EVOLUTE99's Common Place

Transitions are words and phrases that help explain relationships between sentences; they help make a paragraph coherent. While transitions can help clarify the relationships between ideas, they cannot create those relationships. In other words, the logic of the paragraph must already exist in order for transitions to do their job. There are different ways of making an effective transition: 1) Place a strong sentence at the end of the preceding paragraph. The last sentence of some paragraphs in a critical essay or paper may act as a mini-conclusion to the paragraph. It may wrap up the thought or tie the information presented to your thesis. It may also act as a bridge to your next paragraph. Consider this example, from a paper in which a writer compares Americans' reactions to traveling to other parts of the country: Many Westerners don't like rivers in the East. They are alarmed by the muddy water, the overhanging trees, and the snakes. Some Easterners aren't to...

General Principles When integrating direct quotations into a paper it is important to move smoothly from the source information to your own thoughts. If quotations are simply dropped into a paper without significant warning, a reader may become confused as to the appropriateness and relevance of that particular quotation. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce the quotation, usually with its author's name or the source from which it came, to give the reader adequate notice of the relevance and importance of the quotation. Here's a passage from an essay written to analyze five of Stephen Crane's short stories in relation to a uniting theme. The quotation lacks adequate introduction: The men in Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat," are courageous; they want to live. "The idealistic virtues of bravery, fortitude, and integrity possess no meaning in a universe that denies the importance of man" (Stein 151). The ideals of their native envi...

As we reach the end of the semester that means final papers and all the luggage that we must drag along with it. A annotated bibliography are one of the tools your professor will probably assign you before you begin drafting. This is a very important tool but also a very time consuming project. Depending upon how long your assigned paper is depends on how many annotations you will do. but before we get to all the good stuff on how to write and annotated bib, we must first learn how to read scholarly articles and take notes so we can compose a proper annotation. I found a couple of outlets that may be helpful in completing the process. From the  pasadena.edu website. How to Read and Take Notes on a Scholarly Journal Article How to Understand the Author The first thing you need to do in order to read and summarize a scholarly journal article is understand the author.  To understand the author, keep in mind the following: Authors of journal articles always ha...