blog vi

Chapter 7 in the Bedford Book of Genres is all about citing your sources and effectively inserting information from your research into your paper. I have always struggled with quote weaving without making my papers sounds artificial and boring. The BBG makes it very clear how to weave your sources into your paper, so that you will not plagiarize another author. I was always uncertain of when to quote from a text and when to paraphrase, but the BBG made it clear. It is important to quote from a source when the paraphrasing a quote would not make it as effective as the word-for-word version. If the paraphrased version takes away from the quote’s emotional impact, it is important to use a quote instead. On the other hand, you do not want the author of the source’s voice to take over your own, so summarizing or paraphrasing is used. This way the author still gets credit, but your own authorial ethos is indicated as well.

It is also important to go back and make sure your research is not plagiarized. I am sure that no one in our class would plagiarize intentionally, but sometimes people get careless and do so accidentally. The BBG indicates that we should always go back and cross-check our passages. Something can be plagiarized in a few forgotten, small words. To avoid this, we can make a working bibliography as we are researching, paraphrase as we draft, summarize as we draft, and use our notes in our draft.