How to Write an Essay – Step 9: MLA Style
How to Write an Essay. Research, Analysis, Thesis, Outline
Step 1: Essay Research
Step 2: Essay Analysis
Step 3: Brainstorming
Step 4: Essay Thesis
Step 5: Essay Outline
Step 6: Essay Introduction
Step 7: Essay Paragraphs
Step 8: Essay Conclusion
Step 9: MLA Style in Essay Writing
Step: 10: Language
Step 10: Essay Language (b)
In your own essay if you use ideas and phrases that are written by other authors, you have to make it a point to copy accurately cite in your content about precisely where the concept or phrases were taken from. Perfectly recognizing these ideas and phrases is called “in-text citation”, this page is at the end of your essay that lists the source you had used is called a “Works Cited” page.
For the in-text citation and Work Cited pages, there various rules and instructions to be followed for the different style guides, except in most courses or writing, which comes under the humanitarian discipline, the MLA (Modern Language Association) Style is followed. However, there are detailed principles given about assimilating investigation into your essay, below are a given six basic rules to help you accurately to merge sources into your essay.
1. All the authors that are cited in the context of your essay should be sighted too on the Works Cited page.
If authors like Jones, Smith and Johnson are quoted in your essay, the three of them should also be sighted with complete data on the Works Cited pages too, they should not be forgotten. In the same manner, all the sources or authors that are enlisted in the Works Cited pages should also emerge in the content of your essay too. Make sure that there are no sources mentioned on the Works Cited page if they are not cited in your original essay.
2. Quote on the deceptive or the impressive phrases or sentences.
If you are using the source of such quotes that are not extraordinary and are uninteresting in their manner of assertions or judgments’, then its better to avoid such uncommon or uninteresting notes into your own essay. You can always restate such substance and pursue your paraphrase using the author’s name interjecting with an explanation remark ( or the title of the article, if there is no author). Remember to only use deceptive and impressive quotes, and keep the quotation brief say with a line or two mostly. Considering that you would want to use less quotes and uphold your own thoughts.
3. Avoid depending too much on the same source.
If you are using four or five quotes of the same author, then your readers would rather prefer to go and read that author’s books. Your own command of interpreting and thinking about the topic will be jeopardized if you indulge in quoting too much. Instead of just confining yourself to a few authors, try to bring about other wide ranges of different sources and just quote a small bits and pieces from each. If you have a wide variety of sources, it will give your readers the impression that you are well aware about your subject and that you have scrutinized your topic from every angle.
4. Pursue your quotations with commentary, interpretation, or analysis.
Don’t just use a quotation and continue with your writing, thinking that our readers have completely understood your intentions, reasons, and the use of the quotation that you applied. While using any quotations, remember to write a few observatory remarks at some point, even if your remarks are lucid explanation of what the quote meant (in other words….) Keep in mind that you have taken the quotes from some written composition that you have read, but when your reader read what you have quoted, they get only a vague idea of what the whole context was about hence it gets difficult for them to understand what you have to say. Since it is your ideas and thoughts that the essay is supposed to portray and not only the ones that you quoted, should you therefore, come up with some plans to criticize and examine whatever you quote or sum up with.
5. To introduce your quotations, use signal phrases.
A signal phrase is a clause used before the quotation that recognizes the author (e.g. “Jones says,” or “According to Jones…..”) To make a link between your own writing and the one which is of the author whom you are assimilating into your essay, the use of a signal phrase is very important. When you identify the author in the signal phrase, you don’t need to do so in the parentheses after the quotation, as doing this just once is enough.
You do not even have to put any article title in the signal phrase until you need to attract a special alertness to it. If you comprise the article title in your signal phrase, it will result into a lengthy and clumsily quoted phrase that will distracts concentration from the quotation.
An example of a clumsy pre-quote signal phrase: According to the article “Censorship in American High School Reading Classes,” Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was “sacrificed to the gods of political corrections, without any attention to its literary merits.” (Do not put the article title into the signal phrase.)
A better way to say is: As put according to the American Quarterly Review, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was “sacrificed to the gods of political correctness, without any attention to its literary merits.”
An even better way is: Edmund Wilson said, “Twain rewrote the American setting through his character Huck Finn.”
An Example of redundancy: Mark Twain had said that the secret to success is “making your vocation your vacation” (Twain.) (There is no need to repeat Twain twice.)
Special note-”qtd. in”: Just assume for instance that you are using quotations written in an article by somebody else apart from the one saying the quotation, say for example if you are using Judge Williams’ quotations that also written in Mary Jones’ articles, then you cite it by writing “qtd.in Jones” or whoever, just after the quote.
For Example: According to Judge Williams, “just law is the foundation of a just society” (qtd. in Jones).
If Jones is only restating what Williams have said, then you would omit the “qtd. in” and just write (Jones).
Work to practice: Try to read Diana Hacker’s research sample essays and try to identify as many citations as you can where the above five principles have been used.
Incoming search terms:
- yhs-002 (3)
- huckleberry finn signal phrase quotes and citations (1)
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