Day Seven: Quotations and Outlines

1. Day Seven: Quotations and Outlines Free Write: Create a basic outline for your analysis. Include your thesis statement and important points that you want to make for each paragraph. Start making choices about the order of things.

2. Housekeeping • If a grader asks a question that you answer later, that answer needed to be where the question is. • My office hours are for me to assist you. If you want me to look over your work and make sure that you are on the right track, bring them then. • If you are unsure that you are doing an assignment correctly, look at the student samples in the back of your book for an example of how to do it.

3. In your notes When do you quote? When do you paraphrase?

4. When to do what • Quote: • When you want to emphasize a point about the wording that the author chose to use. • When you can’t say something better than the author did. • Paraphrase: • When the exact wording isn’t important. You can usually summarize here as well.

5. Quotes cannot stand alone • You can’t have a sentence that just consists of a quote. You need to introduce the quote in some way, usually with a signal phrase, and then cite. • Mr. Durbin says, “This is how to do it” (Durbin 5). • Mr. Durbin says that “This is also another way to do it” (Durbin 5) • Section 13b in your handbook has a good list of signal phrases. • Note the punctuation here. • You can also use quotes as part of your sentence, where your content matches that of the quote • Mr. Durbin “likes these kinds of quotes,” but not when people “quote” every “other” word (Durbin 5). • Note the punctuation here as well

6. What will we be quoting in our rhetorical analyses?

7. There will be two kinds of quotes Content Quotes Rhetorical examples Most of your quotes will be used to exemplify the rhetoric. When you will explain them, you will not discuss what they mean, but what they do. • Use these sparingly. These convey content from the source text, like what the author’s argument is, or one of their details. • Remember that this information is not that important in your analysis of persuasive techniques.

8. Let’s Try this together

9. Our thesis statement • In “The Ethnobiologist’s Dilemma,” Jared Diamond states his credentials and uses anecdotes and an extended metaphor in order to persuade his readers that they should self-educate before trying to learn from an expert.

10. A quote that supports our thesis statement • In “The Ethnobiologist’s Dilemma,” Jared Diamond states his credentials and uses anecdotes and an extended metaphor in order to persuade his readers that they should self-educate before trying to learn from an expert. • Diamond explains that “In [his] column in the April 1989 issue [he] described how many New Guinea tribesmen are walking encyclopedias of facts about locally occurring species” (Diamond 556).

11. When you need to change a quote • If you need to change a quote for any reason, you indicate your changes with [square brackets]. • If the quote contains an error or non-standard usage, you indicate that with [sic].

12. Citations in MLA • Citations must be part of the sentence that contains what they are citing. • The author says “quote” (Surname #). • There is no comma or ‘p.’ in current MLA formatting. • If there is no citation, end punctuation goes inside the quotation marks (such as if you’re using a title rather than an actual quotation). If there is a citation, end punctuation goes after it. • When you are using something that was quoted in the article, you need to show who said it and where it was quoted: • Author B quotes Author A when she says “this” (A, qtd. in B 2013). • This citation does have a comma. • Here, even though your author made the choice to include this quote (which is important), you must make sure that you attribute it to the actual quotee.

13. What are citations? • Citations allow your readers to go see others’ ideas in context when you use them. There are two parts to make this work. • The parenthetical citation tags the idea in your writing. This tells your readers where the idea came from, both in terms of source and location within that source. • The full citation in the list of works that you are citing from (works cited) tells your readers exactly what the source is. It gives them all of the information that they need to locate the source that you are using. • This is useful for several reasons. First, if you are doing scholarly work and want to use a source’s source (which will usually be the case for thorough students), you can easily find that. Also, if your readers don’t quite understand the quote from your contextualization of it

14. Outlining • Outlining or other kinds of pre-planning can help you organize your thoughts. • You should have a good idea of which points you are going to make and which quotes will support those points before you start writing. It is likely that, during the course of your writing process, those will change. If you already have a plan, though, you can easily figure out how these changes affect the overall organization of the essay. It is then easier to add, subtract, or change content in the middle of the process. • Good rhetoric requires planning. Think about your readers. What is the best organizational strategy for persuading them?

15. Let’s analyze the rhetoric Of this quote

16. Brief Assignment Five • Put your working thesis at the top. • Provide five quotes that you can use to argue your thesis. Each of these quotes should have about 100 words of analysis that explain the rhetoric (how, why, what) as well as where the quote will fit into your argument. • Make sure that the analysis goes with the quote. • Your readers understand what the quote is saying, so unlike a literary analysis, you do not need to explain that here (and shouldn’t). • This is essentially a very detailed outline for your draft.

17. Assignment for next week • Read through the two drafts in the PDF from the assignment description page for BA.6. This is a first and second draft of a rhetorical analysis for our class. • Look at issues from the drafts. I specifically want you to look at issues with content and analysis. Grammatical and mechanical problems, while present, are not the most significant issues, so think about them last. Come up with a list of all issues in the first draft. Then look to see if these issues were addressed by the revision process. Were they fixed? Were they fixed effectively? Did the revision cause new problems? What still needs to be addressed? • In this draft, there is one underlying cause for many of the MAJOR errors in both drafts. The mistake that is causing this problem is one that I discuss a lot in class. It is something that many of you did at the beginning of the semester, and some still do. • The more work you do here, the less work you will have for your BA.6, so please do a thorough job. I will be checking your homework, but not collecting it. If I collect it, how could it help you with BA.6?