Blog Post 13: Practice Quoting

This was posted previously in this week's overview, but I think some of you may have overlooked it, since I posted other blog prompts as separate posts. If you have already done this, you don't need to do it again! This is just for those who may have missed the prompt. 

Blog Post #13: "Practice Quoting"

• Read Student’s Guide Section 5.4 “Quotation: The Source’s Words” (pages 85-90) and review the section of the style guide for formatting in-text citations in your citation style. 
• Choose a good, long-ish to mid-length quote from TWO DIFFERENT sources that are listed in your Annotated Bibliography that will help flesh out details in your QRG (that means, a quote from each source). The two quotes you choose should be roughly about the same topic: a particular event, situation, person, place, etc. But they should represent two different points of view on this topic. In a blank Google Doc, write a concise but detailed mid-length paragraph (about half a page? I’m flexible on this but it should be long enough to get the job done without being unclear or rambling). 
• Audience: The paragraph should be written for an audience that doesn’t know as much as you know about this topic. Depending on the topic, they might know nothing at all. 
• Purpose: To explain how the two people/sources quoted disagree or have differing opinions about the topic at hand. Integrate these two significant quotations directly into the paragraph, following the guidelines for in-text citations as defined by the style guide for your citation style.
• Be sure to to do the following FOUR things in your paragraph:

1. Use appropriate signal phrases to mark the boundaries between your words and the sources’ words (see the explanation of this in MLA-style on Rules for Writers pages 473-4 and then, if you’re using a different citation style, double-check your style guide to see what, if any, differences there are). 
2. Establish the authority of the people/sources being quoted (see the explanation of this in MLA-style on Rules for Writers pages 474-5 and then, if you’re using a different citation style, double-check your style guide to see what, if any, differences there are). 
3. Put the source material into effective context (see the explanation of this in MLA-style on Rules for Writers pages 476-7 and then, if you’re using a different citation style, double-check your style guide to see what, if any, differences there are) 
4. And EITHER use the ellipsis mark to eliminate unnecessary words from the quote in order and/or force it to conform to your sentence’s grammatical structure OR use the brackets to insert your own words into the quote in order to clarify something and/or force it to conform to your sentence’s grammatical structure (see the explanation of this in MLA-style on Rules for Writers pages 470-71 and then, if you’re using a different citation style, double-check your style guide to see what, if any, differences there are). 

• Use the highlighting function in Google Docs, (familiarize yourself with how to change text and highlight color if you don’t know how) and use four different colors to mark these four things (signal phrases that mark boundaries around direct quotes; your establishment of your sources’ authority; your contextualization of the source material; your use of either the ellipsis or brackets).
• Take a screenshot of the highlighted quote. You don’t need blank space in this screenshot, so useGoogle Docs’ zoom feature to edit out blank space and make sure your quote is highly legible to the reader. 
• Upload and/or paste in the screenshot of the highlighted quote. Include a legend that explains what each highlight color represents in the screenshot.