Quotations
You do this whenever you use another’s ideas or work in your own research
What is quoting and giving credit?
These exist to make a series of argumentative points that add up to the main claim of the paper. They are mostly analysis of specific evidence.
What are body paragraphs?
Commonly used in sciences and social sciences, this citation format started as a set of guidelines published as a 61-page supplement in a psychology journal in 1952.
What is APA Style (American Psychological Association)?
These are the standard font, font size, and line spacing for all academic formats.
What are Times New Roman, 12-point font, and double-spaced?
You write these down while reading so that you can quickly recall things about the text later. They can be short phrases, brief summaries, highlights, underlines, and much more!
What are reading notes?
When you do this, you give a quick overview of someone’s ideas without quoting them explicitly.
What is paraphrasing?
This is one sentence that presents the main idea of the whole paper—it tells the reader what the author studied, what is unique about this research, and how this research impacts the greater world.
What is a thesis statement?
This comes at the end of the paper and includes detailed references for all the texts quoted or paraphrased earlier.
What is the Works Cited list or Bibliography?
You put this after the closing parenthesis, if there is one, or before the closing quotation mark.
What is a period?
The two most common file formats for academic document submission—you should submit all assignments and projects as one of these.
What are Word docs (.doc/.docx) and PDFs?
A separate block of text, separated top and bottom from the regular body and offset further to the right than the rest, used to include a long quotation, usually any quotation longer than three lines.
What is a block quotation?
This is the first paragraph of an essay. It gives the reader an overview of the topic, tells them how the research will be presented, or sets the context for the rest of the piece—sometimes all three!
What is an introduction?
You put these in quotation marks in MLA but you only capitalize the first letter of these in APA.
What are article titles?
These indicate that a new paragraph is beginning and move the first line of the paragraph to the right a small amount.
What is an indent or tab?
You can skim, read title headers, read just the beginning and end of paragraphs, read the first and last pages, read the abstract, or even find a review online if you need to go through a whole book!
How do you read quickly?
You use this to skip over irrelevant details in a text you’re quoting, so you only include the important beginning and end of the quotation.
What is “dot dot dot,” ... or ellipsis?
What is a conclusion paragraph?
These are always formatted to be 1" in width, and they always include the page number in the upper-right corner.
What are the margins?
Every sentence only has one of these, which pairs with verbs and objects. It's better to start a new sentence when you switch to a new one of these rather than let the sentence run on with too many phrases and conjunctions.
What is a subject?
Academics use these to communicate quickly and clearly in ways that are familiar to other experts in their fields.
What are academic/formal writing styles?
Author’s surname and year of publication, for APA, and author’s surname and page number, for MLA.
What is an in-text citation?
These are changes to large parts of an essay during the revision process. Sometimes these involve deleting or rewriting large chunks of text, but these can also involve moving around parts of the text into a different order.
What are “high level” edits?
Always put at the end of a citation entry for an online source—can be replaced by a digital object identifier (DOI), if the source has one.
What is a URL or hyperlink?
These sentences help connect the main ideas of two paragraphs. Writing these both make the essay flow smoother but also help the writer check that their ideas actually do connect in a sensible manner.
What are transition sentences?
This is the process of interrogating the veracity of claims or questioning the assumptions behind them. You can do this when you read, watch, or hear anything!
What is critical thinking?