Yesterday, at the end of class, I returned your worksheet for the first Check, Please! lesson. Before you submit your second worksheet next Wednesday, review the annotations on your first worksheet as well as the notes that follow.
- A summary is a third-person objective synopsis. In the first paragraph of your assignment, your summary, you should not use first- or second-person pronouns, singular or plural. In other words, “I,” “me,” “we,” “us,” and “you” should not appear in your summary. I did not deduct points from your first Check, Please! assignment for the use of first person in your summary because I accidentally referred to first person rather than third in the instructions for the summary. However, know in the future that any summaries you write should not include first- or second-person pronouns.
- Your summary should also be free of commentary. If you use such words as “effective,” “useful,” and “instructive,” you have shifted from summary to commentary. Turn to commentary in your second paragraph.
- The first line of both of your paragraphs, your summary and your commentary, should be indented five spaces or one-half inch. You will not see those indentations in my blog posts because of the formatting limitations of the platform, but all of the model assignments posted for you on Blackboard adhere to the format guidelines you are required to follow.
- Check, Please! is a nonprint source, which means that you do not include parenthetical citations with page or paragraph numbers (because, after all, there are no paragraphs or page numbers). Think of citing a website such as Check, Please! the way you would cite a film. Any lines that you include verbatim are enclosed in quotation marks, and the reader knows from the context that the lines are spoken in the film. The works cited entry at the bottom of the text provides the reader with the necessary source details.
- Do not forget to include an MLA-style work cited entry at the end of your assignment. See the model entry on your worksheet
- Not all lists require a colon. Use one only if the clause (a group of words containing a verb) that precedes the colon makes sense on its own.
Consider the difference between these two sentences with lists:
- In lesson two, Mike Caulfield continues his instruction in the four-step approach to determining the reliability of a source, which he terms SIFT: (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
- The steps of SIFT include (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
The second example above does not include a colon because the clause before the list does not make sense on its own.
- A work cited entry has a hanging indent, which means its appearance is the opposite of a paragraph’s. The first line of a paragraph is indented five spaces or one-half inch, and the remaining lines of the paragraph are flush left. In a works cited entry, the first line is flush left, and the remaining lines are indented.
- Include concrete details. Specificity not only enables the reader to see your subject, it also demonstrates to the reader that you have examined your subject carefully.
Consider the difference between the two passages below.
- Lesson two includes two websites that show how similar two can be even though one is propaganda.
- Perhaps the most memorable portion of lesson two is the side-by-side comparison of the websites for the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Pediatricians. Though at first glance the two appear comparable, using the Wikipedia strategy reveals their profound differences. While AAP is the premiere authority on children’s health and well-being, ACP was founded to protest the adoption of children by single-sex couples and is widely viewed as a single-issue hate organization.
The two passages above address the same websites featured in lesson two, but the first example provides the reader with no specifics.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, look to the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the posts devoted to Scrabble tips.
Jane Lucas 