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Essay Instructions: First, make three categories. PRO CAESAR, ANTI CAESAR, AND NEUTRAL. but you will have these three categories for every act of the play Julius Caesar. Because the characters do change from act to act. Basically list the characters names under the category they belong to but the list starts over every time a act changes. Once you have those listed, on the next page, using the following quotes: "I come to bury caesar, not to praise him. the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones"(pg 132) "You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; and being men, hearing the will of caesar"(pg 136) "As rushing out of doors to be resolved If brutus so unkindly knocked or no; for brutus, as you know, was caesars angel"(pg 140) Explain how these persuade the commoners? How are these effective towards this plays parallelism? effectiveness? After that use the following quotes but for rhetorical question: "And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?"(pg 138) "Here was a caesar! When comes such another?"(pg 146) "Tis good you know not that you are his heirs, For if you should, o, what would come of it"(pg 136) Explain how these persuade the commoners? How are these effective towards this plays rhetorical questions? effectiveness?

Essay Instructions: Write a CRITICAL/ARGUMENTATIVE essay on ONE of the TWO topics below:

TOPIC 1: Roch Carrier describes hockey in his introduction to “Backcheck: A Hockey Retrospective”, the National Library of Canada’s Internet homage to hockey in Canada as follows: “Hockey is Canada’s game. But as everyone knows...hockey is also the history of Canadians. The game reflects the reality of Canada in its evolution, ambition, characteristic, tensions, and partnership...[At this site] not only will you find yourself back at the rink but you will also find yourself back in time, exploring all of Canada” (www.collectionscanada.ca/hockey/index-e.html).

While this quote has amazing resonance for many Canadians, a more thorough perusal of the site will reveal that the Canada presented on the “Backcheck” website is purely and exclusively white. Using the short stories from Our Game by Doug Beardsley as well as other material from Hockey Night in Canada by Gruneau and Whitson, and The Hockey Player Sonnets by John B. Lee discuss this exclusionary view of Canada’s hockey history. Be sure to use examples from the short stories from Our Game in your response and provide cross-sectioning between them, as this is most important.

TOPIC 2: Diane Schoemperlen’s “Hockey Night in Canada” from the book “Our Game”, is a poignant recollection of a young girl’s relationship with her mother and father. The game of hockey is woven into the story as a thread that appears to tie things together and give the story a certain perspective. Using “Our Game” by Beardsley, “Hockey Night in Canada” by Gruneau and Whitson, and “The Hockey Player Sonnets” by Lee, discuss hockey’s role as a backdrop for familial relationships.

**You must discuss ONE of the TWO topics by performing a CROSS-SECTION of the following sources: (Outside sources are not needed)

-“Our Game: An all-star collection of Hockey Fiction” By Doug Beardsley
-This book can be previewed at http://books.google.ca/books?ct=result&id=r0h6TjzY7AsC&dq=our+game&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&sig=ACfU3U2Ppov616itv5hictaVL1z8h8helw&q=family

AND

http://books.google.com/books?id=_FMu4twvkGoC&dq=Our+game&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&sig=ACfU3U0xzl7GsY3Y_fPYFGuJdZJcgpLrYg&q=mother#PPA9,M1

-“The Hockey Player Sonnets: Overtime Edition” by John B. Lee

-“Hockey Night in Canada: Sports, Identities, and Cultural Politics” by Richard Gruneau and David Whitson

**Include works cited page

**On Writing Argumentative/Critical Essays:
The opening paragraph of and argumentative/critical essay must contain your thesis.
Each subsequent paragraph needs to make a point that develops from that thesis, and these points
must be supported by evidence from your source material (whatever that material is). The points
should be positioned logically and effectively. For instance, if you analyze the relationship two
characters in a novel or the use of symbolism as a narrative device in your third paragraph, don’t drop
it in paragraph four and then return to talk about it again in paragraph seven.
Points are not merely examples of your thesis. If that’s all they are, then you end up with an
argument that has only one point and many examples, and that’s not the same thing as a thesis that’s
developed in a series of different points.
The final paragraph of your essay should be a conclusion, not a restatement of your thesis (or a
restatement of your argument).
Argue your point: don’t retell the story. Provide enough narrative information so that your point
makes sense, and omit the rest. If you find yourself using narrative language, e.g., “Then she takes
the children home,” or “He picks up the phone and discovers that it has been disconnected,” or “The
chief of police is a man named Homer Necessary,” you’re no longer making an argument ~ you’ve
reverted to retelling the story.
Thinking and Writing Critically
Taken from Quick Access: Reference for Writers. Lynn Quitman Troyka. Prentice-Hall Canada Inc.
2000.
Thinking is not something you choose to do, any more than a fish “chooses” to live in water. To be
human is to think. But while the process of thinking may come naturally, awareness of how to think
does not. So, thinking about thinking is the key to critical thinking.
When you think critically, you take control of your conscious thought processes. Without such control,
you risk being controlled by the ideas of others. Indeed, critical thinking is at the heart of a liberal
(from the Latin word for free) education.
The word critical here has a neutral meaning. It does not mean taking a negative view or finding fault,
as when someone criticizes another person for doing something wrong. The essence of critical
thinking is thinking beyond the obvious, just as critical reading is reading beyond the literal level.
Critical thinking is a process of contemplation and deliberation. Within this process, it takes time to
progress from becoming fully aware of something, to reflecting on it, to reacting to it. You use this
sequence often in your life, as when you learn a new job and then evaluate the job itself as well as
your ability to do the work.
The general process of critical thinking, as it is applied in academic settings, is described below. This
process also applies to reading critically and writing critically.
A crucial distinction in critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing resides in the differences
between summary and synthesis.
Summary comes before synthesis. To summarize is to extract the main message or central point of a
passage. A summary does not include supporting evidence or details. It is the gist, the hub, the seed
of what the author is saying; it is not your reaction to it. Most people summarize informally in
conversation (and more formally in speech).
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1. Analyze: Consider the whole and then break it into its component parts so that you can
examine them separately. By seeing them as distinct units, you can come to understand how
they interrelate.
2. Summarize: Extract and restate the material’s main message or central point at the literal level.
3. Interpret: Read “between the lines” to make inferences about the unstated assumptions
implied by the material. Also evaluate the material for its underlying currents as conveyed by
tone, slant, and clarity of distinctions between fact and opinion; by the quality of evidence; and
by the rigour of its reasoning and logic.
4. Synthesize: Pull together what you have summarized, analyzed, and interpreted to connect it
to what you already know (your prior knowledge) or what you are currently learning. Find links
that help you grasp the new material to create a new whole, one that reflects your ability to see
and explain relationships among ideas.
5. Access critically: Judge the quality of the material on its own and as it holds up in your
synthesis of it with related material.
To synthesize is to weave together ideas from more than one source; to connect ideas from one or
more sources to what you already know from what you have read, listened to, and experienced; to
create a new whole that is your own as a result of your thinking about diverse yet related ideas. Many
techniques can help that thinking along. When you synthesize unconsciously, your mind connects
ideas by thought processes mirrored in the rhetorical strategies discussed.
To synthesize deliberately, consciously apply rhetorical strategies to the material. For example:
# Compare ideas in sources.
# Contrast ideas in sources.
# Create definitions that combine and extend definitions in individual sources.
# Apply examples or descriptions from one source to illustrate ideas in another.
# Find causes and/or effects or other processes described in one source that explain
another.
Unsynthesized ideas and information are like separate spools of thread, neatly lined up, possibly
coordinated, but not integrated. Synthesized ideas and information become threads woven into a
tapestry that creates a new whole. Synthesizing is the core of critical thinking. Synthesis is the
evidence of your ability to tie ideas together in the tapestry of what you learn and know and
experience. Put another way. Synthesis provides the proof that the “light is on.”
Alert: “Synthesis by summary” – a mere listing of who said what about a topic – is not true synthesis.
It does not create a new connection among ideas.
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Style (S-)
1. Always use the present tense when talking about a book, play or movie.
2. A broad, blanket-statement opening sentence like “War is the most destructive force known to
humans” or “Shakespeare was the greatest of dramatists” is nothing but filler. In papers of this
length, get right to the your subject; the leaner your opening statement is, the better. Similarly,
don’t announce what you plan to do in the paper or how you plan to do it ~ just do it. A thesis
statement is not a declaration of your agenda; it’s the premise of your paper.
3. Avoid using the passive voice. It’s usually confusing and tends to make your sentence heavy
and awkward. “Happy is told that his father had the wrong dreams” is puzzling to readers: we
want to know who told him.
4. Avoid using the second person (“you”), which is too informal, and the third party (“one”) which is
too stiff. There are other ways to express the same idea: try using the first person plural
(“we/us”).
5. Avoid breaking up a subject-verb construction with a comma. Instead of the awkward “We,
therefore, know,” try “We know, therefore . . .”
6. Avoid rhetorical questions. They tend to make a writer sound smug because they imply that you
know all the answers.
7. Avoid using “this” or “that” as a demonstrative pronoun; it always makes a sentence more
vague than it need be. Instead, use them as demonstrative adjectives and supply a noun for
them (“this idea,” “that stipulation,” etc.)
Vague sentence: This weakened his argument.
Precise sentence: This statement weakened his argument.
8. Repetition weakens an argument. So does redundancy. The following are common
redundant phrases: “throughout the entire movie,” “anger and rage,” “power and control.”
9. It’s fine ~ even effective ~ to use simple sentences for emphasis, but don’t overdo it. Too many
short, basic sentences in one paragraph make for choppy, disjointed reading and give the
impression that the writer isn’t capable of more sophisticated thought. Combine some of those
simple sentences to construct a more complex one.
10. Try to keep yourself (the first person singular) out of your paper. This precept may sound
impersonal and overly formal, but avoiding “I” and “me” can prevent a lot of awkwardness and
rambling, and expressing your feelings about what you’ve read or seen isn’t the same as
expressing an opinion ~ it’s usually inappropriate in an argumentative essay. And your opinion
is implied without your drawing attention to the fact that’s it’s your opinion, because in an essay
signed by you, who else’s could it be?
11. Use pronouns whenever possible and appropriate. It can drive a reader crazy to read the same
nouns and proper nouns over and over (“Macbeth imagined he saw a dagger in the air and the
dagger reminded Macbeth that Macbeth had sworn to kill Duncan with a dagger”).
12. Avoid using the noun “thing” (or “something”). It doesn’t identify clearly enough the object or
quality you’re trying to get at.
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13. Link your sentences with connectors like “but,” “however,” and “therefore,” or connective
phrases like “on the other hand” and “as well.” Otherwise sentences that you mean to follow
one another in a logical sequence may seem disparate and you’re likely to end up with a
non sequitur (a statement that doesn’t follow logically from one that precedes it). N.B. Overuse
of these connectors can lead to the “ping-pong” effect ~ your reader is bounced back and
forth between so many new points that the original idea is long forgotten. Also, avoid using
these connectors and connective phrases to begin paragraphs. Use transition sentences at the
end of one paragraph to set up the one to follow.
14. Avoid split infinitives and other split verbs. In almost all cases, and adverb that interrupts a verb
can be moved to a different place in the sentence, e.g., “to finally arrive home” reads better as”
finally to arrive home” or “to arrive home, finally.”
15. Avoid clichés as much as possible; they make your writing sludgy and predictable. That’s
equally true of popular expressions like “up front,” “in denial,” “bring closure to,” etc. “Incredible”
and “unbelievable” are dull, vague, inexpressive adjectives unless you mean them literally, and
“depressing” is a misleading way of saying “downbeat” or “sad” or “moving.”
16. For similar reasons, avoid obscenity and other kinds of slang unless you’re quoting a line or
you’re absolutely sure that this is the most effective way to make your point. I’m certainly not
puritanical; I think obscenity spices up spoken discourse. But slang of any kind is rarely an
asset in an argumentative essay. That’s because written English is always more formal than
spoken English. So phrases that are not strictly correct but universally understood in speech
don’t get by on the page. For example, “mad” means “insane,” not “angry,” and “fun” is a noun,
not an adjective, so you can’t write, “It was a fun experience.”
17. Try to avoid archaic phrases and unwieldy diction. “Angry” is a whole lot better than “angered,”
“comedic” is just a fancy way of saying “comic” (you’d never write “tragedic!”), and “utilize”
always sounds to me like something you’d buy in a hardware store. “That which would have
made her happy” is awkward; “what would have made her happy” is much cleaner. And there
are usually better ways to introduce a quote besides “she states,” “he says,” “she tells,” or “he
continues.” Think of all the descriptive synonyms the English language provides for “say.”
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Grammar (G-)
1. Colons and semi-colons cannot be used interchangeably. Colons are used to introduce
material (a quotation or an idea or a list). Semi-colons are used within lists or to connect
separate ideas in a single sentence. A sentence that employs a comma instead of a semi-colon
to connect separate ideas is a run-on sentence.
Run-on sentence: Beth was unhappy at home, she wanted to assert her
independence but her father prevented her from doing so.
Acceptable sentence: Beth was unhappy at home; she wanted to assert her
independence but her father prevented her from doing so.
2. A connector like “and,” “but,” “or,” “that,” or “yet” is not followed by a comma.
3. The terms “i.e.” and “e.g.” mean very different things: “e.g.” means “for example,” and “i.e.”
means “that is.” Either one is always followed by a comma.
4. Don’t use a hyphen (one-) when you want a dash (two -- ), or if you must, at least leave a space
before and after. When you write a sentence like “Hamlet-and not Laertes-is the character we
admire,” you’ve actually invented two new words: “Hamlet-and” and “Laertes-is.”
5. Be careful how you use the word “because”: the phrase that follows it needs to be the cause of
the phrase that precedes it. This is a cause/effect problem, and I usually denote it papers with
“C/E.” (See The Shubert Code.)
6. When you are writing in the past tense and want to refer to an action that happened earlier, the
correct tense is the pluperfect, e.g., “He told his wife that he had written to his brother. That’s
a construction everyone is familiar with. But remember that when you write about a play or a
movie, you’re writing in the present tense and so an action that happened earlier must be
placed in the past tense.
Incorrect sentence: He tells his wife that he had written to his brother.
Correct sentence: He tells his wife that he wrote (or has written) to her brother.
7. When the subject of a phrase is followed directly by a verb, they are not separated by a
comma. So “The Captain of the ship ordered his crew to man the hatches” is correct but “The
Captain of the ship, ordered his crew . . .”is not. Similarly, a comma cannot separate a verb
from its object (or objective completion). So “He is the first one to arrive” is correct but “He is,
the first to arrive” is not. And there is no comma between a possessive and its object: William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” not “William Shakespeare’s, Hamlet.
8. Apostrophes are used only for possessives and contractions ( don’t, didn’t they’re, etc.). They
cannot be used for plurals. Therefore:
Incorrect sentence: His sister’s came over for coffee.
Correct sentence: His sisters came over for coffee.
Incorrect sentence: His sisters boy friend came too.
Correct sentence: His sister’s boy friend came too.
If the word is both plural and possessive, then the apostrophe follows the ‘s’:
Incorrect sentence: Her two son’s birthdays are both in February.
Correct sentence: Her two sons’ birthdays are both in February.
9. The only exception to the possessives rule is “its,” which is a possessive without an
apostrophe. We make this exception in order to distinguish “its” from “it’s,” a contraction that
means “it is.” This is an oft made mistake in students’ papers.
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10. A dangling modifier is a phrase that is meant to modify a noun, usually the subject of a
sentence, but fails to do its job. For example, in the sentence, “Having worked in this office for
ten years, it seems to me that I deserve more respect,” the modifying phrase “having worked in
this office for ten years” is actually modifying “it” ~ though of course “it” hasn’t worked in this
office for ten years. There are two ways to fix this sentence. You could alter the modifying
phrase to read (for example), “Since I have worked in this office for ten years,” or you could
modify the main clause to read ( for example), “ I deserve more respect, it seems to me.”
11. Make sure that your verb agrees with your subject and that all subsequent references to that
subject are also in agreement with it. A compound subject (e.g., two subjects linked with “and”)
is plural and requires the appropriate verb form. “One,” “each,” “each one,” “someone,”
“everyone,” “anyone” and “no one” are all singular subjects; they can’t be referred to later on in
the sentence as “they,” “them,” or “their,” and they require the appropriate verb form.
Incorrect sentence: Everyone likes to take their time.
Correct sentence: Everyone likes to take his or her time.
Preferable sentence: Everyone likes to take time.
12. As the subject or object of a dependant clause, “that” is correct only when the antecedent is not
human, e.g., “the exam that I passed.” (It’s even better ~ more succinct ~ if you can eliminate
“that” altogether, e.g., “the exam I passed.”) If the antecedent is a person, however, you must
use either “who” (for the subject of the clause) or “whom” (for the object of the clause). “Who”
and “whom” cannot be used interchangeably: “the woman who loves me” but “the woman
whom I love.”
13. Colloquially, we often use “how” to mean “that,” but in writing we need to be more precise: only
use “how” if you mean literally, “in what way.” So there’s nothing wrong with the sentence, “He
told me how he’d persuaded her to give him the money,” but “He told me how he used to be a
lifeguard” is incorrect. It should read, “He told me that he used to be a lifeguard.” Also, “an
example of is insensitivity is when he boasts about his sexual conquests” is grammatically
incorrect because an example can’t be when.
14. Always distinguish between a pronoun that operates as a subject of a clause and a pronoun
that operates as an object. “Our host poured coffee for she and I” doesn’t make grammatical
sense, because “she” and “I” are subjective, not objective pronouns. The sentence should read,
“Our host poured coffee for her and me.”
15. Commas are often used to set off a word or phrase in the middle of a sentence that is
supplementary to it, e.g., “She didn’t believe him, however, and went along her merry way” or
“The first rule of thumb, should you find yourself stranded on a highway late at night, is not
to panic. Make sure that you provide both commas in this case ~ one before and one after.
16. Some commonly used prepositional phrases are grammatically incorrect. “In the beginning of
the movie” is incorrect; you want at the beginning of the movie.” (On the other hand, “in the
beginning sequences of the movie” is just fine.) We are concerned about people and paranoid
about the future, not concerned or paranoid of them. And since “off” is a preposition and
therefore takes a direct object, “Please take that picture off of my door” is incorrect; the
sentence should read, “Please that that picture off my door.” The correct word is “recurring,”
not “reoccurring”; “prophesies.” Not “prophesizes.”
17. If you use a participle as a noun (that is, a gerund), then it must be treated grammatically as a
noun, not as a verb. Therefore “she feared him coming” is incorrect, because “coming” is a
noun and the object of the verb “feared”; the correct phrase would be “she feared his coming.”
When this construction becomes awkward (e.g., “He awaited his friend’s coming”), you’re better
off rephrasing (“He awaited his friend’s arrival”).
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Quotations (Q-)
1. Use a quotation from the text to back up your point, not to repeat it. And avoid using quotes to
prove plot details: they don’t need to be proven.
2. Unless you wish to emphasize it, incorporate a single-line passage from a poem, play, novel,
etc., within quotation marks, as part of your sentence, e.g.,
Biff begs his father to “burn that phony dream before it’s too late”
or
Biff begs his father, “Why don’t you burn that phony dream before it’s too late?”
3. For longer quotations, or quotations you wish to give special emphasis to, block-indent. Set
them apart from the text, no more that two or three lines from the text above and no more
than two or three lines from the text below, five spaces from each margin. When you blockindent
a quotation, single-space and do not enclose it in quotation marks.
4. For quoting verse only: If you incorporate the quotation within your sentence, use a slash to
separate the lines, e.g.,
Here Romeo speaks the famous lines: “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. / Arise,
fair sun, and kill the envious room . . .”
If you block-indent the quote, you must preserve the original spacing of the
verse, e.g.,
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon . . .
5. No quotation can stand on its own as a separate sentence; it must be introduced. Use a colon
(not a semi-colon) if you introduce the quoted passage with a complete sentence, e.g.,
Biff warns Happy not to pursue the same ideals as their father did: “He had the
wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”
6. When you quote a complete sentence, you must capitalize the beginning of the quote and
introduce it with a comma or a colon, depending on the context, e.g.,
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda says, “We’re free and clear.”
or
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda addresses her husband’s grave: “We’re
free and clear.”
7. However, if you’re quoting a phrase to complete your own sentence, eliminate the comma and
don’t capitalize the beginning of the phrase, e.g.,
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda says that she is “free and clear.”
or
The Stage Manager in Our Town makes the point that “people were meant to go
through life two by two.”
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8. Commas and periods are always set inside quotation marks, no matter how illogical it may
seem. Other punctuation is set outside quotation marks if it’s yours, inside if it’s the author’s,
e.g.,
The old pop song asks the question, “Why do fools fall in love?”
But
Why does Long Day’s Journey into Night end with the line, “Then I married James
Tyrone and was so happy for a time”?
9. When you’re quoting a line from a text, make sure that it makes sense out of context ~ that the
antecedents of any pronouns in the quoted passage are clear to a reader, and that everything
in the quote is self-explanatory or immediately comprehensible because you’ve clarified it
elsewhere.
10. A quoted passage is only effective if it is self-contained and truly illuminates something in your
argument. There is no point in quoting a line like “It’s true!” or “What did you expect?” out of
context; it only baffles the reader. And there’s no point in quoting a phrase that is banal
and not distinctive, like “Shut the door” or “what you want me to do.” (I generally denote this
problem in your essays with NQ. See The Shubert Code.)
11. There’s no point in quoting a long passage from a text when only a small part of it is relevant
your argument. If you quote a long passage, you need to justify the length by annotating it, i.e.,
providing a detailed explication.
12. Use square brackets ( [ and ] ) ~ not parentheses [ ( and ) ] ~ to mark your own editorial
insertions within quotations, e.g.,
Biff explains to Happy, “[Willy] had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”
You can only use parentheses within a quote if the parenthetical statement belongs
to the writer you’re quoting.
13. When you leave out a section of a passage you are quoting, use an ellipsis (three dots) to
indicate that you’re omitting something.
14. Quotation marks belong around words and phrases only. They cannot be used for emphasis.
15. If a quotation is self-explanatory, it doesn’t need to explicated or reiterated in your own words.
On the other hand, lengthy quotes are only appropriate in a paper if you do plan to explicate
them in some way. Be wary of quoting too much; remember that you ~ not Shakespeare or
O’Neil ~ are writing the paper.
16. A quotation is the exact words of a source enclosed in quotation marks. You face conflicting
demands when you add quotations to your writing. Although quotations provide support for your
contentions, you can lose control of your paper if you add too many. You want your writing to
be coherent and readable, so use quotations sparingly. If more than one-quarter of your paper
consists of quotations or paraphrases, you’ve probably written what some people call a
“Scotch-tape special.” Depending too heavily on quotation gives your readers – including
your instructor – the impression that you haven’t bothered to develop your own thinking and are
letting other people do your talking.
17. Here are some basic guidelines for using quotations:
Use quotations from authorities on your subject to support or refute what you have written.
Never use a quotation to present your thesis statement or a topic sentence.
Select quotations that fit your message. Choose a quotation only when
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Its language is particularly appropriate and distinctive
Its idea is particularly hard to paraphrase accurately
The source’s authority is especially important to support your thesis or main point
The source’s words are open to interpretation
Never compose more than one-quarter of your paper from quotations. Instead, rely on
paraphrasing and summary. Again, be careful not to overdo these either.
Quote accurately. Always check a quotation against the original source – and then recheck it.
Avoid plagiarism.
Document quotations carefully.
Unless you incorporate quotations in your own writing skillfully, you may end up with
incoherent, choppy sentences. You can avoid this problem by making the words you quote fit
smoothly with three aspects of your writing: (1) grammar, (2) style, and (3) logic. After writing a
sentence that contains a quotation, read it aloud to hear whether that language flows smoothly
and gracefully. If it doesn’t, revise the sentence. Here are some examples of sentences that
don’t mesh well with quotations, followed by a revised version.
ORIGINAL MATERIAL: These two minds, the emotional and the rational, operate in tight
harmony for the most part, intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through
the world. SOURCE: Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1995.9.
[These are Goleman’s exact words.]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds
“intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world” (9).
[Incoherent grammar]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how “intertwining their very different ways of
knowing to guide us through the world,” the emotional and rational minds work
together (9). [Incoherent style – Inverted word order]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds work
together by “their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world” (9).
[Incoherent logic]
Correct sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds work
together by “intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the
world” (9).
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Procedure (P-)
1. Titles for essays should provide more information than “Assignment #2,” or “Major Paper,” etc.
This only provides information that is already know and is not, to say the least, very
imaginative. Titles are the first thing your reader sees and should therefore have some
information embedded in them reflecting your thesis statement.
2. Titles of books, plays, movies, newspapers, magazines are either underlined or italicized, not
placed in quotation marks. This is a very common mistake.
3. Please number your pages. It makes it much easier for me to refer to passages in your
papers in my final comments and to locate passages I may want to look at again.
4. You can avoid the confusion about whether to refer to “the reader” or “the audience,” as well as
excess verbiage, by just substituting the first person plural pronoun (“we” or “us” ), e.g., “Orson
Wells shows us Kane’s mansion in the opening scene.”
5. Remember: this is an argumentative essay, not a review of a book(s), article(s), etc. Avoid
either praising the author(s) or complaining about his, her, or their work.
6. Edit your paper carefully before handing it in. If you give it to someone else to type, edit it
after he or she has finished typing it as well as before.
7. Make sure you spell titles and the names of authors, playwrights, characters, etc.,
correctly. It’s your responsibility to double-check to see that you’re not making spelling errors.
8. It isn’t necessary to define a term we all understand; you can assume some intelligence and
experience in your reader. However, you can’t assume that your reader has just finished
reading a specific reference you may be using outside the course literature. If you are making a
point or argument that’s dependent on an understanding of something that’s not self-evident,
then it needs to be explained, succinctly. A paper that’s littered with unexplained references
reads as if it were written in code. It’s simply good writing to make your allusions clear.
11
Documentation (D-)
1. The most frequently used documentation style in the humanities has been developed by the
Modern Languages Association (MLA). In MLA style, you’re expected to document your
sources in two separate, equally important ways:
Within the body of the paper, use in-text citations, as described below.
At the end of the paper, provide a list of sources you used in your paper. Title this list Works
Cited, as described below.
2. In-text citations are information included in the sentences or in parenthetical references within
the paper. They both signal material used from outside sources and enable readers to locate
the original sources.
3. In most in-text citations, a name or a title usually identifies a source, and page numbers usually
show the exact location in that source. In general, put page number information in parentheses
at the end of a quotation, paraphrase, or summary. Try to introduce names of authors and titles
of sources in your own sentences, where they become part of the flow of your writing. If that
isn’t possible, put the information in parentheses at the end of a quotation, paraphrase, or
summary.
4. Before trying to integrate sources into your writing, you need to analyze and synthesize your
material. ANALYSIS is the process of breaking ideas down into their component parts, so that
you can think them through separately. Do this while reading and reviewing your notes.
SYTNTHESIS is the process of making connections among different ideas, seeking
relationships that tie them together.
5. Your paper can be successful only if it reflects your personal synthesis of the ideas you are
dealing with. The major requirement of an argumentative essay is to demonstrate your ability to
think well. Never simply list or summarize separate ideas. Use either quotations, paraphrasing,
or summary to present your synthesis of the material you have read. Remember, however, that
excessive use of quotes and especially paraphrasing does not enable your essay to reflect your
personal synthesis.
6. Here are some examples of citations of paraphrases:
People from the Mediterranean prefer an elbow-to-shoulder distance from each other (Morris
131). [name and page number cited in parentheses]
Desmond Morris notes that people from the Mediterranean prefer and elbow-to-shoulder
distance from each other (131). [name cited in text, page number cited in parentheses]
A parenthetical reference belongs at the end of the material it refers to, usually at the end of a
sentence. If you’re citing a quotation enclosed in quotation marks, place the parentheses after
the closing quotation mark but before sentence-ending punctuation:
Binkley claims that artificial light reduced SAD-related “depression in 87 percent of patients . .
. within a few days; relapses followed” (203-04) when light treatment ended.
Research shows that “the number, rate, and direction of time-zone changes are the critical
factors in determining the extent and degree of jet lag symptoms” (Coleman 67).
7. Place a parenthetical reference for a long quotation (one you set off from your own sentences
with indentation) outside the punctuation ending the last sentence.
8. There are many different guidelines for citing specific types of material, all of which are covered
in detail in Quick Access: Second Canadian Edition by Lynn Quitman Troyka. It is highly
recommended that you purchase this book, especially if you don’t already own a similar
resource.

Essay Instructions: Write a critical/argumentative essay of the topic below. Provide at least 6 sources outside of Hockey Night in Canada by Gruneau and Whitson (will be emailed). Use the 6 sources and Hockey Night in Canada to support your thoughts/ideas. Please include a Works Cited page.

TOPIC: Hockey, that is, professional men's hockey, came back after a one year hiatus and all was right in the world...Well, almost. The Carolina Hurricanes won the Staney Cup and for the second time in three years, a Canadian team came up one game short of bringing the cup home to its rightful place-If, of course, you are to believe the Canadian media. During the course of the 2006 playoffs, the following headline appeared:

"Hockey fans stabbed in Edmonton melee"
Two people were stabbed and 49 others were arrested in Edmonton when fans celebrating an Oilers playoff victory turned violent. (Last updated Sat, 13 May 2006 19:31:43 EDT CBC News)

Immediately after this story broke, experts in hockey received calls from Canadian media asking for their comments on "what makes hockey fans go crazy and turn violent." Their only comment was that the violence in the streets of Edmonton had as much to do with hockey as the violence that erupted in the streets of Penticton several years ago during the Okanagan Peach Festival had to do with peaches. As you might expect, this response was followed by a polite: Thank you...click!

The point to this rather protracted introduction to an essay topic is that the Canadian media appear to have a penchant for "fanning the flames" when it comes to stories that link hockey to violence, whether or not it happens on or off the ice, and are always looking for ways to reinforce the stereotypical image of masculinity and testosterone gone awry-player or fan. Please write an essay on the myriad of issues addressed above. WARNING: There are as many opinions about "violence" in hockey as there are people in Canada! Thus, please do NOT write an essay summarizing Hockey Night in Canada Ch 8 regarding violence and then add your opinions on whether or not fighting should be allowed in hockey. Instead, think of ways to address the above without trying to draw a straight line between "fighting" and "violence". There are many ways to approach this, but it is important that you develope a solid thesis statement. If you chose, you can use a segue/hook like the one used at the beginning of this essay topic.

TIPS On Writing Argumentative/Critical Essays:
The opening paragraph of and argumentative/critical essay must contain your thesis.
Each subsequent paragraph needs to make a point that develops from that thesis, and these points
must be supported by evidence from your source material (whatever that material is). The points
should be positioned logically and effectively. For instance, if you analyze the relationship two
characters in a novel or the use of symbolism as a narrative device in your third paragraph, don’t drop
it in paragraph four and then return to talk about it again in paragraph seven.
Points are not merely examples of your thesis. If that’s all they are, then you end up with an
argument that has only one point and many examples, and that’s not the same thing as a thesis that’s
developed in a series of different points.
The final paragraph of your essay should be a conclusion, not a restatement of your thesis (or a
restatement of your argument).
Argue your point: don’t retell the story. Provide enough narrative information so that your point
makes sense, and omit the rest. If you find yourself using narrative language, e.g., “Then she takes
the children home,” or “He picks up the phone and discovers that it has been disconnected,” or “The
chief of police is a man named Homer Necessary,” you’re no longer making an argument ~ you’ve
reverted to retelling the story.
Thinking and Writing Critically
Taken from Quick Access: Reference for Writers. Lynn Quitman Troyka. Prentice-Hall Canada Inc.
2000.
Thinking is not something you choose to do, any more than a fish “chooses” to live in water. To be
human is to think. But while the process of thinking may come naturally, awareness of how to think
does not. So, thinking about thinking is the key to critical thinking.
When you think critically, you take control of your conscious thought processes. Without such control,
you risk being controlled by the ideas of others. Indeed, critical thinking is at the heart of a liberal
(from the Latin word for free) education.
The word critical here has a neutral meaning. It does not mean taking a negative view or finding fault,
as when someone criticizes another person for doing something wrong. The essence of critical
thinking is thinking beyond the obvious, just as critical reading is reading beyond the literal level.
Critical thinking is a process of contemplation and deliberation. Within this process, it takes time to
progress from becoming fully aware of something, to reflecting on it, to reacting to it. You use this
sequence often in your life, as when you learn a new job and then evaluate the job itself as well as
your ability to do the work.
The general process of critical thinking, as it is applied in academic settings, is described below. This
process also applies to reading critically and writing critically.
A crucial distinction in critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing resides in the differences
between summary and synthesis.
Summary comes before synthesis. To summarize is to extract the main message or central point of a
passage. A summary does not include supporting evidence or details. It is the gist, the hub, the seed
of what the author is saying; it is not your reaction to it. Most people summarize informally in
conversation (and more formally in speech).
2
1. Analyze: Consider the whole and then break it into its component parts so that you can
examine them separately. By seeing them as distinct units, you can come to understand how
they interrelate.
2. Summarize: Extract and restate the material’s main message or central point at the literal level.
3. Interpret: Read “between the lines” to make inferences about the unstated assumptions
implied by the material. Also evaluate the material for its underlying currents as conveyed by
tone, slant, and clarity of distinctions between fact and opinion; by the quality of evidence; and
by the rigour of its reasoning and logic.
4. Synthesize: Pull together what you have summarized, analyzed, and interpreted to connect it
to what you already know (your prior knowledge) or what you are currently learning. Find links
that help you grasp the new material to create a new whole, one that reflects your ability to see
and explain relationships among ideas.
5. Access critically: Judge the quality of the material on its own and as it holds up in your
synthesis of it with related material.
To synthesize is to weave together ideas from more than one source; to connect ideas from one or
more sources to what you already know from what you have read, listened to, and experienced; to
create a new whole that is your own as a result of your thinking about diverse yet related ideas. Many
techniques can help that thinking along. When you synthesize unconsciously, your mind connects
ideas by thought processes mirrored in the rhetorical strategies discussed.
To synthesize deliberately, consciously apply rhetorical strategies to the material. For example:
# Compare ideas in sources.
# Contrast ideas in sources.
# Create definitions that combine and extend definitions in individual sources.
# Apply examples or descriptions from one source to illustrate ideas in another.
# Find causes and/or effects or other processes described in one source that explain
another.
Unsynthesized ideas and information are like separate spools of thread, neatly lined up, possibly
coordinated, but not integrated. Synthesized ideas and information become threads woven into a
tapestry that creates a new whole. Synthesizing is the core of critical thinking. Synthesis is the
evidence of your ability to tie ideas together in the tapestry of what you learn and know and
experience. Put another way. Synthesis provides the proof that the “light is on.”
Alert: “Synthesis by summary” – a mere listing of who said what about a topic – is not true synthesis.
It does not create a new connection among ideas.
3
Style (S-)
1. Always use the present tense when talking about a book, play or movie.
2. A broad, blanket-statement opening sentence like “War is the most destructive force known to
humans” or “Shakespeare was the greatest of dramatists” is nothing but filler. In papers of this
length, get right to the your subject; the leaner your opening statement is, the better. Similarly,
don’t announce what you plan to do in the paper or how you plan to do it ~ just do it. A thesis
statement is not a declaration of your agenda; it’s the premise of your paper.
3. Avoid using the passive voice. It’s usually confusing and tends to make your sentence heavy
and awkward. “Happy is told that his father had the wrong dreams” is puzzling to readers: we
want to know who told him.
4. Avoid using the second person (“you”), which is too informal, and the third party (“one”) which is
too stiff. There are other ways to express the same idea: try using the first person plural
(“we/us”).
5. Avoid breaking up a subject-verb construction with a comma. Instead of the awkward “We,
therefore, know,” try “We know, therefore . . .”
6. Avoid rhetorical questions. They tend to make a writer sound smug because they imply that you
know all the answers.
7. Avoid using “this” or “that” as a demonstrative pronoun; it always makes a sentence more
vague than it need be. Instead, use them as demonstrative adjectives and supply a noun for
them (“this idea,” “that stipulation,” etc.)
Vague sentence: This weakened his argument.
Precise sentence: This statement weakened his argument.
8. Repetition weakens an argument. So does redundancy. The following are common
redundant phrases: “throughout the entire movie,” “anger and rage,” “power and control.”
9. It’s fine ~ even effective ~ to use simple sentences for emphasis, but don’t overdo it. Too many
short, basic sentences in one paragraph make for choppy, disjointed reading and give the
impression that the writer isn’t capable of more sophisticated thought. Combine some of those
simple sentences to construct a more complex one.
10. Try to keep yourself (the first person singular) out of your paper. This precept may sound
impersonal and overly formal, but avoiding “I” and “me” can prevent a lot of awkwardness and
rambling, and expressing your feelings about what you’ve read or seen isn’t the same as
expressing an opinion ~ it’s usually inappropriate in an argumentative essay. And your opinion
is implied without your drawing attention to the fact that’s it’s your opinion, because in an essay
signed by you, who else’s could it be?
11. Use pronouns whenever possible and appropriate. It can drive a reader crazy to read the same
nouns and proper nouns over and over (“Macbeth imagined he saw a dagger in the air and the
dagger reminded Macbeth that Macbeth had sworn to kill Duncan with a dagger”).
12. Avoid using the noun “thing” (or “something”). It doesn’t identify clearly enough the object or
quality you’re trying to get at.
4
13. Link your sentences with connectors like “but,” “however,” and “therefore,” or connective
phrases like “on the other hand” and “as well.” Otherwise sentences that you mean to follow
one another in a logical sequence may seem disparate and you’re likely to end up with a
non sequitur (a statement that doesn’t follow logically from one that precedes it). N.B. Overuse
of these connectors can lead to the “ping-pong” effect ~ your reader is bounced back and
forth between so many new points that the original idea is long forgotten. Also, avoid using
these connectors and connective phrases to begin paragraphs. Use transition sentences at the
end of one paragraph to set up the one to follow.
14. Avoid split infinitives and other split verbs. In almost all cases, and adverb that interrupts a verb
can be moved to a different place in the sentence, e.g., “to finally arrive home” reads better as”
finally to arrive home” or “to arrive home, finally.”
15. Avoid clichés as much as possible; they make your writing sludgy and predictable. That’s
equally true of popular expressions like “up front,” “in denial,” “bring closure to,” etc. “Incredible”
and “unbelievable” are dull, vague, inexpressive adjectives unless you mean them literally, and
“depressing” is a misleading way of saying “downbeat” or “sad” or “moving.”
16. For similar reasons, avoid obscenity and other kinds of slang unless you’re quoting a line or
you’re absolutely sure that this is the most effective way to make your point. I’m certainly not
puritanical; I think obscenity spices up spoken discourse. But slang of any kind is rarely an
asset in an argumentative essay. That’s because written English is always more formal than
spoken English. So phrases that are not strictly correct but universally understood in speech
don’t get by on the page. For example, “mad” means “insane,” not “angry,” and “fun” is a noun,
not an adjective, so you can’t write, “It was a fun experience.”
17. Try to avoid archaic phrases and unwieldy diction. “Angry” is a whole lot better than “angered,”
“comedic” is just a fancy way of saying “comic” (you’d never write “tragedic!”), and “utilize”
always sounds to me like something you’d buy in a hardware store. “That which would have
made her happy” is awkward; “what would have made her happy” is much cleaner. And there
are usually better ways to introduce a quote besides “she states,” “he says,” “she tells,” or “he
continues.” Think of all the descriptive synonyms the English language provides for “say.”
5
Grammar (G-)
1. Colons and semi-colons cannot be used interchangeably. Colons are used to introduce
material (a quotation or an idea or a list). Semi-colons are used within lists or to connect
separate ideas in a single sentence. A sentence that employs a comma instead of a semi-colon
to connect separate ideas is a run-on sentence.
Run-on sentence: Beth was unhappy at home, she wanted to assert her
independence but her father prevented her from doing so.
Acceptable sentence: Beth was unhappy at home; she wanted to assert her
independence but her father prevented her from doing so.
2. A connector like “and,” “but,” “or,” “that,” or “yet” is not followed by a comma.
3. The terms “i.e.” and “e.g.” mean very different things: “e.g.” means “for example,” and “i.e.”
means “that is.” Either one is always followed by a comma.
4. Don’t use a hyphen (one-) when you want a dash (two -- ), or if you must, at least leave a space
before and after. When you write a sentence like “Hamlet-and not Laertes-is the character we
admire,” you’ve actually invented two new words: “Hamlet-and” and “Laertes-is.”
5. Be careful how you use the word “because”: the phrase that follows it needs to be the cause of
the phrase that precedes it. This is a cause/effect problem, and I usually denote it papers with
“C/E.” (See The Shubert Code.)
6. When you are writing in the past tense and want to refer to an action that happened earlier, the
correct tense is the pluperfect, e.g., “He told his wife that he had written to his brother. That’s
a construction everyone is familiar with. But remember that when you write about a play or a
movie, you’re writing in the present tense and so an action that happened earlier must be
placed in the past tense.
Incorrect sentence: He tells his wife that he had written to his brother.
Correct sentence: He tells his wife that he wrote (or has written) to her brother.
7. When the subject of a phrase is followed directly by a verb, they are not separated by a
comma. So “The Captain of the ship ordered his crew to man the hatches” is correct but “The
Captain of the ship, ordered his crew . . .”is not. Similarly, a comma cannot separate a verb
from its object (or objective completion). So “He is the first one to arrive” is correct but “He is,
the first to arrive” is not. And there is no comma between a possessive and its object: William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” not “William Shakespeare’s, Hamlet.
8. Apostrophes are used only for possessives and contractions ( don’t, didn’t they’re, etc.). They
cannot be used for plurals. Therefore:
Incorrect sentence: His sister’s came over for coffee.
Correct sentence: His sisters came over for coffee.
Incorrect sentence: His sisters boy friend came too.
Correct sentence: His sister’s boy friend came too.
If the word is both plural and possessive, then the apostrophe follows the ‘s’:
Incorrect sentence: Her two son’s birthdays are both in February.
Correct sentence: Her two sons’ birthdays are both in February.
9. The only exception to the possessives rule is “its,” which is a possessive without an
apostrophe. We make this exception in order to distinguish “its” from “it’s,” a contraction that
means “it is.” This is an oft made mistake in students’ papers.
6
10. A dangling modifier is a phrase that is meant to modify a noun, usually the subject of a
sentence, but fails to do its job. For example, in the sentence, “Having worked in this office for
ten years, it seems to me that I deserve more respect,” the modifying phrase “having worked in
this office for ten years” is actually modifying “it” ~ though of course “it” hasn’t worked in this
office for ten years. There are two ways to fix this sentence. You could alter the modifying
phrase to read (for example), “Since I have worked in this office for ten years,” or you could
modify the main clause to read ( for example), “ I deserve more respect, it seems to me.”
11. Make sure that your verb agrees with your subject and that all subsequent references to that
subject are also in agreement with it. A compound subject (e.g., two subjects linked with “and”)
is plural and requires the appropriate verb form. “One,” “each,” “each one,” “someone,”
“everyone,” “anyone” and “no one” are all singular subjects; they can’t be referred to later on in
the sentence as “they,” “them,” or “their,” and they require the appropriate verb form.
Incorrect sentence: Everyone likes to take their time.
Correct sentence: Everyone likes to take his or her time.
Preferable sentence: Everyone likes to take time.
12. As the subject or object of a dependant clause, “that” is correct only when the antecedent is not
human, e.g., “the exam that I passed.” (It’s even better ~ more succinct ~ if you can eliminate
“that” altogether, e.g., “the exam I passed.”) If the antecedent is a person, however, you must
use either “who” (for the subject of the clause) or “whom” (for the object of the clause). “Who”
and “whom” cannot be used interchangeably: “the woman who loves me” but “the woman
whom I love.”
13. Colloquially, we often use “how” to mean “that,” but in writing we need to be more precise: only
use “how” if you mean literally, “in what way.” So there’s nothing wrong with the sentence, “He
told me how he’d persuaded her to give him the money,” but “He told me how he used to be a
lifeguard” is incorrect. It should read, “He told me that he used to be a lifeguard.” Also, “an
example of is insensitivity is when he boasts about his sexual conquests” is grammatically
incorrect because an example can’t be when.
14. Always distinguish between a pronoun that operates as a subject of a clause and a pronoun
that operates as an object. “Our host poured coffee for she and I” doesn’t make grammatical
sense, because “she” and “I” are subjective, not objective pronouns. The sentence should read,
“Our host poured coffee for her and me.”
15. Commas are often used to set off a word or phrase in the middle of a sentence that is
supplementary to it, e.g., “She didn’t believe him, however, and went along her merry way” or
“The first rule of thumb, should you find yourself stranded on a highway late at night, is not
to panic. Make sure that you provide both commas in this case ~ one before and one after.
16. Some commonly used prepositional phrases are grammatically incorrect. “In the beginning of
the movie” is incorrect; you want at the beginning of the movie.” (On the other hand, “in the
beginning sequences of the movie” is just fine.) We are concerned about people and paranoid
about the future, not concerned or paranoid of them. And since “off” is a preposition and
therefore takes a direct object, “Please take that picture off of my door” is incorrect; the
sentence should read, “Please that that picture off my door.” The correct word is “recurring,”
not “reoccurring”; “prophesies.” Not “prophesizes.”
17. If you use a participle as a noun (that is, a gerund), then it must be treated grammatically as a
noun, not as a verb. Therefore “she feared him coming” is incorrect, because “coming” is a
noun and the object of the verb “feared”; the correct phrase would be “she feared his coming.”
When this construction becomes awkward (e.g., “He awaited his friend’s coming”), you’re better
off rephrasing (“He awaited his friend’s arrival”).
7
Quotations (Q-)
1. Use a quotation from the text to back up your point, not to repeat it. And avoid using quotes to
prove plot details: they don’t need to be proven.
2. Unless you wish to emphasize it, incorporate a single-line passage from a poem, play, novel,
etc., within quotation marks, as part of your sentence, e.g.,
Biff begs his father to “burn that phony dream before it’s too late”
or
Biff begs his father, “Why don’t you burn that phony dream before it’s too late?”
3. For longer quotations, or quotations you wish to give special emphasis to, block-indent. Set
them apart from the text, no more that two or three lines from the text above and no more
than two or three lines from the text below, five spaces from each margin. When you blockindent
a quotation, single-space and do not enclose it in quotation marks.
4. For quoting verse only: If you incorporate the quotation within your sentence, use a slash to
separate the lines, e.g.,
Here Romeo speaks the famous lines: “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. / Arise,
fair sun, and kill the envious room . . .”
If you block-indent the quote, you must preserve the original spacing of the
verse, e.g.,
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon . . .
5. No quotation can stand on its own as a separate sentence; it must be introduced. Use a colon
(not a semi-colon) if you introduce the quoted passage with a complete sentence, e.g.,
Biff warns Happy not to pursue the same ideals as their father did: “He had the
wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”
6. When you quote a complete sentence, you must capitalize the beginning of the quote and
introduce it with a comma or a colon, depending on the context, e.g.,
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda says, “We’re free and clear.”
or
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda addresses her husband’s grave: “We’re
free and clear.”
7. However, if you’re quoting a phrase to complete your own sentence, eliminate the comma and
don’t capitalize the beginning of the phrase, e.g.,
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda says that she is “free and clear.”
or
The Stage Manager in Our Town makes the point that “people were meant to go
through life two by two.”
8
8. Commas and periods are always set inside quotation marks, no matter how illogical it may
seem. Other punctuation is set outside quotation marks if it’s yours, inside if it’s the author’s,
e.g.,
The old pop song asks the question, “Why do fools fall in love?”
But
Why does Long Day’s Journey into Night end with the line, “Then I married James
Tyrone and was so happy for a time”?
9. When you’re quoting a line from a text, make sure that it makes sense out of context ~ that the
antecedents of any pronouns in the quoted passage are clear to a reader, and that everything
in the quote is self-explanatory or immediately comprehensible because you’ve clarified it
elsewhere.
10. A quoted passage is only effective if it is self-contained and truly illuminates something in your
argument. There is no point in quoting a line like “It’s true!” or “What did you expect?” out of
context; it only baffles the reader. And there’s no point in quoting a phrase that is banal
and not distinctive, like “Shut the door” or “what you want me to do.” (I generally denote this
problem in your essays with NQ. See The Shubert Code.)
11. There’s no point in quoting a long passage from a text when only a small part of it is relevant
your argument. If you quote a long passage, you need to justify the length by annotating it, i.e.,
providing a detailed explication.
12. Use square brackets ( [ and ] ) ~ not parentheses [ ( and ) ] ~ to mark your own editorial
insertions within quotations, e.g.,
Biff explains to Happy, “[Willy] had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”
You can only use parentheses within a quote if the parenthetical statement belongs
to the writer you’re quoting.
13. When you leave out a section of a passage you are quoting, use an ellipsis (three dots) to
indicate that you’re omitting something.
14. Quotation marks belong around words and phrases only. They cannot be used for emphasis.
15. If a quotation is self-explanatory, it doesn’t need to explicated or reiterated in your own words.
On the other hand, lengthy quotes are only appropriate in a paper if you do plan to explicate
them in some way. Be wary of quoting too much; remember that you ~ not Shakespeare or
O’Neil ~ are writing the paper.
16. A quotation is the exact words of a source enclosed in quotation marks. You face conflicting
demands when you add quotations to your writing. Although quotations provide support for your
contentions, you can lose control of your paper if you add too many. You want your writing to
be coherent and readable, so use quotations sparingly. If more than one-quarter of your paper
consists of quotations or paraphrases, you’ve probably written what some people call a
“Scotch-tape special.” Depending too heavily on quotation gives your readers – including
your instructor – the impression that you haven’t bothered to develop your own thinking and are
letting other people do your talking.
17. Here are some basic guidelines for using quotations:
Use quotations from authorities on your subject to support or refute what you have written.
Never use a quotation to present your thesis statement or a topic sentence.
Select quotations that fit your message. Choose a quotation only when
9
Its language is particularly appropriate and distinctive
Its idea is particularly hard to paraphrase accurately
The source’s authority is especially important to support your thesis or main point
The source’s words are open to interpretation
Never compose more than one-quarter of your paper from quotations. Instead, rely on
paraphrasing and summary. Again, be careful not to overdo these either.
Quote accurately. Always check a quotation against the original source – and then recheck it.
Avoid plagiarism.
Document quotations carefully.
Unless you incorporate quotations in your own writing skillfully, you may end up with
incoherent, choppy sentences. You can avoid this problem by making the words you quote fit
smoothly with three aspects of your writing: (1) grammar, (2) style, and (3) logic. After writing a
sentence that contains a quotation, read it aloud to hear whether that language flows smoothly
and gracefully. If it doesn’t, revise the sentence. Here are some examples of sentences that
don’t mesh well with quotations, followed by a revised version.
ORIGINAL MATERIAL: These two minds, the emotional and the rational, operate in tight
harmony for the most part, intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through
the world. SOURCE: Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1995.9.
[These are Goleman’s exact words.]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds
“intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world” (9).
[Incoherent grammar]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how “intertwining their very different ways of
knowing to guide us through the world,” the emotional and rational minds work
together (9). [Incoherent style – Inverted word order]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds work
together by “their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world” (9).
[Incoherent logic]
Correct sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds work
together by “intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the
world” (9).
10
Procedure (P-)
1. Titles for essays should provide more information than “Assignment #2,” or “Major Paper,” etc.
This only provides information that is already know and is not, to say the least, very
imaginative. Titles are the first thing your reader sees and should therefore have some
information embedded in them reflecting your thesis statement.
2. Titles of books, plays, movies, newspapers, magazines are either underlined or italicized, not
placed in quotation marks. This is a very common mistake.
3. Please number your pages. It makes it much easier for me to refer to passages in your
papers in my final comments and to locate passages I may want to look at again.
4. You can avoid the confusion about whether to refer to “the reader” or “the audience,” as well as
excess verbiage, by just substituting the first person plural pronoun (“we” or “us” ), e.g., “Orson
Wells shows us Kane’s mansion in the opening scene.”
5. Remember: this is an argumentative essay, not a review of a book(s), article(s), etc. Avoid
either praising the author(s) or complaining about his, her, or their work.
6. Edit your paper carefully before handing it in. If you give it to someone else to type, edit it
after he or she has finished typing it as well as before.
7. Make sure you spell titles and the names of authors, playwrights, characters, etc.,
correctly. It’s your responsibility to double-check to see that you’re not making spelling errors.
8. It isn’t necessary to define a term we all understand; you can assume some intelligence and
experience in your reader. However, you can’t assume that your reader has just finished
reading a specific reference you may be using outside the course literature. If you are making a
point or argument that’s dependent on an understanding of something that’s not self-evident,
then it needs to be explained, succinctly. A paper that’s littered with unexplained references
reads as if it were written in code. It’s simply good writing to make your allusions clear.
11
Documentation (D-)
1. The most frequently used documentation style in the humanities has been developed by the
Modern Languages Association (MLA). In MLA style, you’re expected to document your
sources in two separate, equally important ways:
Within the body of the paper, use in-text citations, as described below.
At the end of the paper, provide a list of sources you used in your paper. Title this list Works
Cited, as described below.
2. In-text citations are information included in the sentences or in parenthetical references within
the paper. They both signal material used from outside sources and enable readers to locate
the original sources.
3. In most in-text citations, a name or a title usually identifies a source, and page numbers usually
show the exact location in that source. In general, put page number information in parentheses
at the end of a quotation, paraphrase, or summary. Try to introduce names of authors and titles
of sources in your own sentences, where they become part of the flow of your writing. If that
isn’t possible, put the information in parentheses at the end of a quotation, paraphrase, or
summary.
4. Before trying to integrate sources into your writing, you need to analyze and synthesize your
material. ANALYSIS is the process of breaking ideas down into their component parts, so that
you can think them through separately. Do this while reading and reviewing your notes.
SYTNTHESIS is the process of making connections among different ideas, seeking
relationships that tie them together.
5. Your paper can be successful only if it reflects your personal synthesis of the ideas you are
dealing with. The major requirement of an argumentative essay is to demonstrate your ability to
think well. Never simply list or summarize separate ideas. Use either quotations, paraphrasing,
or summary to present your synthesis of the material you have read. Remember, however, that
excessive use of quotes and especially paraphrasing does not enable your essay to reflect your
personal synthesis. Quotes and paraphrasing that are strung together will be denoted in your
papers with SQT or SPT. See The Shubert Code.
6. Here are some examples of citations of paraphrases:
People from the Mediterranean prefer an elbow-to-shoulder distance from each other (Morris
131). [name and page number cited in parentheses]
Desmond Morris notes that people from the Mediterranean prefer and elbow-to-shoulder
distance from each other (131). [name cited in text, page number cited in parentheses]
A parenthetical reference belongs at the end of the material it refers to, usually at the end of a
sentence. If you’re citing a quotation enclosed in quotation marks, place the parentheses after
the closing quotation mark but before sentence-ending punctuation:
Binkley claims that artificial light reduced SAD-related “depression in 87 percent of patients . .
. within a few days; relapses followed” (203-04) when light treatment ended.
Research shows that “the number, rate, and direction of time-zone changes are the critical
factors in determining the extent and degree of jet lag symptoms” (Coleman 67).
7. Place a parenthetical reference for a long quotation (one you set off from your own sentences
with indentation) outside the punctuation ending the last sentence.
8. There are many different guidelines for citing specific types of material, all of which are covered
in detail in Quick Access: Second Canadian Edition by Lynn Quitman Troyka. It is highly
recommended that you purchase this book, especially if you don’t already own a similar
resource.
There are faxes for this order.

Essay Instructions: Using Patricia Hughes-Fuller's article, "'Am I Canadian?' Hockey as 'National' Culture," write a critical essay interpreting and commenting on Hughes-Fuller's understanding of the importance of hockey in Canadian society. Be sure to use 'Hockey Night in Canada' by Gruneau and Whitson to back up your argument.

Hughes-Fuller's article can be retrieved here:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/cms/hughes.pdf

'Hockey Night in Canada' by Gruneau and Whitson will be sent via email.

On Writing Argumentative/Critical Essays:

The opening paragraph of and argumentative/critical essay must contain your thesis.
Each subsequent paragraph needs to make a point that develops from that thesis, and these points
must be supported by evidence from your source material (whatever that material is). The points
should be positioned logically and effectively. For instance, if you analyze the relationship two
characters in a novel or the use of symbolism as a narrative device in your third paragraph, don’t drop
it in paragraph four and then return to talk about it again in paragraph seven.
Points are not merely examples of your thesis. If that’s all they are, then you end up with an
argument that has only one point and many examples, and that’s not the same thing as a thesis that’s
developed in a series of different points.
The final paragraph of your essay should be a conclusion, not a restatement of your thesis (or a
restatement of your argument).
Argue your point: don’t retell the story. Provide enough narrative information so that your point
makes sense, and omit the rest. If you find yourself using narrative language, e.g., “Then she takes
the children home,” or “He picks up the phone and discovers that it has been disconnected,” or “The
chief of police is a man named Homer Necessary,” you’re no longer making an argument ~ you’ve
reverted to retelling the story.
Thinking and Writing Critically
Taken from Quick Access: Reference for Writers. Lynn Quitman Troyka. Prentice-Hall Canada Inc.
2000.
Thinking is not something you choose to do, any more than a fish “chooses” to live in water. To be
human is to think. But while the process of thinking may come naturally, awareness of how to think
does not. So, thinking about thinking is the key to critical thinking.
When you think critically, you take control of your conscious thought processes. Without such control,
you risk being controlled by the ideas of others. Indeed, critical thinking is at the heart of a liberal
(from the Latin word for free) education.
The word critical here has a neutral meaning. It does not mean taking a negative view or finding fault,
as when someone criticizes another person for doing something wrong. The essence of critical
thinking is thinking beyond the obvious, just as critical reading is reading beyond the literal level.
Critical thinking is a process of contemplation and deliberation. Within this process, it takes time to
progress from becoming fully aware of something, to reflecting on it, to reacting to it. You use this
sequence often in your life, as when you learn a new job and then evaluate the job itself as well as
your ability to do the work.
The general process of critical thinking, as it is applied in academic settings, is described below. This
process also applies to reading critically and writing critically.
A crucial distinction in critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing resides in the differences
between summary and synthesis.
Summary comes before synthesis. To summarize is to extract the main message or central point of a
passage. A summary does not include supporting evidence or details. It is the gist, the hub, the seed
of what the author is saying; it is not your reaction to it. Most people summarize informally in
conversation (and more formally in speech).
2
1. Analyze: Consider the whole and then break it into its component parts so that you can
examine them separately. By seeing them as distinct units, you can come to understand how
they interrelate.
2. Summarize: Extract and restate the material’s main message or central point at the literal level.
3. Interpret: Read “between the lines” to make inferences about the unstated assumptions
implied by the material. Also evaluate the material for its underlying currents as conveyed by
tone, slant, and clarity of distinctions between fact and opinion; by the quality of evidence; and
by the rigour of its reasoning and logic.
4. Synthesize: Pull together what you have summarized, analyzed, and interpreted to connect it
to what you already know (your prior knowledge) or what you are currently learning. Find links
that help you grasp the new material to create a new whole, one that reflects your ability to see
and explain relationships among ideas.
5. Access critically: Judge the quality of the material on its own and as it holds up in your
synthesis of it with related material.
To synthesize is to weave together ideas from more than one source; to connect ideas from one or
more sources to what you already know from what you have read, listened to, and experienced; to
create a new whole that is your own as a result of your thinking about diverse yet related ideas. Many
techniques can help that thinking along. When you synthesize unconsciously, your mind connects
ideas by thought processes mirrored in the rhetorical strategies discussed.
To synthesize deliberately, consciously apply rhetorical strategies to the material. For example:
# Compare ideas in sources.
# Contrast ideas in sources.
# Create definitions that combine and extend definitions in individual sources.
# Apply examples or descriptions from one source to illustrate ideas in another.
# Find causes and/or effects or other processes described in one source that explain
another.
Unsynthesized ideas and information are like separate spools of thread, neatly lined up, possibly
coordinated, but not integrated. Synthesized ideas and information become threads woven into a
tapestry that creates a new whole. Synthesizing is the core of critical thinking. Synthesis is the
evidence of your ability to tie ideas together in the tapestry of what you learn and know and
experience. Put another way. Synthesis provides the proof that the “light is on.”
Alert: “Synthesis by summary” – a mere listing of who said what about a topic – is not true synthesis.
It does not create a new connection among ideas.
3
Style (S-)
1. Always use the present tense when talking about a book, play or movie.
2. A broad, blanket-statement opening sentence like “War is the most destructive force known to
humans” or “Shakespeare was the greatest of dramatists” is nothing but filler. In papers of this
length, get right to the your subject; the leaner your opening statement is, the better. Similarly,
don’t announce what you plan to do in the paper or how you plan to do it ~ just do it. A thesis
statement is not a declaration of your agenda; it’s the premise of your paper.
3. Avoid using the passive voice. It’s usually confusing and tends to make your sentence heavy
and awkward. “Happy is told that his father had the wrong dreams” is puzzling to readers: we
want to know who told him.
4. Avoid using the second person (“you”), which is too informal, and the third party (“one”) which is
too stiff. There are other ways to express the same idea: try using the first person plural
(“we/us”).
5. Avoid breaking up a subject-verb construction with a comma. Instead of the awkward “We,
therefore, know,” try “We know, therefore . . .”
6. Avoid rhetorical questions. They tend to make a writer sound smug because they imply that you
know all the answers.
7. Avoid using “this” or “that” as a demonstrative pronoun; it always makes a sentence more
vague than it need be. Instead, use them as demonstrative adjectives and supply a noun for
them (“this idea,” “that stipulation,” etc.)
Vague sentence: This weakened his argument.
Precise sentence: This statement weakened his argument.
8. Repetition weakens an argument. So does redundancy. The following are common
redundant phrases: “throughout the entire movie,” “anger and rage,” “power and control.”
9. It’s fine ~ even effective ~ to use simple sentences for emphasis, but don’t overdo it. Too many
short, basic sentences in one paragraph make for choppy, disjointed reading and give the
impression that the writer isn’t capable of more sophisticated thought. Combine some of those
simple sentences to construct a more complex one.
10. Try to keep yourself (the first person singular) out of your paper. This precept may sound
impersonal and overly formal, but avoiding “I” and “me” can prevent a lot of awkwardness and
rambling, and expressing your feelings about what you’ve read or seen isn’t the same as
expressing an opinion ~ it’s usually inappropriate in an argumentative essay. And your opinion
is implied without your drawing attention to the fact that’s it’s your opinion, because in an essay
signed by you, who else’s could it be?
11. Use pronouns whenever possible and appropriate. It can drive a reader crazy to read the same
nouns and proper nouns over and over (“Macbeth imagined he saw a dagger in the air and the
dagger reminded Macbeth that Macbeth had sworn to kill Duncan with a dagger”).
12. Avoid using the noun “thing” (or “something”). It doesn’t identify clearly enough the object or
quality you’re trying to get at.
4
13. Link your sentences with connectors like “but,” “however,” and “therefore,” or connective
phrases like “on the other hand” and “as well.” Otherwise sentences that you mean to follow
one another in a logical sequence may seem disparate and you’re likely to end up with a
non sequitur (a statement that doesn’t follow logically from one that precedes it). N.B. Overuse
of these connectors can lead to the “ping-pong” effect ~ your reader is bounced back and
forth between so many new points that the original idea is long forgotten. Also, avoid using
these connectors and connective phrases to begin paragraphs. Use transition sentences at the
end of one paragraph to set up the one to follow.
14. Avoid split infinitives and other split verbs. In almost all cases, and adverb that interrupts a verb
can be moved to a different place in the sentence, e.g., “to finally arrive home” reads better as”
finally to arrive home” or “to arrive home, finally.”
15. Avoid clichés as much as possible; they make your writing sludgy and predictable. That’s
equally true of popular expressions like “up front,” “in denial,” “bring closure to,” etc. “Incredible”
and “unbelievable” are dull, vague, inexpressive adjectives unless you mean them literally, and
“depressing” is a misleading way of saying “downbeat” or “sad” or “moving.”
16. For similar reasons, avoid obscenity and other kinds of slang unless you’re quoting a line or
you’re absolutely sure that this is the most effective way to make your point. I’m certainly not
puritanical; I think obscenity spices up spoken discourse. But slang of any kind is rarely an
asset in an argumentative essay. That’s because written English is always more formal than
spoken English. So phrases that are not strictly correct but universally understood in speech
don’t get by on the page. For example, “mad” means “insane,” not “angry,” and “fun” is a noun,
not an adjective, so you can’t write, “It was a fun experience.”
17. Try to avoid archaic phrases and unwieldy diction. “Angry” is a whole lot better than “angered,”
“comedic” is just a fancy way of saying “comic” (you’d never write “tragedic!”), and “utilize”
always sounds to me like something you’d buy in a hardware store. “That which would have
made her happy” is awkward; “what would have made her happy” is much cleaner. And there
are usually better ways to introduce a quote besides “she states,” “he says,” “she tells,” or “he
continues.” Think of all the descriptive synonyms the English language provides for “say.”
5
Grammar (G-)
1. Colons and semi-colons cannot be used interchangeably. Colons are used to introduce
material (a quotation or an idea or a list). Semi-colons are used within lists or to connect
separate ideas in a single sentence. A sentence that employs a comma instead of a semi-colon
to connect separate ideas is a run-on sentence.
Run-on sentence: Beth was unhappy at home, she wanted to assert her
independence but her father prevented her from doing so.
Acceptable sentence: Beth was unhappy at home; she wanted to assert her
independence but her father prevented her from doing so.
2. A connector like “and,” “but,” “or,” “that,” or “yet” is not followed by a comma.
3. The terms “i.e.” and “e.g.” mean very different things: “e.g.” means “for example,” and “i.e.”
means “that is.” Either one is always followed by a comma.
4. Don’t use a hyphen (one-) when you want a dash (two -- ), or if you must, at least leave a space
before and after. When you write a sentence like “Hamlet-and not Laertes-is the character we
admire,” you’ve actually invented two new words: “Hamlet-and” and “Laertes-is.”
5. Be careful how you use the word “because”: the phrase that follows it needs to be the cause of
the phrase that precedes it. This is a cause/effect problem, and I usually denote it papers with
“C/E.” (See The Shubert Code.)
6. When you are writing in the past tense and want to refer to an action that happened earlier, the
correct tense is the pluperfect, e.g., “He told his wife that he had written to his brother. That’s
a construction everyone is familiar with. But remember that when you write about a play or a
movie, you’re writing in the present tense and so an action that happened earlier must be
placed in the past tense.
Incorrect sentence: He tells his wife that he had written to his brother.
Correct sentence: He tells his wife that he wrote (or has written) to her brother.
7. When the subject of a phrase is followed directly by a verb, they are not separated by a
comma. So “The Captain of the ship ordered his crew to man the hatches” is correct but “The
Captain of the ship, ordered his crew . . .”is not. Similarly, a comma cannot separate a verb
from its object (or objective completion). So “He is the first one to arrive” is correct but “He is,
the first to arrive” is not. And there is no comma between a possessive and its object: William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” not “William Shakespeare’s, Hamlet.
8. Apostrophes are used only for possessives and contractions ( don’t, didn’t they’re, etc.). They
cannot be used for plurals. Therefore:
Incorrect sentence: His sister’s came over for coffee.
Correct sentence: His sisters came over for coffee.
Incorrect sentence: His sisters boy friend came too.
Correct sentence: His sister’s boy friend came too.
If the word is both plural and possessive, then the apostrophe follows the ‘s’:
Incorrect sentence: Her two son’s birthdays are both in February.
Correct sentence: Her two sons’ birthdays are both in February.
9. The only exception to the possessives rule is “its,” which is a possessive without an
apostrophe. We make this exception in order to distinguish “its” from “it’s,” a contraction that
means “it is.” This is an oft made mistake in students’ papers.
6
10. A dangling modifier is a phrase that is meant to modify a noun, usually the subject of a
sentence, but fails to do its job. For example, in the sentence, “Having worked in this office for
ten years, it seems to me that I deserve more respect,” the modifying phrase “having worked in
this office for ten years” is actually modifying “it” ~ though of course “it” hasn’t worked in this
office for ten years. There are two ways to fix this sentence. You could alter the modifying
phrase to read (for example), “Since I have worked in this office for ten years,” or you could
modify the main clause to read ( for example), “ I deserve more respect, it seems to me.”
11. Make sure that your verb agrees with your subject and that all subsequent references to that
subject are also in agreement with it. A compound subject (e.g., two subjects linked with “and”)
is plural and requires the appropriate verb form. “One,” “each,” “each one,” “someone,”
“everyone,” “anyone” and “no one” are all singular subjects; they can’t be referred to later on in
the sentence as “they,” “them,” or “their,” and they require the appropriate verb form.
Incorrect sentence: Everyone likes to take their time.
Correct sentence: Everyone likes to take his or her time.
Preferable sentence: Everyone likes to take time.
12. As the subject or object of a dependant clause, “that” is correct only when the antecedent is not
human, e.g., “the exam that I passed.” (It’s even better ~ more succinct ~ if you can eliminate
“that” altogether, e.g., “the exam I passed.”) If the antecedent is a person, however, you must
use either “who” (for the subject of the clause) or “whom” (for the object of the clause). “Who”
and “whom” cannot be used interchangeably: “the woman who loves me” but “the woman
whom I love.”
13. Colloquially, we often use “how” to mean “that,” but in writing we need to be more precise: only
use “how” if you mean literally, “in what way.” So there’s nothing wrong with the sentence, “He
told me how he’d persuaded her to give him the money,” but “He told me how he used to be a
lifeguard” is incorrect. It should read, “He told me that he used to be a lifeguard.” Also, “an
example of is insensitivity is when he boasts about his sexual conquests” is grammatically
incorrect because an example can’t be when.
14. Always distinguish between a pronoun that operates as a subject of a clause and a pronoun
that operates as an object. “Our host poured coffee for she and I” doesn’t make grammatical
sense, because “she” and “I” are subjective, not objective pronouns. The sentence should read,
“Our host poured coffee for her and me.”
15. Commas are often used to set off a word or phrase in the middle of a sentence that is
supplementary to it, e.g., “She didn’t believe him, however, and went along her merry way” or
“The first rule of thumb, should you find yourself stranded on a highway late at night, is not
to panic. Make sure that you provide both commas in this case ~ one before and one after.
16. Some commonly used prepositional phrases are grammatically incorrect. “In the beginning of
the movie” is incorrect; you want at the beginning of the movie.” (On the other hand, “in the
beginning sequences of the movie” is just fine.) We are concerned about people and paranoid
about the future, not concerned or paranoid of them. And since “off” is a preposition and
therefore takes a direct object, “Please take that picture off of my door” is incorrect; the
sentence should read, “Please that that picture off my door.” The correct word is “recurring,”
not “reoccurring”; “prophesies.” Not “prophesizes.”
17. If you use a participle as a noun (that is, a gerund), then it must be treated grammatically as a
noun, not as a verb. Therefore “she feared him coming” is incorrect, because “coming” is a
noun and the object of the verb “feared”; the correct phrase would be “she feared his coming.”
When this construction becomes awkward (e.g., “He awaited his friend’s coming”), you’re better
off rephrasing (“He awaited his friend’s arrival”).
7
Quotations (Q-)
1. Use a quotation from the text to back up your point, not to repeat it. And avoid using quotes to
prove plot details: they don’t need to be proven.
2. Unless you wish to emphasize it, incorporate a single-line passage from a poem, play, novel,
etc., within quotation marks, as part of your sentence, e.g.,
Biff begs his father to “burn that phony dream before it’s too late”
or
Biff begs his father, “Why don’t you burn that phony dream before it’s too late?”
3. For longer quotations, or quotations you wish to give special emphasis to, block-indent. Set
them apart from the text, no more that two or three lines from the text above and no more
than two or three lines from the text below, five spaces from each margin. When you blockindent
a quotation, single-space and do not enclose it in quotation marks.
4. For quoting verse only: If you incorporate the quotation within your sentence, use a slash to
separate the lines, e.g.,
Here Romeo speaks the famous lines: “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. / Arise,
fair sun, and kill the envious room . . .”
If you block-indent the quote, you must preserve the original spacing of the
verse, e.g.,
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon . . .
5. No quotation can stand on its own as a separate sentence; it must be introduced. Use a colon
(not a semi-colon) if you introduce the quoted passage with a complete sentence, e.g.,
Biff warns Happy not to pursue the same ideals as their father did: “He had the
wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”
6. When you quote a complete sentence, you must capitalize the beginning of the quote and
introduce it with a comma or a colon, depending on the context, e.g.,
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda says, “We’re free and clear.”
or
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda addresses her husband’s grave: “We’re
free and clear.”
7. However, if you’re quoting a phrase to complete your own sentence, eliminate the comma and
don’t capitalize the beginning of the phrase, e.g.,
At the end of Death of a Salesman, Linda says that she is “free and clear.”
or
The Stage Manager in Our Town makes the point that “people were meant to go
through life two by two.”
8
8. Commas and periods are always set inside quotation marks, no matter how illogical it may
seem. Other punctuation is set outside quotation marks if it’s yours, inside if it’s the author’s,
e.g.,
The old pop song asks the question, “Why do fools fall in love?”
But
Why does Long Day’s Journey into Night end with the line, “Then I married James
Tyrone and was so happy for a time”?
9. When you’re quoting a line from a text, make sure that it makes sense out of context ~ that the
antecedents of any pronouns in the quoted passage are clear to a reader, and that everything
in the quote is self-explanatory or immediately comprehensible because you’ve clarified it
elsewhere.
10. A quoted passage is only effective if it is self-contained and truly illuminates something in your
argument. There is no point in quoting a line like “It’s true!” or “What did you expect?” out of
context; it only baffles the reader. And there’s no point in quoting a phrase that is banal
and not distinctive, like “Shut the door” or “what you want me to do.” (I generally denote this
problem in your essays with NQ. See The Shubert Code.)
11. There’s no point in quoting a long passage from a text when only a small part of it is relevant
your argument. If you quote a long passage, you need to justify the length by annotating it, i.e.,
providing a detailed explication.
12. Use square brackets ( [ and ] ) ~ not parentheses [ ( and ) ] ~ to mark your own editorial
insertions within quotations, e.g.,
Biff explains to Happy, “[Willy] had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.”
You can only use parentheses within a quote if the parenthetical statement belongs
to the writer you’re quoting.
13. When you leave out a section of a passage you are quoting, use an ellipsis (three dots) to
indicate that you’re omitting something.
14. Quotation marks belong around words and phrases only. They cannot be used for emphasis.
15. If a quotation is self-explanatory, it doesn’t need to explicated or reiterated in your own words.
On the other hand, lengthy quotes are only appropriate in a paper if you do plan to explicate
them in some way. Be wary of quoting too much; remember that you ~ not Shakespeare or
O’Neil ~ are writing the paper.
16. A quotation is the exact words of a source enclosed in quotation marks. You face conflicting
demands when you add quotations to your writing. Although quotations provide support for your
contentions, you can lose control of your paper if you add too many. You want your writing to
be coherent and readable, so use quotations sparingly. If more than one-quarter of your paper
consists of quotations or paraphrases, you’ve probably written what some people call a
“Scotch-tape special.” Depending too heavily on quotation gives your readers – including
your instructor – the impression that you haven’t bothered to develop your own thinking and are
letting other people do your talking.
17. Here are some basic guidelines for using quotations:
Use quotations from authorities on your subject to support or refute what you have written.
Never use a quotation to present your thesis statement or a topic sentence.
Select quotations that fit your message. Choose a quotation only when
9
Its language is particularly appropriate and distinctive
Its idea is particularly hard to paraphrase accurately
The source’s authority is especially important to support your thesis or main point
The source’s words are open to interpretation
Never compose more than one-quarter of your paper from quotations. Instead, rely on
paraphrasing and summary. Again, be careful not to overdo these either.
Quote accurately. Always check a quotation against the original source – and then recheck it.
Avoid plagiarism.
Document quotations carefully.
Unless you incorporate quotations in your own writing skillfully, you may end up with
incoherent, choppy sentences. You can avoid this problem by making the words you quote fit
smoothly with three aspects of your writing: (1) grammar, (2) style, and (3) logic. After writing a
sentence that contains a quotation, read it aloud to hear whether that language flows smoothly
and gracefully. If it doesn’t, revise the sentence. Here are some examples of sentences that
don’t mesh well with quotations, followed by a revised version.
ORIGINAL MATERIAL: These two minds, the emotional and the rational, operate in tight
harmony for the most part, intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through
the world. SOURCE: Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1995.9.
[These are Goleman’s exact words.]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds
“intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world” (9).
[Incoherent grammar]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how “intertwining their very different ways of
knowing to guide us through the world,” the emotional and rational minds work
together (9). [Incoherent style – Inverted word order]
Incorrect sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds work
together by “their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world” (9).
[Incoherent logic]
Correct sentence: Goleman explains how the emotional and rational minds work
together by “intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the
world” (9).
10
Procedure (P-)
1. Titles for essays should provide more information than “Assignment #2,” or “Major Paper,” etc.
This only provides information that is already know and is not, to say the least, very
imaginative. Titles are the first thing your reader sees and should therefore have some
information embedded in them reflecting your thesis statement.
2. Titles of books, plays, movies, newspapers, magazines are either underlined or italicized, not
placed in quotation marks. This is a very common mistake.
3. Please number your pages. It makes it much easier for me to refer to passages in your
papers in my final comments and to locate passages I may want to look at again.
4. You can avoid the confusion about whether to refer to “the reader” or “the audience,” as well as
excess verbiage, by just substituting the first person plural pronoun (“we” or “us” ), e.g., “Orson
Wells shows us Kane’s mansion in the opening scene.”
5. Remember: this is an argumentative essay, not a review of a book(s), article(s), etc. Avoid
either praising the author(s) or complaining about his, her, or their work.
6. Edit your paper carefully before handing it in. If you give it to someone else to type, edit it
after he or she has finished typing it as well as before.
7. Make sure you spell titles and the names of authors, playwrights, characters, etc.,
correctly. It’s your responsibility to double-check to see that you’re not making spelling errors.
8. It isn’t necessary to define a term we all understand; you can assume some intelligence and
experience in your reader. However, you can’t assume that your reader has just finished
reading a specific reference you may be using outside the course literature. If you are making a
point or argument that’s dependent on an understanding of something that’s not self-evident,
then it needs to be explained, succinctly. A paper that’s littered with unexplained references
reads as if it were written in code. It’s simply good writing to make your allusions clear.
11
Documentation (D-)
1. The most frequently used documentation style in the humanities has been developed by the
Modern Languages Association (MLA). In MLA style, you’re expected to document your
sources in two separate, equally important ways:
Within the body of the paper, use in-text citations, as described below.
At the end of the paper, provide a list of sources you used in your paper. Title this list Works
Cited, as described below.
2. In-text citations are information included in the sentences or in parenthetical references within
the paper. They both signal material used from outside sources and enable readers to locate
the original sources.
3. In most in-text citations, a name or a title usually identifies a source, and page numbers usually
show the exact location in that source. In general, put page number information in parentheses
at the end of a quotation, paraphrase, or summary. Try to introduce names of authors and titles
of sources in your own sentences, where they become part of the flow of your writing. If that
isn’t possible, put the information in parentheses at the end of a quotation, paraphrase, or
summary.
4. Before trying to integrate sources into your writing, you need to analyze and synthesize your
material. ANALYSIS is the process of breaking ideas down into their component parts, so that
you can think them through separately. Do this while reading and reviewing your notes.
SYTNTHESIS is the process of making connections among different ideas, seeking
relationships that tie them together.
5. Your paper can be successful only if it reflects your personal synthesis of the ideas you are
dealing with. The major requirement of an argumentative essay is to demonstrate your ability to
think well. Never simply list or summarize separate ideas. Use either quotations, paraphrasing,
or summary to present your synthesis of the material you have read. Remember, however, that
excessive use of quotes and especially paraphrasing does not enable your essay to reflect your
personal synthesis. Quotes and paraphrasing that are strung together will be denoted in your
papers with SQT or SPT. See The Shubert Code.
6. Here are some examples of citations of paraphrases:
People from the Mediterranean prefer an elbow-to-shoulder distance from each other (Morris
131). [name and page number cited in parentheses]
Desmond Morris notes that people from the Mediterranean prefer and elbow-to-shoulder
distance from each other (131). [name cited in text, page number cited in parentheses]
A parenthetical reference belongs at the end of the material it refers to, usually at the end of a
sentence. If you’re citing a quotation enclosed in quotation marks, place the parentheses after
the closing quotation mark but before sentence-ending punctuation:
Binkley claims that artificial light reduced SAD-related “depression in 87 percent of patients . .
. within a few days; relapses followed” (203-04) when light treatment ended.
Research shows that “the number, rate, and direction of time-zone changes are the critical
factors in determining the extent and degree of jet lag symptoms” (Coleman 67).
7. Place a parenthetical reference for a long quotation (one you set off from your own sentences
with indentation) outside the punctuation ending the last sentence.
8. There are many different guidelines for citing specific types of material, all of which are covered
in detail in Quick Access: Second Canadian Edition by Lynn Quitman Troyka. It is highly
recommended that you purchase this book, especially if you don’t already own a similar
resource.




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