Chapter 18

This chapter covers document design from a more visual point of view as opposed to content and structure.

Important vocab:

• Balance - vertical alignment of text and of images, headings, etc. Is your document balanced or unbalanced? Whichever it is, the decision should be deliberate.
• Emphasis - the arrangement of images and headings to create emphasis or flow, size of images, text color of headings or important words, etc.
• Placement - esp. the location of images; put related images close to each other, place images next to the specific passages to which they’re relevant.
• Repetition and consistency - patterns are good. Certain elements should be the same every time they come up to make comprehension as simple as possible for your readers.

When designing your document, your reader’s comprehension should be first in your mind. Make it easy to understand the organization of your document, the separation of parts, the places to find and review specific points of information.

Use fonts, line spacing, alignment, layout, colors, shading, borders, rules, and images or various types as the elements in your document’s visual design.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15 goes over a number of ideas related to proper use of sources. Perhaps most importantly, it explains proper practice for the attribution of sources, as well as the correct formats for citations and different kinds of quotes. It also provides overviews of other ways to integrate sources -- paraphrases, summaries, and so forth.

Here are some uses for sources beyond being sources of information:

• You can quote a source to say something you couldn’t say yourself without sounding biased
• You can use sources to introduce ideas and arguments, choosing what to paraphrase or how to summarize to place emphasis on different points
• You can use quotations and paraphrases to show, rather than tell, where disagreement or contrasting ideas are present
• You can use quotes from sources with authority to give your own ideas more authority

And so forth. Of course, you can also use a source to expand on ideas with further information and things like that.

Chapter 16

Style is a vital part of any writing project. As with many other things, appropriate styles vary between different genres of document. It’s important to be aware of things like the appropriate level of formality to use and the preferred methods of citation.

Other elements of style to pay attention to are choices about sentence structure, when to use active voice vs. passive voice, effective transitions, varied word choice, and even choice of pronouns when describing people and professions in general cases.

The chapter provides in-depth examples and comparisons of all of the above, and several other things.

Worksheet: MLA Citations - Theory & Practice

1. Identify each bibliographic element in the following entries:
1. “Article title” in quotation marks. Periodical name in italics. Organization name, date published. Medium. Date accessed.
2. Website name in italics. Organization name, year published. Medium. Date accessed.
3. Author’s last name, first name. “Paper Title” in quotation marks. Periodical title in italics. Volume.issue (year published) in parentheses: first page-last page. Medium.
4. Documentary title in italics. Dir[ector’s]. First name Last name. Perf[ormers’]. First name Last name, First name Last name. Distributor’s name, year published. Medium.
5. Author’s last name, first name and initial. “Article name” in quotation marks. Periodical title and volume.issue (month and year released) in parentheses: first page-last page. Database name. Date accessed.
2. Write out bibliographic (works cited) entries for each of the following sources; give an explanation for each.
1. The source is a government publication; list government, then the government body that authored it, then the type of document followed by the title of the document, then publishing body, publishing date, and medium.
   United States. Federal Maritime Commission. Rept. Hawaiian Trade Study: An Economic Analysis. Washington: GPO, 1978. Print.
2. Personal interview; List interviewee’s last name, then first name, then list type of review or review medium, then the date the interview took place.
   Montez, Mary. Personal interview. 21 June 2012.
3. For an unpublished dissertation with a quotation in the title; author’s last name, first name, then the title enclosed in double quotation marks, with the quotation enclosed in single quotation marks, then the school, the date, and the medium.
   Casawantay, M.J. “Timing in ‘Once More to the Lake’: E.B. White’s ‘Chiller.’” Yale, 1985. Print.
4. For a newspaper article; author’s last name, first name. Then article name in quotation marks. Then the periodical name in italics, with the city indicated. Then date and medium.
   Harmon, Amy. “Have Laptop, Will Track Each Blip in the Market.” New York Times 12 March 1998. Print.
5. Article in a journal: Author’s last name, first name. title in quotation marks. Journal name and volume, issue, and year: pages. Medium.
   Robbins, William G. “Triumphal Narratives and the Northern West.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 42.2 (1992): 62-68. Print.
6. Article from an online database; ame as an article in a journal, but in the medium part you list the database name, then ‘Web.’, then the date accessed.
   Robbins, William G. “Triumphal Narratives and the Northern West.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 42.2 (1992): 62-68. JSTOR. Web. 12 May 2005.
7. couldn’t find a relevant source of this type
8. The Silkroad Foundation. Silkroad Foundation, 2000. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.
9. Palmer, Carla. Personal interview. 6 Feb. 2014.

Chapter 12

This chapter is an overview of the process of developing your argument. Starting from your thesis statement, you’re to generate and explain your reasons for supporting your thesis statement. You should have a number of them. The chapter explains what sort of reasoning will be expected in various different document styles. All your reasons, then, should be backed up by logic and by evidence.

In addition to explaining your reasoning, a good argument will require appeals. The chapter explains the main types of appeals and how they work. The rest of the chapter outlines what aren’t acceptable appeals, or acceptable reasons. These are fallacies. There are a number of different fallacies. Generally speaking, they can be generalized as based on one of four things: distraction, questionable assumptions, misrepresentation, or careless reasoning. All of them are sloppy and dishonest, and if your readers detect them, they will not trust your reasoning.