Using sources is important, in professional and academic settings. They help prove your point or show a counterpoint. They can give you credibility, help show where your information came from, or say things more clearly than you could. But, there are instances where the way you use a source is annoying or confusing.
Everyone is guilty of using sources incorrectly or in a spectacularly clunky way. I’m sure that I did it in high school. I know that I’ve done it in college (in this class even)! So, as I look back, I can identify a few of these mistakes and attempt to correct them.
In Kyle D. Stedman’s essay “Annoying Ways People Use Sources,” he describes several ways that quotes and sources can be annoying to readers. He refers to one of these annoying ways as, “Dating Spider-Man: starting or ending a paragraph with a quotation” (246). Starting and/or ending a paragraph can lead to a confused reader. It’s like dating a superhero(ine) [Spider-Man in this case], and as soon as the hero(ine) starts a conversation, they hear trouble and zoom off. This leaves you confused and wondering what was going to be said next. I did something similar in a rough draft, just last month. This is how I started an entire post.
“Filters have become an important part of popular visual culture. Instagram was one of the first site to really popularize filters, and now they are everywhere, allowing us to make our selfies and other photos look brighter, more muted, more grungy, or more retro than real life.” (Rettberg 21). The term filter can have several connotations. One of the fastest growing uses for the term is referring to the altering of pictures, as described by Jill Walker Rettberg in the previous quote. Filters can, however, be an unconscious decision or influence in many aspects of our lives.
Stedman also provides strategies for making these mistakes less annoying. In the case of dating a superhero(ine) Stedman explains, “The Fix is the same: in the majority of situations, readers appreciate being guided to and led away from a quotation by the writer doing the quoting. Readers get a sense of pleasure from the safe flow of hearing how to read an upcoming quotation, reading it, and then being told one way to interpret it.” (247). As you can see from the rest of my introduction paragraph above, I did attempt to analyze and guide the reader away from the quote. However, it was clunky and didn’t tie into the rest of the post very well.
In class, we have discussed the “cookie method” of incorporating quotes. The basic premise is that you introduce the quote, state the quote, and then analyze the quote. Simply using this method, should help to alleviate a lot of confusion and make your work less annoying.
So remember, Prepare, Quote, Analyze. (And eat cookies!)
Cranial Notations 