ANATOMY

Chilling with andrew in the LMC and recooperating from McDonalds. Gross.

#bcfl

Integrating Sources-The most exciting part of writing any paper!

Hello blogging world! Scott Odorico here to talk to you about my prompt for the week, which is integrating sources. I know what you're probably thinking; "Well hey, I already know how to do that!" That's exactly what I thought before I had my memory jogged and before I learned a couple of new things about integrating sources. For those who don't know what this is, it is the use of outside sources and documents in your own work, and citing it correctly so it is considered legal. Some difficult ideas to understand when Integrating sources are punctuation, quotation marks, use of parenthesis, and introduction of quotes.

So what is the first thing I think of when I think about integrating sources? I think about all of those papers I have written, and all of the mistakes marked off because of faulty citing and such. Mistakes such as incorrect punctuation and incorrect parenthesis have really killed me (with grades that is). Since videos and cool multimedia are pretty hard to come by on this topic, I am going to explain and address some major problems most young writers have with integrating sources.

The first problem I would like to address is punctuation. If most writers are like me, punctuation can be fairly confusing when it comes to citing sources. The best way to show you this is to give you an example:

-Scott Odorico stated in his personal diary, "I am simply the smartest man alive, and no one can argue that" (Odorico 3).

So when breaking down this example, one can tell that you simply introduce the quote by giving some outside information or the author and before stating the quote, you must use a comma. This introduction is key to include as you do not want to leave a quote just hanging their with no introduction. This introduction (and comma) introduces the quote following, and brings the reader into the quotation marks. Most writers know how to use the quotation marks, but more problems occur when addressing the end of the quote. In a normal statement, no comma or period is used to transfer into the parenthesis, which is a common problem for some writers. This can be different with an exclamatory remark or a question in a quote. An example of this is:

-Scott Odorico stated in his personal diary, "Is anyone really better than me at anything?" (Odorico 4).

As you can see, when an exclamation mark or question mark is used at the end of a quote, you include the mark as well as end the entire sentence (after the parenthesis) with a period.

As you can see, MLA format is pretty picky when it comes to citing your sources, and rightfully so. When it can lead into legal matters, why not be completely serious about citing sources? For some more information on integrating sources and citing quotes, I have found two pretty good websites for your viewing pleasure:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/1/

and

http://widstudents.wordpress.com/category/integrating-sources/

Well thanks for all of those who read my blog this week and come back next week for my next topic on writing! And remember, correctly cite your sources!

Godspeed world.

Work Cited

#1- Purdue OWLhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/1/

#2- George Washington Universityhttp://widstudents.wordpress.com/category/integrating-sources/