Quoting always seemed tedious to me. I understand the importance, showing that an expert or at least another person in the world shares your point of view, but finding that one quote that would fit the thesis perfectly, bores me to no end. I try to find quotes that don’t need much explanation, which isn’t always the best thing, but, it doesn’t take that much effort, and when I’m writing a paper, I want it as effortless as possible.
So, needless to say, I never caught on to introducing quotations or putting my interpretations of them right before and after the quote. It seemed that if I had chosen the right quote, an explanation wouldn’t be needed. However, no one’s corrected my quoting methods before, so I assumed that I was doing everything right. Yeah, it was just lazy teaching, and I was doing it wrong.
This chapter really simplified what I was supposed to do, and even though it will require effort, it’s not as much effort as I originally thought. The resemblance of “…quotations are orphans” not only tickled me greatly, but was able to put into perspective of what I was supposed to do, like the why of it all. It went on to explain which quotes needed to be explained, which was good, because then I can put even less of an effort into a paper.
I hate writing papers, but these articles and chapter don’t make it sound too bad. Unlike the textbooks that I have read in my previous years of school, it seems that this book, even though I have only read the two chapters, actually wants people to learn how to write a decent argument, and not learn enough just to get by. Using quotations doesn’t seem that intimidating anymore, now that I understand what I’m supposed to do.
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