being imagined: how the literal statement of the poet’s feeling has been transformed.” To help you move from the ‘what’ of the poem to the ‘how’ of the poem, Vendler suggests working through the following categories.


Words
Which words in the poem stand out? Why? Perhaps you can make connections between some of the poem’s key words. Are there any words that you don’t know? Look them up in a dictionary. Pay attention to the way that the poet uses even the smallest words, such as conjunctions and pronouns. Look for patterns among them.


Sentences
Notice the length of each sentence in the poem. Are some shorter than others? Why? How is the logic of the poem embodied by its syntax? Determine whether the ends of clauses and sentences correspond to the ends of lines or stanzas. Why might the poet have created a particular relation of sentence grammar and poetic form?


Form
What is it about the sound of the poem that catches your ear? And what strikes you about its appearance on the page? How is it shaped? Does the poem rhyme? Does it have regular meter? Are its lines short or long? Does the form of the poem shift as it proceeds? Perhaps it reminds you of other poems that you have read. What is the cumulative effect of the poem’s sound?


Time
What changes happen to the poem as it moves from beginning to end? That is, what is the “plot” of the poem? Imagine that the poem begins at A and moves to Z. What happens at the various points that lie in between—for example, at B, G, J, and Q? What emotions does the poem move through?


Space
After you have read through the poem, how do you visualize it in your mind’s eye? Think of the poem as a map, viewed from above. As you look down on it, what do you see? What parts does it fall into? How do those parts relate to one another? Perhaps some parts of the poem seem more significant than others. Why? What images stand out? You might even try sketching the poem on a piece of paper.

Literary Terms (Stolen from Denise L. Despres)

ENG202 Intro to Poetry
(Adapted from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, ed. R. Murfin and S.M. Ray (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003).

Please bring this glossary to every class meeting. Students are responsible for knowing these terms. I also encourage students to use the Literary Vocabulary website in preparation for class discussion and in-class essay exams: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms.html

Aesthetics: The study of beauty and nature in the arts. Aesthetics concerns the nature and definition of beauty, as well as the relationship between beauty and truth. Aesthetics also involves inquiry into the nature of artistic creation and audience appreciation.

Allegory: The presentation of an abstract idea through an extended metaphor (an image or figure of speech).

Allusion: An indirect reference to a person, event, statement, or theme in the arts. Authors who use this device presuppose that select readers will recognize the allusion and thus have access to a richer interpretation than uninformed readers.

Ambiguity: In literary works, in contrast to direct speech, authors create multiple meanings or interpretive possibilities through the use of words with several connotations (associations evoked by a word beyond its denotations, or literal meaning). Deliberate ambiguity contributes to the richness and complexity of literature.

Anachrony: The literary technique of presenting material out of chronological order. Analepsis is the insertion of a past scene into the present time; prolepsis is the insertion of scenes the preview future events or developments; ellipsis is a chronological gap. We are familiar with anachrony in film as flashbacks or flashforwards.

Anagnorisis: A term from Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 330 B.C.) referring to the moment in drama when the protagonist discovers or gains crucial knowledge the leads to or explains a reversal in fortune.

Antagonist: The character pitted against the protagonist—the main character. The antagonist may be, but need not be, a villain.

Antihero: A protagonist in a modern work who does not display the characteristics of a traditional hero.

Apocalypse: The term apocalyptic stems from the word apocalypse, of Greek origins, meaning, “to uncover.” Literature is apocalyptic when it purports to uncover, reveal, or prophesy the future. The Biblical Apocalypse is the book of Revelation, whose complex symbolism depicts the catastrophic end of the world and subsequent Day of Judgment.

Close Reading: The thorough and nuanced analysis of a literary text, with close attention to the author’s use of allusion, imagery, plot, setting, characterization, etc.

Closure: The process by which a literary work is brought to a coherent conclusion, providing a sense of wholeness, integrity, and finality to the narrative.

Convention: A literary device, usage, style, situation or form so widely employed that readers and audiences expect it. For example, a central convention of chivalric romance is the knight’s quest.

Figurative language, Figure of speech: A literary device involving unusual use of language to create an image in the reader’s mind. Although figurative language can be used for decorative or purely aesthetic purposes, it is used primarily to attain some specific effect on the reader.

Foil: a character that, by his/her contrast with the main character accentuates the protagonist’s distinctive qualities.

Genre: From the French genre, meaning “kind” or “type,” the classification of literary works on the basis of their content, form, or technique (e.g. prose, poem, fiction, drama, novel, short story). The traditional classical divisions are: comedy, tragedy, lyric, pastoral, epic and satire.

Grotesque: Artistic representations involving bizarre or unnatural combinations of characteristics or images. The grotesque is an aesthetic category that evokes both fear and laughter.

Hermeneutics: A theory of interpretation or strategy to determine textual meaning.

Imagery: Imagery is the central element of all imaginative literature. Imagery is the language a writer employs to convey a visual picture, either literal or figurative (figurative language calls to mind an abstract idea through tangible elements). Artists create symbols through image patterns that work together to convey major themes or arguments in literature. A symbol cannot be an isolated object or image but must be part of pattern integral to meaning.

Intertextuality: The condition of interconnectedness among texts due to influence, allusion, quotation, genre, or style.

Metafiction: Literary works that self-consciously examine the nature and status of fiction, posing questions about the relationship between art and reality.

Metaphor: A figure of speech that associates two distinct things; an image used to create a nuanced representation, e.g. “That child is quiet as a mouse.”


Medieval Romance (Chivalric Romance): An episodic narrative, written in prose or verse, concerned with adventure, courtly love, and chivalry. Medieval romances reflect the religious and chivalric ideals of their noble audiences, such as courage, gentility, piety, loyalty, magnanimity, and fidelity (rather than social or historical realities). The symbols of medieval romance are rooted in courtly and religious culture. The chief motive of the knightly protagonist is self-discovery and maturation, thus the integration of the public persona with private desire. The storyline is typically a quest that tests the knight’s integrity, the events taking place in psychological landscape.


Novel: A lengthy fictional prose narrative; the length permits the author to develop characters with complex motivation and to construct an intricate plot. Novels developed from ancient epics and medieval romances. Literary historians tend to distinguish the realistic novel from the romance novel. Realistic novels seek to attain verisimilitude in their depictions of ordinary characters, situations, and settings; romance novelists, in contrast, focus on adventure and often feature improbable developments that draw attention to the power of the imagination and fictionality.

Setting: The combination of place, historical time, and social milieu that provides the general background for the characters and plot of a literary work. Setting often plays a crucial role in determining the atmosphere of a work.

Short Story: A brief fictional prose narrative distinguished by its meticulous and deliberate craftsmanship, specifically of plot, character, and point of view. Unlike novels, the short story usually has a single focus and produces a specific dramatic revelation or effect (often the result of opposing motivations or forces) toward which the story builds and to which everything else in the story is subordinate.

Style: The devices an author uses to convey a work’s subject matter, including diction, syntax, and figurative language. Through these formal elements, authors present the content of work in ways that affect its aesthetic quality and influence the reader’s emotional response.

Theme: Not simply the subject of a literary work, but rather a statement that the text seems to be making about that subject. A motif usually refers to a unifying element in an artistic work, such as a recurrent image, symbol, character type, or narrative detail that supports a theme.

Tone: The attitude of the author toward the reader or the subject matter of a literary work. Tone functions with mood to create in the reader a general feeling.

Success Demystified

How to Get A Good Grade In Your Lit Class


1) Keep up with the reading.

2) Take notes during reading and class discussions.

3) Keep a journal.

4) Begin reading scholarship the first week of class.

5) Participate fully in all class meetings.

6) Talk to people about the texts and your ideas.

7) Re-read. Rethink.

8) Visit the Writing Center three times in the first
six weeks of the class.

9) Listen to other students’ ideas.

10) Change your mind.

The Writing Process in the College Classroom

Every activity in the classroom, and in your work for the class, is part of the writing process. That means we begin our writing for this class TODAY. The list below is not strictly sequential: of course you have to read before you can think about what you’ve read, but many activities--researching expressing, conferring, and reflecting--occur many times while we are reading and writing.

1) Reading means a lot more than denoting words on a page. To read effectively, a student has to read critically. Common critical activities include acknowledging the context of the text (where was it written? who was it written for? what was the author like? what genre is the work? what does the book expect of the reader? what other kinds of books is this book meant to be like or compared to?). More concretely, an effective reader takes notes while reading, underlines important passages, and re-reads.

2) Reflecting is simply thinking about the reading afterwards. Not just in a casual, haphazard way, but perhaps with a journal or a conversation of twenty minutes with someone else who has read the book. We often feel two ways about what we’ve read: how we feel when we’re reading it and how we feel after we’ve read it. It’s often helpful to make yourself aware of, and to record, how your sense of a text changes over time.

3) Expressing your ideas in the classroom—and being open to those ideas changing, developing, or receding—is the sole reason for class discussion. If we ALL put our ideas together, we will conjure up better stuff than if we just think on our own.

4) Researching can help both to formulate ideas and to test them. Try to read a few essay on the text just to see what kinds of things people write about. As you develop your research, you will look for sources that support your argument—but also sources that challenge you to strengthen, specify, and make clearer your own argument. Sometimes, you just use others’ essays to show the reader that you are familiar with the conventional interpretations, a practice that heightens the reader’s trust in the writer.

5) Conferring with your professor is a good way to touch base, maybe learn a few shortcuts or simply to ease your mind that your idea isn’t too crazy. Surprisingly, most students learn to be more daring after speaking with their professors—weak writing is often characterized by apparent theses or descriptive papers that make no argument. Professors can also give students novel approaches to sources and methodology.

6) Writing is re-writing and re-re-writing and revising and editing and polishing.

Writing = first draft

Re-writing = all subsequent drafts

Revising = seeing the paper in a new way (modifying thesis, changing
methodology, re-assessing sources, etc.)

Editing = clarifying language and ideas, re-shaping paragraphs, re-ordering
sequence of ideas, eliminating repetitions or unnecessary
parts

Polishing = checking spelling, grammar, usage, punctuation, correctness
of paper format (margins, indentions, Notes Page, Works
Cited page, etc.)

7) Reviewing your paper after the professor returns it is a crucial part of the learning process. Where did you succeed? Where was your logic flawed? Where were you eloquent? Where did you sound unimpressive? What might have made the paper better? Where could it have gone further, if there had been more time? It’s also a good idea to meet with your professor after you’ve looked over her or his comments if you have questions or need further clarification. HINT: professors loathe being asked to defend their grades, but they love being asked to explain their responses to your writing. Students who meet this way with professor almost always do better on the next paper—usually a lot better.

Writerly Terms

Diction—the relative formality of a prose style. Diction is normally of three kinds: high, medium, and low. High diction can be likened to dress; as such it is the “tuxedo” of style. You might find high diction in written laws, contracts, diplomas, official pronouncements, etc. Medium diction (to continue the metaphor) is a jacket-and-tie affair. Most of the language we are exposed to is in medium diction. Essays, newspaper articles, textbooks, and most public speeches are medium diction. Low diction (to beat the metaphor into the ground) is the tee-shirt-and-sneaker approach to language. Our speech with cronies and intimates is often of low diction; we call it being colloquial. In order to make a thematic point or to create a sense of dialect, some literature is in low diction. And yes, that means that vulgarity, obscenity, and the like are beneath low diction.  Kind of makes you think. 

Tone is at once the trickiest and the most revealing aspect of anyone’s language. Tone is most often described with the same words one would use to characterize a person’s emotional state, e.g., “pensive”  “lighthearted” “angry” “sarcastic”. One helpful way to identify the tone of a piece is to ask yourself what mood the speaker seems to be in. Studying word choice and phrasing is a good way to investigate the tone of a work.

Voice is a grammatical term that concerns the origin of action in a sentence. There are two voices, active and passive. “John kicked the ball” is in the active voice. “The ball was kicked by John” is in the passive voice. In an active sentence, the subject of the sentence is the doer of the action; in a passive sentence, the subject of the sentence is the recipient of the action.

Note. The passive voice should be used sparingly, for deliberate reasons.

Mood is another grammatical term. There are three moods: Indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. (There’s also the interjection--Wow! —but let’s not worry about that) The indicative is a statement outright—“It’s time.” The subjunctive is sometimes hard to identify; it relates to statements that are contrary to pure, clean fact: “If I were a rich man” is in the subjunctive mood because the speaker expresses something which may not be true. Note that the verb is in the plural even though the subject is singular. The imperative mood is, of course, the simple command—“Study these terms.” Note that the subject, “you,” is understood and hence omitted.

Subject is the material that you are working with: a book, a project, an individual, etc.

Topic is the particular part of the subject that the writer concerns himself with in the essay. For example, your topic on the subject of the book might be the author’s use of similes, chapter length, the personality of characters, the omnipresence of humor, etc.

Thesis is the particular proposition, or argument, relating to the topic that you advance in a paper. A thesis is a statement of interpretation, as opposed to observation. The thesis is the heart of any critical paper.

Provocative & Interpretative Tests

I would not make 1-5 equal to A-F, but you want to be as close to 1 as you can

 

Provocative

1)                  Thesis is greatly surprising, possibly upsetting.  I can easily think of 2 or 3 counterarguments that would offer it formidable challenges.

2)                  Thesis is unexpected, intriguing.  I can think of 1 or 2 counterarguments that would need to be explored in order for thesis to be persuasive

3)                  Neutral.  Thesis may or may not be proven.  The interest will be in the argumentation rather than the argument.

4)                  Thesis is expected, familiar, or apparent.  It would be hard for me to imagine a sound or attractive counterargument.

5)                  Thesis is descriptive, obvious, or unclear.

Interpretive

1)                  After reading this paper, I feel as if I have completely missed a rich layer of meaning in the novel.

2)                  After reading this paper, I feel that my interpretation of the novel has been substantially enriched.   Meanings that I sensed were there are now very much clearer.

3)                  Author uses novel for purposes of illustration, relying on conventional interpretations to support the thesis.

4)                  Occasional allusions to the novel’s artistic meaning are “safe” or obvious.

5)                  Thesis does not offer the reader any interpretive sense of the novel.

Stylistic Tips

Although our approach to writing has been one of process, wherein student writers learn to create language from the inside out so to speak, you may nevertheless profit from some tried and true rules of thumb when going over your writing before the final printing.

The Umpteen Commandments (subject to amendments and additions)

--Avoid beginning clauses with unattached pronouns.  Not "This is because..." but "This condition is because"

--Prefer the simple present to the present progressive.  Not "He is running" but "He runs."

--Cut out phrases whose absence will not change the meaning of the sentence.  Not "This type of/kind of/sort of action" when "this action" will do.

--Watch out for words that have lost their meaning and/or resonance due to overuse, misuse, or lack of precision.  "The book was interesting."  "The essay was descriptive."  "The performer had a unique style."  "War is the ultimate solution."  "He is a nice man."

--Do not needlessly separate the subject from the predicate. 

Needful:  "Joe Ross, my boss, lives in Seattle."

Needless: "Frank, when his brother was killed, turned himself in."

--Use the possessive case before the gerund.

Not "Jim hitting the field goal won the game."

But "Jim's hitting the field goal won the game."

--Prune intensifiers.  They usually mean that the following word is not the one that precisely fits your meaning.  Not "The book was extremely dull."  But "The book was tedious or stupefying or soporific."  P.S., do not intensify absolute words like unique, enigmatic, ultimate, etc.  You cannot have "a touch of pregnancy" or be suffering from "a mild case of death."  So too are words like "unique" absolute:  something is either unique or it is not, period.

--Make each sentence as brief as it can be while expressing what you want it to.

--If you have a choice, choose the concrete word over the abstract word.  Not "He wanted a man with more strength."  But "He wanted a man with more brawn."

--Make sure each word you choose is the most appropriate, the most precise.  Otherwise, you are letting words choose the meaning rather than your choosing the meaning and finding the word that fits.

--Never needlessly use the passive voice.

--Never needlessly split infinitives.

Not "to quickly run" but "to run quickly"

--Try to make your prose "verb-centered" rather than "noun-centered."  Not "He is a sculptor" but "He sculpts."

--Vary sentence construction and length.  Use simple sentences, for example, to begin or conclude points, compound sentences to draw together two or more ideas, and complex or complex/compound sentences to explain the relationship between ideas.  Most well-developed paragraphs contain all four types of sentences.

--Avoid clichés, truisms, trite expressions, familiar metaphors, mixed metaphors, adages, and worn-out images.  Ex.  My "tried and true" at the beginning of this handout.

--Remember, you are inventing language and knowledge every time you write.  You are creating some thing new.  Make it beautiful and meaningful.

--Finally, remember that you do not know what you think about something until you have written, and rewritten and rewritten about it.  You cannot be a great writer without being a great thinker:  learning to write can make you smarter, honest.

How to Use Quotations in Literary Papers

As a writer, you use a quotation to examine the connection between the use of language and a text's larger themes.  In other words, a quotation introduces a linguistic argument, an argument in which you will show how form contributes to content, how the author's use of language supports your thesis.

DO NOT use quotations merely to summarize, exemplify, or restate the plot or action in a text.

Normally, quotations are followed by your commentary, a discussion in which you teach the reader the significance (vis-à-vis your thesis) of the quoted passage's tone, diction, word choice, imagery, syntax, etc.

Remember that quotations do not speak for themselves: a quotation followed by no or insufficient commentary makes no sense in the essay; the reader does not know why it is there.

EXAMPLE: Let us suppose that you are writing an essay on Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Your thesis involves an assertion that Macbeth's evil brings about a self-knowledge whereby he is more keenly aware of the consequences of his crimes as his crimes become worse and worse.  You choose the following quotation to support your argument:

                        that which should accompany old age,

            As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

            I must not look to have.

                                                                                                (v.iii.24-26)

Your task now is to show how Shakespeare's use of language supports the thesis.  You might want to mention that Macbeth is here viewing his crimes in light of his relationships with others.  Earlier his soliloquies have largely concerned only his relationship with his own soul:  words like honor, love, and obedience imply relationships outside of the self, as the word accompany more explicitly signifies relationship.  You might want to point out how troops is ironic, as hostile troops are now assembling outside Macbeth's castle.  The word must implies a kind of imperative, a suggestion that Macbeth's crimes have gradually taken from him any option of choice.  These ideas are only a few ways to talk about the use of language in the passage.  You could also talk about the syntax (how Macbeth puts the main clause, with his own personal pronoun, at the end of the sentence), the notion of expectation and knowledge ("I must not look to have" instead of the simpler "I cannot have" or "I must not have").

FORMAT:  Remember that poetry, unlike prose, is written in lines.  If you are quoting two lines or less of poetry, keep the quotation within quotation marks in your own margins, making sure to signify line breaks with a spaced slash.  More than two lines of poetry should be indented ten spaces, single-spaced, without quotation marks, preserving the poetic lines (see Macbeth quotation above).  The same general rule applies to prose passages, except, of course, there is no need for the slashes or line breaks.

TWO LINES OR LESS OF POETRY INTRODUCED WITH MAIN CLAUSE: 

Antony's funeral speech immediately commends the attention of the crowd: "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears; / I come to bury Caesar" (III. 73-4).

Remember that a comma precedes the quotation if that quotation completes the clause that introduces it.

MORE THAN TWO LINES OF POETRY COMPLETING A CLAUSE:

Antony subtly undermines Brutus' reputation when he suggests that,

                         The noble Brutus

          Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.

          If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

          And grievously hath Caesar answered it.

                              (III.ii.77-80)

Notice how the lines of the quotation stop where the poetic line stops.  the indented quotation uses no quotation marks.

In Elizabethan drama, citations are normally made with Act (large Roman numerals), scene (small Roman numerals), and line (Arabic numerals:  separated by periods (no spaces).  When quoting novels or other works in which lines are not numbered, cite with the page number (using "p" is unnecessary) in parentheses, followed by the terminal punctuation.  EXAMPLE:  Ed appears to be smugly aware that he has been living a life of "antifriction"  (55).

Place citation at the end of sentences, even if you use a quotation at the beginning of a sentence.  EXAMPLE:  Living a life of "antifriction," Ed seems nevertheless eager to meet whatever challenge Lewis puts to him  (55).

Make sure to give a quotation in its context.  Let there be no doubt where the quotation has come from and why it is in this part of the essay.

Finally, quotation is a noun.  Do not use quote (a verb in formal English) when you mean quotation.

Checklist For Research Papers

____      Three drafts (including final) that trace the process of the writing.

____     Fully filled-out Edit Sheets (2)

____     Pages Numbered

____     Clear parenthetical citations (MLA)

____     Notes Pages (MLA)

                        (At least one note explaining primary text)

____     Works Cited Page (MLA)

                        (Minimum 10 sources from scholarly journals or university presses)

____     Close reading for every quotation

____     Interpretive Thesis

____     Methodology Explained in Intro Paragraph

____     Topic Sentences

____     Title, but no title page

____     Consideration of strong counter-argument (optional)

____     To Be search & destroy

____     Proofread