Fat cats and falsehoods
They say that honesty is the best policy, and if I were to follow that right now, this would be the shortest blog I have ever posted. The reason being because I have no idea what the weirdest or most off the wall thing is that I have been taught about citations and all that jazz. I’m sure that there is a plethora of falsehoods I have been taught throughout my life, but none of them seem odd. In fact, I don’t remember ever formally being taught MLA, or any other type of citing for that matter. Most of my teachers had their own way they wanted it cited. It probably would have been nice to learn the ins and outs of citing when I was a lad.
Most of the stuff that I seemed ill-informed on was just punctuation and that whole scene. See what I mean, this is a boring blog, so I am now going to make up a bunch of wrong things that I wish I had been taught about citations in order to spice up this blog and make it come alive.
I wish that I was taught that you always put the book name before the author. That would be neat. Of course, I’ve seen that on many a paper here in the writing center. It’s not that weird, but it would be something fun to look back on and realize that my teacher was wrong.
The next falsehood that I wish I had been taught about citing would be that you never punctuate
on the works cited page. If everything were just one large conglomerate of words with no differentiation between them, I would be a happy camper. I can just imagine what my first paper in college would be like. Red pen marks all over the page like the paper was bleeding! Oh, if only my dreams were a reality!
I also wish that teachers never said a thing about plagiarism. If that was the case then citing would be unnecessary and ridiculous. I can imagine the fury on a professor’s face when a paper was turned in full of neat quotes and intriguing information, yet no citations, no works cited no nothing. Boy would I have been in for it!
Of course, I say all these like I wish that they had really happened. In reality, I’m glad they never did. I would have hated getting terrible grades on my papers because I didn’t know how to cite. I was lucky in the sense that I was never taught anything that was too far off the beaten path (of course I don’t recall ever being taught much about the beaten path anyway). Luckily, I learned just enough to get me through my courses up until this point where I now know the truth about citations and most of the crazy rules that those fat cats in Washington, or wherever they are, have decided are necessary for the advancement of writing and pertinent for every student’s livelihood and well-being.
Most of the stuff that I seemed ill-informed on was just punctuation and that whole scene. See what I mean, this is a boring blog, so I am now going to make up a bunch of wrong things that I wish I had been taught about citations in order to spice up this blog and make it come alive.
I wish that I was taught that you always put the book name before the author. That would be neat. Of course, I’ve seen that on many a paper here in the writing center. It’s not that weird, but it would be something fun to look back on and realize that my teacher was wrong.
The next falsehood that I wish I had been taught about citing would be that you never punctuate
on the works cited page. If everything were just one large conglomerate of words with no differentiation between them, I would be a happy camper. I can just imagine what my first paper in college would be like. Red pen marks all over the page like the paper was bleeding! Oh, if only my dreams were a reality!
I also wish that teachers never said a thing about plagiarism. If that was the case then citing would be unnecessary and ridiculous. I can imagine the fury on a professor’s face when a paper was turned in full of neat quotes and intriguing information, yet no citations, no works cited no nothing. Boy would I have been in for it!
Of course, I say all these like I wish that they had really happened. In reality, I’m glad they never did. I would have hated getting terrible grades on my papers because I didn’t know how to cite. I was lucky in the sense that I was never taught anything that was too far off the beaten path (of course I don’t recall ever being taught much about the beaten path anyway). Luckily, I learned just enough to get me through my courses up until this point where I now know the truth about citations and most of the crazy rules that those fat cats in Washington, or wherever they are, have decided are necessary for the advancement of writing and pertinent for every student’s livelihood and well-being.
posted by Derek Stout at 3:51 PM
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