Writing the Final Essay

Writing Issues

• Italicize titles of movies and books!

• Sloppy mistakes! Stop!

• Read your paper aloud to yourself as a way to proofread!

Citing a Book

• When quoting a book in a paper, you must cite the author’s name and page number.

• Ex. McCandless “was green, and he overestimated his resilience, but he was sufficiently skilled to last sixteen weeks on little more than his wits and ten pounds of

rice”(Krakauer 182).• Notice that there is no period after the quote.

Citing a book continued

• If you include the author’s name in the sentence, then you only need the page number in your citation.

• EX. Krakauer points out that McCandless “had a need to test himself in ways, as he was fond of saying, that mattered” (182).

• Notice how the quotes in the examples are all embedded. Do not use stand alone quotes!

• Also, it is not necessary to use an ellipsis (……) to show where you break into a sentence at the beginning of a quotes. Use ……to show where you end a quote.

Citing a Website

• If the website you are using has an author, then put the author’s last name in ( ). If there is no author listed, then you put the first word or two of the title of the web page in ( ).

• Statistics published by the American Psychological Association on their “Marriage and Divorce” page would look like this.

• EX. According to the latest statistics, “about 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce”(“Marriage”).

More on Citing Websites

• Websites do not have page numbers, so don’t add page numbers.

• Do not number paragraphs (the MLA Handbook says not to)

Citing Articles from Databases

• a citation will follow the guidelines for a newspaper article, magazine article, journal entry, encyclopedia entry, etc.

• It will be followed by name of the database. Web. Date accessed.

• The citation is usually found at the bottom of the article. However, not all of them are correct. URL’s are NO LONGER required by MLA!

• Delete the URL, then add the name of the database. Web. Date accessed.

• “’No-Fault' Divorce." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 30 Apr. 2004. Web. 2 Dec. 2013. <http://www.2facts.com/article/i0102930>. (the URL needs to be deleted)

Creating Works Cited Page using Easybib

• Input all sources used in easybib

• If you want to copy and paste a citation from a database, click on “All59 Options”, select “copy/paste citation” on the left, and copy/paste into the box provided

• When you have inputted all sources you are using in your paper, click “export or print”

• Choose “print as word DOC”

Creating Works Cited page on Word

• To set up the correct format, open a new word document

• Click on “paragraph”

• Under “special,” use the drop down menu to select “hanging”

• Under “line spacing,” choose “double”

• Type your citations. They will be formatted correctly.

• Make sure they are in alphabetical order by author’s last name. If there is no author, alphabetize using first word of the title

Review of General v. Specific

• You need to make broad, general statements about the impact of 1984 before you move into the specifics of your topic.

• This will cut down on confusion