Insignificant Wranglings

Today’s Plan:

• Plagiarism
• Handling Sources
• Homework

Inserting Page Numbers

Let’s talk about headers.

Let’s talk about the ruler.

What is Plagiarism

One of my graduate students put together a PowerPoint. Let’s start there.

How to Avoid Plagiarism?

I want to follow that presentation up by stressing a few ways to avoid plagiarism. I think this is especially important because for the next few weeks you will be publishing your writing online on medium.com. It would be weird to see traditional academic citations in an online publication. Rather than using MLA or APA format to cite material, you will be using journalistic standards for citing sources.

• First, use the sentence I outline below, or something like it, to make it really clear where you found information. Don’t leave me guessing.
• Second, use author’s names, and make it clear what they are saying. Use “I” to make it very clear when you are extending, responding to, agreeing with, another writer’s ideas. Don’t make me guess where the sources stops thinking and you start thinking. Use They Say, I Say to help you transition between the summary of a source and your own contribution.

What I hope the walk-away of that presentation is that plagiarism isn’t just a matter of taking someone else’s words without credit, it is also a matter of taking someone else’s thought. And plagiarism isn’t always a matter of giving credit, it is also a matter of acknowledging influence or similarity. That is, ideas are never created out of nothing, as if one writer or thinker owns them in their entirety. However, thinkers have a responsibility to acknowledge what other thinkers and thoughts they have come across while developing and refining their own ideas.

I think this is especially important because of the nature of this class. For the next 8 weeks or so, I won’t expect you to use MLA or APA format to document sources. But I do expect you to make it very clear when you are presenting other people’s ideas (and, as I’ve indicated, I expect about 66%-75% or your writing to be presenting other people’s ideas!). On medium, citation isn’t necessary as strict–but it is no less important. And citation is often driven by two things: attribution (the name of the source, acknowledgement that you have read it) and links (hence why I have put so much emphasis on hyperlinking early in the course). Start paying attention to the articles you read online and you will see these strategies at work. Just because there isn’t a parenthetical doesn’t mean there isn’t ways of acknowledging the material we use.

I want to put particular emphasis on another part of the presentation–the idea of “common knowledge.” This is one of the trickiest parts of acknowledging the influence of ideas. No one needs to cite the fact that the Earth is round. Unless, that is, you are writing a paper on the history of cartography. Then, in fact, it might be necessary to cite a number of sources that helped trace the development of this idea. Example:

In his 2004 post “The Round Earth and Christopher Columbus,” David Sterns argues that several different philosophers and scientists discovered the Earth’s roundness at different points in history: the ancient Greeks, then the ancient Romans, and then the council of King Ferdinand’s court who approved Columbus’ journey to the “new world.” As Sterns notes, this council was quite aware of the theories proposed by the Greeks and Romans.

That previous paragraph was meant to show how I expect you to attribute sources this semester. It introduces a source, David Sterns’ post, using what I call the “magic sentence,” so called because it packs a lot of contextual information into very few words.

Avoiding Plagiarism: Providing Contextual Information and Attributing Sources

Essentially, I consider handling sources a 4 part process. There’s the signal, the quote/evidence, the summary, and the analysis. The signal is the part that makes the attribution. This is essentially the underlying structure for most (academic) argumentative paragraphs: a claim, followed by evidence, and analysis.

• Signal: who, what, where, when. Note that what/where can be a reference to a kind of media [article, book, poem, website, blog post], a genre [sonnet, dialogue, operational manual], or location/event [press conference, reporting from the steps of the White House]. The signal helps create ethos, establishing the credibility of your source, addressing their disposition toward the issue, and positioning them within the context of a particular conversation. 
• Quote/evidence: in-line citations use quotation marks and are generally three lines or less. Block citations do not use quotation marks and are indented from the rest of the text. Generally, quotes present logos of some kind–be it in the form of statistics or argumentation. Of course, quotes can also be used in an attempt to engender pathos, or a strong emotional reaction. 
• Summary: especially for block quotations, you need to reduce a block of text to a single-line. You need to put the quote in your own words. Because language is slippery, and your readers might not read the quote as you do. So, offering a summary after a quote– particularly a long one (which many readers simply do not read)–allows readers an opportunity to see if they are on the same page as you. 
• Analysis: Reaction, counter-argument, point to similar situation, offer further information, use the bridge, “in order to appreciate X’s argument, it helps to know about/explore/etc. This is where the thinking happens. 

Here’s an example; let’s say I was writing a blog on the struggles of newspapers to survive the digital transition, I might want to point to the October 15th, 2009 NYT’s article dealing with the Times Co. decision to hold on to the Boston Globe.

In his recent article, Richard Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has decided to hold onto the Boston Globe, at least for now. Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has been trying to sell the newspaper for the past month, but, since it hasn’t received what it deems a credible offer, it has decided to pull the paper off the market. He writes:

Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who has closely followed The Globe’s troubles, said it might be better for The Globe to remain with the Times Company than to go to a new owner that might do more cutting or replace top executives. “But the company has its work cut out for it in terms of rebuilding credibility with the employees and the community,” he said.

Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has been involved in bitter labor disputes over the past year, as advertising revenues continue to fall: this move, as Kennedy notes above, could be a solid first move in rebuilding an important relationship with one of America’s oldest, and most significant, newspapers. However, I think we still need to be a bit skeptical here: the fact that no one even proposed a reasonable offer for a newspaper that only 15 years ago commanded 1 billion dollars, the highest price ever for a single newspaper (Perez-Pena), does not bode well for the future of the industry. Like many newspapers, the Globe was slow to adapt to the digitalization of America’s infosphere. Time will tell if recent efforts are too little too late.

If you look above, I first contextualize the quote–not only supplying where/when/who it came from, but also providing some sense of what the whole article discusses. Then I focus attention toward a particular point and supply the quote. After the quote, I first reiterate what the quote said (providing a bit of new information). This is an important step that a lot of writers skip. Always make sure you summarize a quote, so a reader knows precisely what you think it says. Then, in the final part of the paragraph above, I analyze the material. I respond to it. In this particular case, I am somewhat critical of the optimism that underlies Perez-Pena’s piece.

A few other small points:

• Notice the first time I reference an author, I use there first and last name. After that, it is sufficient to only use the last name.
• Notice that I don’t have a citation after the direct quotation: the reason here is that it is obvious where the quote came from thanks to my signal. This is an electronic source, so there is no page number citation, were it a print source I would have to include that. NEVER USE A PAGE NUMBER IN THE SIGNAL TEXT–that is, never write something like “On page 193 Gladwell argues…” Not only do page numbers shift between digital editions, but also this is just a newb move.
• Notice in my analysis that I make a parenthetical to the author–its because I pulled the price of the Globe purchase in 1993 from his article. I don’t directly quote it, so no quotation marks.
• Finally, there’s two kinds of quotations, in-line quotations and block quotations. Each have there own rules for academic papers (the dreaded MLA and APA guidelines). We will deal with those later in the course. Generally, quotes longer than 4 lines need to be blockquoted. Medium has a button to help you do this. Blockquotes don’t receive quotation marks.

The First (Best?) Step Toward Avoiding Plagiarism: Crafting Quality Signals

In response to plagiarism, I want to focus a bit on the first part of what I introduce above, crafting a quality signal that introduces a reader to a source (be it a quote or statistical evidence). Here it is:

Shakespeare’s Renaissance tragedy Romeo and Juliet documents the titular characters’ intense love and foolhardy demise. Shakespeare’s play leads us to question both the sincerity of young love. 

I came up with this sentence while prepping high school students to take placement exams, hence the literary material. But the semantics of the sentence make it useful for virtually every kind of writing. I especially want to highlight the importance of the verbs in this sentence, because choosing the proper verb often reveals both our appraisal of the source and our thinking on the questions it raises. 

[Author]’s [time period] [genre] [title] [verb] [plot summary]. [Author] [verb] [theme/purpose]. 

Ok, so in reality I have two sentences here. But, when dealing with non-fiction works, they can often be combined into one:

[Author’s] [time period] [genre] [title] [verb] [purpose]. 

As I indicated above, it is the verb that is the silent star of the show here. Consider for a minute the following example:

Malcom Gladwell’s 2005 book Blink exposes how subconscious part of our brain think in ways we are not consciously aware. 

Exposes. How does the meaning of the sentence change if I use the verb:

• suggests
• argues
• questions whether
• supposes 
• explicates
• details
• offers a theory of
• explores

Each of these verb choices subtly alters the way I approach the work discussed. Exposes suggests something secret and perhaps mysterious is being uncovered. Suggests suggests that an amount of doubt surrounds the issue. Supposes implies that I am hostile or at least quite skeptical toward the idea. This subtle indicator allows my an opportunity to softly align or distance myself from the source I am using. Good authors do this all the time to subconsciously prepare readers for their arguments. 

Here’s an example from someone’s proposal.

Let’s talk an example:

In her 2018 article “Helicopter Parents Are Raising Unemployable Children,” Marcia Sirota discusses how parents baby their children way too much which leads them to thinking they are entitled. She also says how parents may think they are doing the best for their children but in the long run they are actual raising, “unemployable children.”
Sirota points to an interview by Duke psychology professor Holly Rodgers, who VERB that many of her University students struggle to acclimate to the challenges in higher education.

Here’s an example from a presentation I am currently working on.

Homework

At this point you should be doing more reading and research for your first medium.com article a rough draft of this article is due on Friday. Articles should be around 750 words in length and should cite at least 4 sources. Drive by citations will not count–I want evidence of close reading (as we discussed on Friday) and analysis.

To help you get started, I want you to make two posts to Canvas over the next two days. Read and summarize two sources (one per day) and post a strong paragraph to Canvas. Follow the guides from last Wednesday’s class on close reading and today’s work on transitioning into/handling sources.