For Whom Do You Write?

2. For Whom Do You Write? • Your audience, in this class will always consist of three elements: me, you and your peers, and the AP readers on the exam. You need to know something about all three of these populations. • Assume that all are familiar with the text; you do not have to repeat it or make line or text references to locate information within the text.

3. For Whom Do You Write? • Scholars (your audience) expect a cogent argument, logically arranged, based solidly on evidence. • These essays tend to be formal in style and tone, but that doesn’t mean you cannot be witty and personable. Having said that, remember, a college professor may consider wit to be something different than you do.

4. Choosing a Topic • Almost all of the formal essays you will write in this class will be actual essays from past AP Language exams or they will be modelled on them. • AP Language, as a course in the study of rhetoric, focuses almost exclusively on non-fiction.

5. Proving Your Point • In writing about literature, your object is to convince readers that your understanding of a work is valid and important. This effort requires proof. • Proof in writing about literature is primarily an exercise in strict definition and textual analysis.

6. Proving Your Point • Juliet’s phrase (from Romeo and Juliet),“parting is such sweet sorrow,” derives its feeling from the paradoxical linking of sweetness and grief as a representation of the conflicting emotions of love. To provide an appropriate definition of the effect of the phrase, you would need to identify (not define!) the figure of speech as paradox, and investigate the way love can simultaneously inflict pain and give pleasure, and, even more effectively, point to the alliteration that ties these opposites together. Finally, it would insightful to note how this quote ties into the work as a whole since both lovers die as a result of their supposed death or “parting.”

7. Using Quotations • For the type of essay we write in this class, you should only quote single words or short sections of a sentence; rarely would you use a full sentence or several sentences strung together. • Do not use multiple sentence, block quotes. I don’t read them and neither do the AP readers because it is not YOUR written ideas or analysis.

8. When should I quote? • Use quotations at strategically selected moments. You have probably been told by teachers to provide as much evidence as possible in support of your thesis. But packing your paper with quotations will not necessarily strengthen your argument. The majority of your paper should still be your original ideas in your own words (after all, it's your paper). And quotations are only one type of evidence: well-balanced papers may also make use of paraphrases, data, and statistics.

9. When should I quote? • Use as few words as possible. Remember, your paper should primarily contain your own words, so quote only the most pithy and memorable parts of sources. • Overusing quotations can result in patchwork writing, a jumble of miscellaneous information from various sources that is merely pieced together. Quotations should fit logically into your text.

10. Using Quotes • Put the quote in quotation marks and introduce it directly into YOUR OWN SENTENCE SO THAT IT FITS INTO YOUR SENTENCE GRAMMATICALLY. NO quote should ever sit outside of your own sentence; ALL quotes should be included in the sentence you are writing.

11. Using Quotes • MLK, in a reminder to his critics about the dangers of racism, creates a metaphor about the “dark clouds of racial prejudice” and the coming light that the civil rights movement will bring when “tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

12. Using Quotes • Your quotation must combine with its introduction to make a grammatically correct sentence. • MLK says, “While confined here in the Birmingham city jail.” WRONG • MLK does not avoid the stigma that he is “confined here in the Birmingham city jail.” RIGHT

13. Pronouns Must be in Agreement • MLK says he is “here in Birmingham” and “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” WRONG • MLK answers by noting that he is “here in Birmingham” because he serves as “president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” RIGHT

14. Nouns and Verbs Must Agree • MLK says that he “have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” WRONG • MLK defends his presence in Birmingham because he has served as “president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” RIGHT

15. Using Quotes in Context • The most important thing you have to learn is how to use quotes in the context of YOUR written analysis. Quotes should not be tossed into a paragraph to replace your own insightful writing. • Your introduction to the quote (we will call them dialogue tags) must supply enough context to make the quotation meaningful.

16. Provide a context for each quotation • Do not rely on quotations to tell your story for you. It is your responsibility to provide your reader with a context for the quotation. The context, the dialogue tag, should set the basic scene for when, possibly where, and under what circumstances the quotation was spoken or written. So, in providing a context for our above example, you might write:

17. Provide a context for each quotation • When MLK wrote about the urgency of the goals of the civil rights movement, he metaphorically described the southern blacks’ hopes as “blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon [them].”

18. Use key words • Use key words from the quotation and make them a grammatical part of your sentence. • As MLK argued the “shadow of deep disappointment” was a dangerous indication of the southern black community’s lack of hope for a better tomorrow.

19. NEVER Use These Introductions • MLK said, “our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.” • OF COURSE HE SAID IT: IF HE HADN’T YOU COULDN’T QUOTE IT! • MLK quoted, “our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.” • NO HE DIDN’T: YOU CAN’T QUOTE YOURSELF!

20. Provide a context for each quotation. • Once you've carefully selected the quotations that you want to use, your next job is to weave those quotations into your text. The words that precede and follow a quotation are just as important as the quotation itself.

21. Provide a context for each quotation. • There are many ways to attribute quotes besides the common "he/she said" construction. Here are a few alternative verbs: • add remark exclaim • announce reply state • comment respond estimate • write retort predict • argue question propose • declare criticize proclaim • note complain observe

22. Explain the significance of the quotation • Once you've inserted your quotation, along with its context and attribution, don't stop! Your reader still needs your assessment of why the quotation holds significance for your paper. In other words, show cause and effect by drawing conclusions: hey, you are creating analysis!! • . . . “our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.” Because of the dismal state of his southern peers, the flock he had been asked to lead, MLK illustrated why they could no longer wait, even if it meant he had to go to jail.

23. Altering Quotes • Whenever you need to change the quotes so that it fits grammatically into your own sentence (which should be in third person), use brackets to note the word(s) you have changed. If you find that you have used so many brackets that the quote is no longer succinct, paraphrase it instead.

24. “I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in.“ ORIGINAL QUOTE • Answering his critics, MLK argued that [he] [thought] [he] should indicate why [he] [was] [t]here in Birmingham, since [they] have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in.“ • Answering his critics, MLK argues he needed to explain to them that he was not an agitator, or one of the “outsiders.” PARAPHRASE

25. When do I use those three dots ( . . . )? • Whenever you want to leave out material from within a quotation, you need to use an ellipsis, which is a series of three periods, each of which should be preceded and followed by a space. So, an ellipsis in this sentence would look like . . . this. There are a few rules to follow when using ellipses:

26. Use of ellipsis • 1. Be sure that you don't fundamentally change the meaning of the quotation by omitting material. • 2. Do not use ellipses at the beginning or ending of quotations. • . . .the Writing Center is located on the UNC campus . . .” WRONG • 3. Use punctuation marks in combination with ellipses when removing material from the end of sentences or clauses. • [T]he Writing Center is located on the UNC campus.” RIGHT

27. Keep periods and commas within quotation marks • Periods and commas ALWAYS go inside of the quotation marks. • According to MLK, Lincoln "feared the spread of slavery," but many of his aides advised him to "watch and wait.”

28. Other punctuation • Place all other punctuation marks (colons, semicolons, exclamation marks, question marks) outside the quotation marks, except when they were part of the original quotation • African-Americans celebrated that the U. S. civil rights movement "finally ended around 1980"! • MLK repeated, “I have a dream!"

29. Titles of Essays • Create a meaningful title. • Do NOT use the title of work you are writing about. • Do not use a title that announces the project, i.e. Rhetorical Analysis of Letter from Birmingham Jail. • Titles make your essay more sophisticated if they ADD to your analysis, i.e. Why We Can’t Wait! • Do not underline your title or put it in quotes or extra big font. • If your title includes a real title then put the real title in italics, ____, or “ .”

30. Titles • Put quotes around works that are part of a bigger work. • Underline works that are published by themselves. • Better yet, type ALL titles (except your own) in italics. If you print, write the titles in cursive; if you write in cursive, then print titles.

31. Picky Style Hints • Use MLA style with an MLA heading: your name, teacher name, class name (with period#), date—in the upper left corner. • Check formatting. • Don’t use “ “ if it isn’t a quote. • Use the author’s full name the first time then the last name thereafter (or something simple, i.e. MLK.) • Foreign words go in italics • Spell out numbers, at least one through ten.

32. What to Do? • Novels are an art form: form=function. • It’s your job to discover this pattern. • The primary purpose is not to entertain your personal taste. That topic should never appear in your discussion. If you write about yourself you are off topic. • Write only about the text.

33. Avoid First-Person • Do not unnecessarily intrude yourself into your critical analysis. • It seems to me that MLK captures the horror of racism when he discusses little children . . . . POOR • MLK captures the horror of racism by describing a little girl . . . . OK • The image of a little girl’s chidhood dreams being crushed by racism . . . . BETTER

34. Write About the Text Only! • When you conduct textual analysis, you should be sure that the thesis or topic of a paragraph focuses on rhetorical analysis and the purpose of the text as a whole. • Avoid, therefore, writing about yourself, a supposed reader, or the author. Remember, authors use a persona—narrative voices they assume to tell the story. This point is, obviously, less true of non-fiction, especially autobiography.

35. Write About the Text • MLK uses personification when he refers racism as a “pack of madmen.” POOR • The phrase “pack of madmen” describing the danger of racism personifies the anger inherent in its bestial nature. GOOD • In fact, as hard as it is to do when analyzing non-fiction, try to avoid the verb uses since your focus is not on an author using a rhetorical device but on the result of that use, not on an author selecting a device to achieve a purpose but on the result of that selection. The easiest way to rid your essay of use and uses or the idea of using is simply to delete them. In this way, you will stop choosing as a thesis that an author uses rhetorical devices to make his/her work more interesting or to move the audience more thoroughly or to make his point more clearly.

36. Write About the Text • In this way, you will stop choosing as a thesis that an author uses rhetorical devices to make his/her work more interesting or to move the audience more thoroughly or to make his point more clearly. Instead, you will have to make a thesis that comments on the purpose of the text as a whole: why we can’t wait!

37. What to Do? • Do not discuss the hypothetical “reader” • Don’t discuss the author or the fact that the author wrote the novel or did something else to it. Write about the text. • Do not write about problems you may have encountered in reading a work: you don’t really want to comment about your own lack of reading ability. • Conduct a literary analysis using literary terms and ideas; provide proof not empty content.

38. More Picky Stuff That Drives Me Crazy! • “This” is meaningless; never use it without a noun. • Always write about literature in the present tense since it is always occurring as it is read. • Do not use “very” in your essays in this class. • Learn how to punctuate phrases and clauses. • There is a difference between linking two independent clause with a connecting word and joining items in a series. • Learn what an appositive (and a restrictive element) is and how to punctuate it/them.

39. Stuff to Avoid • Learn what a comma splice, a run on sentence and a fragment are, then avoid them. • Stop using grandiose clichés and empty praise: “has existed for centuries,” “this world class author.” • Avoid fancy diction: eschew supiflage • Learn where commas go in relation to quotation marks.

40. Proofread! • When you discuss the Bible in a sentence, that’s how you write it: the Bible, with a capital B, not italicized. • When you use biblical, the b is not capitalized. • You really should know which nouns (proper nouns) are capitalized, so proofread your essay for mistakes and typos. • A proper noun is one, specific thing, something that has a name. Is civil rights movement a proper noun? Is the South a proper noun?

41. Editing Marks • descrip or desc=description • awk=awkward • ¶=paragraph • PR or pr=proof read • WC or wc=word choice • II=create parallel construction • VT or vt=shift in verb tense • VA or va=check verb agreement • “ “’s=quote(s) or quotation marks

42. Editing Marks • LI=lead in sentenceconcl or con=conclusion • BG=background info. in your intro. • TH=thesis • ^=insert • ℓ or ∂=delete • I=not a new paragraph, move over • pt=point • observ or obs=observation • char=character

43. Editing Marks • POV=point of view • sum=summary • ▲= therefore • C&E=cause and effect • =create a transition, often to show cause and effect • =don’t ever do this again! • MART=make a real title • con or concl=conclusion