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PART I


Composing:
An Overview
This text serves a dual purpose: to enable you to enjoy, under-
stand, and learn from imaginative literature; and to help you
to write clearly, intelligently, and correctly about what you
have learned. It is designed to guide you through the interre-
lated processes of analytical reading and critical writing. The
book combines an anthology of short stories, poems, and plays
along with instruction in interpreting and writing about liter-
ature. It also includes a concise handbook to help you in cor-
recting errors, plus a handy glossary of literary and rhetorical
terms. Throughout we supply inventive topics for responsive,
critical, and researched writing.
We begin our rhetorical instruction at the beginning with
the prewriting process—the thinking that goes on as you sort
out and focus on what you want to say. Then we offer advice to
get you through a first draft. Next comes help with the crucial
task of revising, followed by tips to improve your editing and
proofreading. Finally, you will learn how to use secondary
sources—library and Internet materials—to enhance your
thinking and writing about literature. As you study these first
four chapters, you will be guided with geniality and encour-
agement through the writing process to the completion of a
finished paper you can be proud of.
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1
The Prewriting Process

Y
our study of writing, as we approach it in this book, will focus on
the composing process: prewriting, writing, rewriting, and edit-
ing. The first part of the text takes you through each stage,
explaining one way of putting together a paper on James Joyce’s
“Eveline.” The following parts, which include more short stories, plus
poems and plays, offer further advice for understanding and writing
about these various kinds of literature.
We realize, of course, that our chronological, linear (step-by-step)
explanations of the writing process are not entirely true to experience;
most of us juggle at least two of the steps at a time when we write. We
put down half a sentence, go back and revise it, make notes of some
details to include later in the essay, and then finish the sentence, perhaps

crossing out and correcting a misspelled word—a combination of
prewriting, writing, rewriting, and editing. We have adopted the linear,
step-by-step presentation because it allows us to explain this complicated
process.

Reading for Writing

To prepare for your study of the stages of writing an essay about a lit-
erary topic, find a comfortable spot and read the following short story.

James Joyce 1882–1941

James Joyce rejected his Irish Catholic heritage and left his homeland at age twenty.
Though an expatriate most of his adult life, Joyce wrote almost exclusively about his
native Dublin. His first book, Dubliners (1914), was a series of sharply drawn vignettes
based on his experiences in Ireland, the homeland he later described as “a sow that eats


its own farrow.” His novel Ulysses (1933) was banned for a time in the United States
because of its coarse language and frank treatment of sexuality; it is now often ranked as
the greatest novel of the twentieth century.

3
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4 JAMES JOYCE Eveline

Eveline
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was
leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty
cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home;
she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards
crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used
to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people’s
children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not
like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The
children of the avenue used to play together in that field—the Devines, the
Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to
hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh
used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed
to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her
mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters
were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the
Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to
go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which
she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the
dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from
which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years
she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph
hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the
promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school
friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father
used to pass it with a casual word:
“He is in Melbourne now.”
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried 5
to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and
food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she
had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her
in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she
was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss
Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever
there were people listening.
“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”
“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that.
Then she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect
then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she
was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence.
She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were grow-
ing up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest,
because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he
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CHAPTER 1 The Prewriting Process 5

Photo of a street in Dublin that conveys a sense of the neighborhood

where Eveline grew up. (Courtesy of Benjamin D. Smith)

would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to
protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating busi-
ness, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable
squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably.
She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry always sent up
what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she
used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give
her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he
was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money
and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to
rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather
purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and return-
ing home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house
together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge
went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work—
a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly
undesirable life.
She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, 10
open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and
to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well
she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the
main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at
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6 JAMES JOYCE Eveline

the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward
over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet
her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The
Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre
with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they
were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt
pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been
an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had
tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a
ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he
had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the
Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fall-
en on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just
for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her
to have anything to say to him.
“I know these sailor chaps,” he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her
lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew
indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her
favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she
noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before,
when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made
toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all
gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on
her mother’s bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her
head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down
far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air. Strange
that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother,
her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered
the last night of her mother’s illness; she was again in the close dark room at the
other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-
player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her
father strutting back into the sickroom saying:
“Damned Italians! coming over here!” 15
As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very
quick of her being—that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness.
She trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice saying constantly with fool-
ish insistence:
“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!”1
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank
would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live.
Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take
her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He
held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about

1“The end of pleasure is pain!”

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CHAPTER 1 The Prewriting Process 7

the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown bag-
gages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black
mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She
answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of dis-
tress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat
blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be
on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. This passage had been
booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress
awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: 20
“Come!”
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into
them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
“Come!”
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid
the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
“Eveline! Evvy!” 25
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at
to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a
helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
(1914)
Now that your reading of Joyce’s story has given you material to mull
over, you should consider some questions that good writers think about
as they prepare to write. Granted, experienced writers might go over
some of these prewriting matters almost unconsciously—and perhaps as
they write instead of before. But in order to explain how to get the
process going for you, we will present these considerations one by one.

Who Are My Readers?

Unless you are writing a journal or a diary for your own satisfaction,
your writing always has an audience—the person or group of people who
will read it. You need to keep this audience in mind as you plan what to
say and as you choose the best way to express your ideas.

Analyze the Audience

No doubt you already have considerable audience awareness. You
would never write a job application letter using the latest in-group slang,
nor would you normally correspond with your dear Aunt Minnie in
impersonal formal English. Writing for diverse groups about whom you
know little is more difficult than writing for a specific audience whom
you know well. In this class, for instance, you will be writing for your fel-
low students and for your instructor, a mixed group often thrown togeth-
er by a computer. Although they are diverse, they do share some charac-
teristics. For one thing, when you begin to write a paper about “Eveline,”
you know that your audience has read the story; thus, you need not
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8 PART I Composing: An Overview

summarize the plot. Also, the people in your audience are college-
educated (or becoming so); therefore, you need not avoid difficult words
like epitome, eclectic, or protean if they are the appropriate choices. Other
shared qualities will become apparent as you get to know your classmates
and your instructor.

Prewriting Exercise
Compose a brief letter persuading Eveline that she should (or should
not) leave Frank. Your argumentative tactics, your attitude, and even
your word choice must be affected by what you know about Eveline from
reading the story—her essential timidity, her insecurity, her self-doubt,
her capacity for self-deception.
Then, write briefly to her bullying father explaining to him why his
dutiful daughter has deserted him.
Finally, write Frank a short letter explaining why Eveline will not be
going away with him.
Be prepared to discuss with the class specific ways in which your letters
are different when you change your audience.

Why Am I Writing?
Every kind of writing, even a grocery list, has a purpose. You seldom
sit down to write without some aim in mind, and this purpose affects
your whole approach to writing. The immediate response to the question
“Why am I writing?” may be that your teacher or your employer asked
you to. But that answer will not help you understand the reasons that
make writing worth doing—and worth reading.

Reasons for Writing

Sometimes you may write in order to express your own feelings, as in a
diary or a love letter. More frequently, though, you will be writing for sev-
eral other people, and the response you want from these prospective read-
ers will determine your purpose. If, for instance, you want your audience to
be amused by your writing (as in an informal essay or friendly letter), your
purpose is to entertain. If you want your readers to gain some knowledge
from your writing (say, how to get to your house from the airport), then you
are writing to inform. If you want your readers to agree with an opinion or
to accept an idea (as in a letter to the editor or an advertisement), then you
are writing to persuade. Of course, these aims overlap—as do most things in
the writing process—but usually one purpose predominates.
Most of your writing in this course, as in real life, will attempt to per-
suade in one way or another. Your purpose is often to convince your
reader to agree with the points you are making. Logical ideas set down
in clear, interesting writing should prove convincing and keep your read-
ers reading.
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CHAPTER 1 The Prewriting Process 9

Prewriting Exercise
In writing the three letters to various characters, you have already
noticed how audience and purpose can change the way you think and
write about “Eveline.” After studying the four writing suggestions that
follow, reread the story. You may discover that you have more ideas and
feelings about it than you first imagined. Thinking about prospective
readers and determining your purpose will help you to understand your
own views and reactions better.

1. If your purpose is to express your personal response:

Write down your feelings about Eveline in a journal entry or in a brief
note to a close friend. Do you sympathize with Eveline? Pity her?
Does she irritate you or make you angry? Be as forthright as you can.
2. If your purpose is to inform someone else:
Write a brief summary (less than one hundred words) of “Eveline” for
a fellow student who wants to know if the story is worth reading.
Write a slightly longer summary for your instructor (or someone else
who has read the story) who wants to know if you have grasped its
important points.
Which summary was easier to write? What purposes besides provid-
ing information were involved in each summary?
3. If your purpose is to entertain yourself or your readers:
How would you rewrite the ending of “Eveline” to make it more pos-
itive or romantic—to make it appeal to a wider audience? Would such
an ending be consistent with the earlier parts of the story? Would it
be true to human experience?
4. If your purpose is to persuade your readers:
The author tells us that Eveline held two letters in her lap, but we do
not know their contents. Write your version of one of them. Try to
construe from evidence in the story what Eveline would have said to
convince her father or her brother that she had good reasons for going
away with Frank. How would she persuade them to forgive her?
Consider also what other purposes Eveline would try to achieve in
each of these letters.

What Ideas Should I Use?

Understanding literature involves learning what questions to ask
yourself as you read. To deepen your comprehension and develop ideas
for writing, you need to examine the work carefully and think critically
about its component parts.

Reading and Thinking Critically

Critical reading and thinking involves several overlapping procedures:
analysis, inference, synthesis, and evaluation. The word critical does not
mean “disapproving” or “faultfinding” in this context; it means thorough,
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10 PART I Composing: An Overview

thoughtful, inquisitive, and discerning. As a critical reader you want to

discover meanings and relationships that you might otherwise miss in
uncritical, superficial reading.

● Analysis involves examining the parts or elements of a work, the better to

understand it.
● Inference entails drawing conclusions about a work based on your analy-
sis. When you infer, you explore the implications of various elements
(such as plot, characterization, structure, tone) and interpret their
meaning.
● Synthesis is the process of putting your analysis and inferences together
into a new, more informed understanding of the work. You create this
new understanding by making connections, identifying patterns, and
drawing conclusions.
● Evaluation means defending the judgments you have made about a
work’s meaning and significance.

Chapters 5, 11, and 15—“How Do I Read Short Fiction?” “How Do I

Read Poetry?” and “How Do I Read a Play?”—provide specific sug-
gestions and questions to guide you in analyzing, making inferences,
synthesizing, and evaluating literary works. Here are some sugges-
tions and questions from those chapters, along with their critical reading
basis.

Example of Questions Inviting Analysis

What is the central conflict of the play? Does the play contain any sec-
ondary conflicts (subplots)? How do they relate to the main conflict?
Example of Questions That Require Inferences
Who is the main character? Does this person’s character change during
the course of the story? Do you feel sympathetic toward the main charac-
ter? What sort of person is she or he?
Example of Questions Involving Synthesis
What is the theme (the central idea) of this poem? Can you state it in a
single sentence?
Example of a Suggestion for Evaluation
Is the play a tragedy, a comedy, or a mixture? Is this classification
important?

Discovering and Developing Ideas

You read critically to derive meaning from a work, and you continue
to think critically as you go about discovering ideas to write about. This
latter process, called invention, is more effective if you employ one of the
following techniques designed to help you analyze literary works and
generate ideas about them.
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Self-Questioning
These are the kinds of questions you might ask yourself when study-
ing a work of literature: questions about characters, their circumstances,
their motives and conflicts, their fears and expectations, their relations
with other characters; questions about the setting in which the story
takes place; questions about any repeated details that seem significant;
questions about the meaning and value of actions and events. Write out
your responses to these questions about “Eveline” and keep them handy
as you formulate your essay.

1. What is Eveline’s home life like?

2. How does she expect her new life to be different?
3. Do you think this expectation is realistic?
4. Why is the word dust mentioned so often?
5. List all the concrete details you can find that describe Eveline’s home.
6. How old is Eveline? Is her age important for any reason?
7. What sort of person is her father? What kind of “bad way” is he in on
Saturday nights?
8. How does Eveline feel about her father?
9. What sort of person was Eveline’s mother? What happened to her?
Does Eveline identify with her mother in any way?
10. How does Eveline feel about her dead mother?
11. What do you think her mother meant when she kept repeating “the
end of pleasure is pain”? Why would she say this? Was she really
crazy—or only worn down?
12. What does Eveline’s father mean when he tells her, “I know these
sailor chaps”? What possible reasons could he have for trying to break
up Eveline’s romance?
13. What sort of person is Frank? What does Eveline actually know about
him?
14. Has Eveline romanticized Frank in any way? Is her father’s objection
to him perhaps justified?
15. What is Eveline’s duty to her father? What promise did she make to
her dying mother?
16. What is her duty to herself? Does she really believe she has a “right to
happiness”? Why or why not?
17. How does Eveline feel about leaving her brother?
18. In what ways is Eveline “like a helpless animal”? What is she afraid of ?
19. Why do you think her eyes give Frank “no sign of love or farewell or
recognition”?
20. Do you think Eveline made the right decision? Why or why not?

During the invention stage, you want to turn up as many ideas as possi-
ble. Later, after choosing a focus for your paper, such as characterization
or theme, you will select those story details that you will be discussing
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12 PART I Composing: An Overview

when developing your ideas. Even though you narrow your focus, you still
need to consider other elements of the story—imagery, symbolism, set-
ting, point of view—as these elements serve to reveal character or theme.

Directed Freewriting
Many people find that they can best bring ideas to the surface by writ-
ing freely, with no restrictions about correctness. When you engage in
freewriting in order to “free” ideas from your subconscious mind, you
should think of a pertinent question and just start writing.
Consider this question: “Why does Eveline stay with her abusive
father?” As you think, start writing. Set down everything that comes to
mind; do not concern yourself with spelling, word choice, or punctua-
tion. You are writing for your own benefit, attempting to discover every-
thing about Eveline’s decision that you have in mind after reading and
thinking about the story.
After writing for ten minutes (or after you run out of ideas), stop and
read over what you have said. Underline any idea that might serve as the
focus for a paper. Put stars or asterisks in the margin beside any ideas that
sound useful as support for your interpretation. Figure 1-1 provides an
example of freewriting turned out by a student on this same question.
If you find freewriting a good method for generating ideas, you may
want to go through the process again. This time write down a statement
that you underlined in your first freewriting as a possible approach for
your paper. Let’s say you decide to focus (as our student did) on the idea
that Eveline’s sense of insecurity causes her to remain with her father.
Put that sentence at the top of a fresh sheet of paper and begin writing.
Continue recording your thoughts until you either run out of ideas or
run out of time (fifteen minutes is usually enough). Then read over your
freewriting, underlining or putting stars by any ideas that you think
would be good support to include in your paper.

Problem Solving
Another method of generating material for a paper involves problem
solving. Consider some part of the work that you feel you need to under-
stand better and pose yourself a problem, like the following:

Explain the ending of the story so that it is understandable and believable.

As you seek a solution, ask yourself more questions.

● Why does Eveline refuse to leave her pinched, narrow life with her
father and the younger children?
● Is there anything about the way she was brought up that makes this
action seem reasonable, perhaps inevitable?
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CHAPTER 1 The Prewriting Process 13

Figure 1-1 Directed Freewriting

● Would her life have been different if she had been born male instead of
female? What happened to her brothers, for instance?
● Does her religion have any bearing on her decision?
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14 PART I Composing: An Overview

Write down all the reasons you can find to help explain why Eveline does
not leave home. Do any of these reasons shed light on the overall mean-
ing of the story? Do you now perhaps see a meaningful point you could
develop into an essay?

Clustering
Another useful way of getting ideas out of your head and down on
paper involves clustering. Begin with a blank sheet of paper. In the center,
write a crucial question about the story that you want to investigate, and
circle the words. Then, draw a line out from that circle, write an idea or
a question related to the central idea, and circle that. Spiraling out from
that circle, add and circle any further associations that you can make.
Continue drawing lines from the center, like spokes radiating from a
wheel, and record any other ideas or questions that are related. When
you finish, you will have a cluster of related ideas resembling Figure 1-2,
which explores the question “Why does Eveline decide to stay with her
father?”
Clustering works just fine with statements, as well as with questions.
If you think you might want to write a paper focusing on the character-
ization of Eveline, you could just write her name in the center of the page
and begin recording all that you know about her. Your first ring of cir-
cles might include father, mother, siblings, house, church, job, Frank,
lifestyle, personality—and spiral out from there.
You can see that this technique works well for exploring any aspect of
a work. As you progress through this course, you may decide to write in
the middle of the page point of view, setting, imagery, or whatever element
you think might serve as a meaningful focus for your paper.

What Point Should I Make?

Besides providing a thorough understanding of the story, these
prewriting activities serve to stir up ideas for a thesis—the controlling
idea for your paper—and to help you discover evidence to support con-
vincingly the observations you will make in developing that thesis.

Relate a Part to the Whole

One bit of advice that will help you write meaningful literary papers is
the following:

Devise a thesis that makes its point by relating some aspect of the work to
the meaning of the whole—that is, to its theme.

Our questions so far have led you to approach Joyce’s story by ana-
lyzing character and plot. But writing a simple character sketch (in
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CHAPTER 1 The Prewriting Process 15

Figure 1-2 Clustering

which you discuss what sort of person Eveline is) would not pro-
duce a satisfactory critical paper. You need to go beyond that one-
dimensional approach and make your essay say something about the
story itself. In short, you must relate your analysis of her character to
the theme.
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16 PART I Composing: An Overview

How Do I Find the Theme?

You may have learned that the theme of a work is the moral. In a sense
that is true, but a moral suggests a neatly stated, preachy comment on
some vice or virtue, whereas a literary theme will seldom be so pat and
should never sound preachy. In order to discover theme you need to
decide what you have learned from reading the story. What did the
author reveal about the behavior of human beings, about the conduct of
society? Rather than looking for a moral, look for some insight into the
human condition.
Sometimes you may have a theme in mind but be unable to express it
except in a cliché. You could, for instance, see the theme of “Eveline” as
an acceptance of the old adage “Better the devil you know than the devil
you don’t.” Although this idea is acceptable as a theme, a clearer state-
ment would relate the concept more closely to the story, as follows:

In “Eveline,” Joyce focuses on the painful choices a young woman faces

concerning her desire for a better life, her duty to her family, and her fear
of leaving home.

Certainly her character—the kind of person she is—relates directly to

this theme. If, for instance, Eveline had been a willful, disobedient child
who grew up into a rebellious, irresponsible young woman, the outcome
of the story would surely be different.
The problem is thus to find a thesis that will allow you to explain how
Eveline’s upbringing has conditioned her for the inevitable failure of
nerve, the return to servitude and security, the relinquishing of hopes and
dreams.

Stating the Thesis

A good thesis statement should be a complete sentence that clearly con-
veys the point you plan to make in your paper. Notice the difference
between a topic, which is not a complete sentence, and a thesis, which is.

Topic A characterization of Eveline

Thesis Joyce’s characterization of Eveline as a dutiful daughter enables us
to discover why she makes her strange decision at the end.
Topic The role of the church in “Eveline”
Thesis The role of the Catholic church is crucial in shaping Eveline’s
personality and in helping us understand why she sacrifices her-
self for her family.
Topic Dust as a symbol in “Eveline”
Thesis Joyce’s use of dust as a controlling symbol in “Eveline” reinforces
our understanding of this young woman’s dreary, suffocating,
arid life.
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CHAPTER 1 The Prewriting Process 17

Your thesis sentence should be broad enough to include all the ideas
that are necessary as evidence but narrow enough to make a precise state-
ment of your main point and focus your thoughts. If your thesis is too
broad—as, for example, “Joyce’s characterization of Eveline is extremely
well drawn”—you may end up skimming the surface, never providing a
meaningful interpretation of the work. Notice that the previous overly
broad thesis is unsatisfactory for another reason: it fails to make a real
point.
A better thesis for a paper on “Eveline” might be stated in any of the
following ways:

Eveline’s Catholic upbringing as a dutiful daughter makes impossible

her hopes for a happier life.
If Eveline had been born male instead of female, she might have
escaped her unhappy home life, as her brother did.
Eveline, “trapped like a helpless animal” by her deathbed promise to
her mother, is morally unable to break her vow and flee her miserable
home to seek a new life for herself.
Having been thoroughly beaten down by her brutal, domineering
father, Eveline lacks the self-confidence to flee in search of her own life.

Most of the ideas and details you need to support any of these thesis
statements will appear in the freewriting or clustering that you have
already completed. In the next chapter, we will suggest some ways in
which you might arrange this material in the paper itself.
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4
Researched Writing

A
t some point you may be asked to write a literary paper that
doesn’t draw entirely on your own understanding and judgments.
In other words, you will have to do some research. When writing
a researched paper about literature, you begin, as always, with a primary

source—the story, poem, or play the paper is about—but you expand the
range of your coverage to include secondary sources—critical, biograph-
ical, historical, and cultural documents that support your interpretation
of the primary work (or works).

Using Library Sources in Your Writing

Most student writers consult secondary sources to help them explain,
develop, and strengthen their ideas and opinions. That’s what Wendy
Dennison did with her essay “Fear of Failure in Joyce’s ‘Eveline’”
(see pages 51–54 in the previous chapter). Although Wendy had worked
out her own arguments for why Eveline did not go away with Frank, she
and her instructor thought it would be enlightening to see what other
readers thought. So Wendy went to the library to find material by critics
who had published their interpretations of “Eveline,” especially about the
ending of the story. After reading and taking notes from a number of books
and articles, Wendy revised her paper by incorporating comments from
several critics into her discussion. The revised, documented version of her
essay appears on pages 73–79.
Although not everyone produces a finished paper before doing research,
some writers do prepare a first draft before looking at secondary sources.
Others consult secondary materials to help them decide on a topic.
Another common strategy is to use the ideas of others as a platform for an
interpretation, first summarizing several views and then presenting a dif-
ferent interpretation, a synthesizing conclusion, or an analysis of their con-
flicting points of view.

55
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56 PART I Composing: An Overview

Secondary sources can help you in a number of different ways to

develop an essay about literature:

● Analyzing the features of a single work. Why does E. E. Cummings disre-

gard traditional form and punctuation in his poetry? How does the chorus
function in Antigone?
● Exploring connections between a work and the author’s life. How does the
consumption of alcohol in “What We Talk About When We Talk About
Love” relate to Raymond Carver’s personal struggles with alcoholism?
How autobiographical is Anne Sexton’s “You All Know the Story of the
Other Woman”?
● Assessing the impact of social, historical, or cultural backgrounds on a work. How
do attitudes toward homosexuality in China affect your understanding of
“The Bridegroom” by Ha Jin? What is the role of the blues tradition in
Fences by August Wilson? How do psychological theories of family sys-
tems illuminate “The Rocking-Horse Winner”?
● Understanding the political or artistic objectives of a work. In what ways can
Luis Valdez’s play Los Vendidos be seen as a drama of social protest? How
well does “The Cask of Amontillado” illustrate Poe’s theory about
achieving “a certain unique or single effect” in a short story?
● Comparing themes or characters in several works. How do the mother-
daughter relationships in stories by Tillie Olsen, Hisaye Yamamoto,
Flannery O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates illustrate different kinds of
maternal-filial bonding? What attitudes toward sports are expressed in
Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Updike’s “Ex-Basketball
Player,” and Wright’s “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”?

You will find ideas for researched writing in the questions that follow
most of the literary selections in this book.

Conducting Your Research

The prewriting you do for a documented paper is similar to the
prewriting you would do for any literary essay. You still need to consider
your audience, determine your purpose, discover and develop your ideas,
and decide what point you want to make. The techniques and advice
presented in Chapter 1 will help you with these tasks. But the next steps
will be different, perhaps even new to you. First and foremost, you have
to track down relevant secondary sources, a challenging procedure that
involves libraries, computer terminals, and stacks of papers and index
cards. The following sections will guide you through this process.

Locating Sources
More than likely you will conduct your search for sources on a com-
puter. Most college libraries offer workshops to help students locate
materials, conduct computer searches, use online databases, and navigate
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 57

the Internet. If these courses are not required, take them anyway—you
could save yourself hours of aimless wandering. Your library’s informa-
tion desk will provide you with schedules of these valuable sessions.

Using the Online Catalog

Most libraries today list their holdings in a computerized public access
catalog (PAC) or an online catalog (OC). The PAC or OC terminal itself
will tell you how to use it. The opening screen of the OC at the library
Wendy Dennison used shows that she can search for books, journals and
magazines, and other items owned by her library and by other libraries in
the state. In electronic databases, you can usually search for sources by
author, title, and publication year and also by subject, using keywords, or
descriptors, to describe the source’s contents. Subject searches work best
when the keywords conform to a database’s directory of terms. For your
library’s catalog, the directory is the Library of Congress Subject Headings
(LCSH), which is available in printed form in the library’s reference room.
Remember that computers are unforgiving about spelling and typing
errors. When your results are not what you expected, check the accuracy
of the search terms you used.
To begin her search of the OC, Wendy typed in the LSCH heading
“Joyce, James, 1882–1941” and selected “subject” in the “search by” menu.
The results showed more than seventy entries, most of which contained
sublistings for specific titles. In other words, her library owns hundreds of
books and other materials about James Joyce. Wendy refined her search by
adding “Dubliners” (the title of the collection that contains “Eveline”) to
her descriptor; she found that her library had eight books on this topic. She
saw which ones were available and where they were located in the library.
Wendy also browsed a number of items under the subheading “criticism
and interpretation” and took down information about books that appeared
to deal with Joyce’s early works. She felt she had plenty of material to begin
her review of critical opinions about the motivations of Eveline.

Using Indexes and Databases

Even though you might find valuable material in books to use in doc-
umenting your ideas and critical judgments, your paper will not be well
researched unless you also find articles and reviews relevant to your
topic. These sources are now available electronically through online
databases and text archives that your library subscribes to. The library
homepage that Wendy was using allowed her to move from the online
catalog to a list of more than a hundred searchable indexes, bibliogra-
phies, and other electronic reference tools.
The reference librarian recommended that Wendy look first at two
computerized indexes to find publication information on articles about
“Eveline”: the MLA International Bibliography and the Humanities
International Index. Other databases, like Academic Search Elite and Expanded
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58 PART I Composing: An Overview

Academic Index ASAP, also provide citations for journal articles, but they
cover a wide range of academic subjects. These may be suitable for gather-
ing background information, but the MLA International Bibliography is the
best choice for finding authoritative, scholarly sources about literature.
Journals, like magazines and newspapers, are published periodically, but are
written by and for academics or expert scholars. Journals rarely have adver-
tising, eye-catching artistic touches, or slick covers. Each journal is devoted
to a specific academic subject, often a very narrow one.
When Wendy typed “Eveline” in the “find” box of the MLA search
screen, she got 132 hits. The display also prompted her to narrow her
results by subject and gave her several words and phrases to add to her
search term. Wendy selected “Joyce, James,” which reduced the list to
41 entries. She could view these entries one at a time or print out the
entire list. Each citation included the article title and the name, volume,
date, and page number of the periodical; it also supplied the call number
for any publications in her library. Many of the entries contained a brief
summary of the article’s content, and several included the full text of the
article for her to read or print. She could also send the data to her home
computer by e-mail.
Wendy browsed through these findings and printed the citations for
several articles that looked promising. Because the library did not own sev-
eral of the periodicals, the librarian suggested requesting copies of the arti-
cles through an interlibrary loan, but that would take several days. Another
option was to consult a full-text database, such as JSTOR ( Journal Storage
Project) or ProjectMUSE, to see if the articles were available there. Wendy
discovered two promising articles in JSTOR and printed them out.
These are some of the electronic tools that Wendy used to search for
possible sources. Your library may subscribe to many of the same indexes
and databases, but you need to find out what’s available and how to use
them. Chart 4-1 provides a list of the most popular online sources for
researching literary topics. Most of these are subscription services, but
they are often available, without a fee, on computers at academic and
public libraries. You may also be able to access these resources from your
home or other location through a proxy service that verifies your status
as a library card holder.

Using the Internet

Online databases and text archives are stored on computers all over
the world and are accessible over the Internet, through your library
network, a local Internet provider, or a commercial service. Chart 4-2
presents selected Internet sources for doing literary research; this listing
focuses on well-established sites that feature useful links and other
resources.
The most popular tool for searching the Internet is the World Wide
Web, a complex system for organizing and viewing information. The
primary attraction of the Web is that its documents are linked to other
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 59

Chart 4-1 Selected Online Indexes and Databases

Indexes and Abstracts
American Humanities Index
Bibliographic references to more than 1,000 creative, literary, and
scholarly journals published in the United States and Canada.
Gale’s Literary Index
Master index to author and title listings from 130 literary
reference works, including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary
Literary Criticism, Contemporary Novelists, and Contemporary
Poets.
Humanities International Index
Bibliographic references to more than 1,900 literary, scholarly, and
creative journals in the humanities published worldwide, dating as
far back as 1925.
MLA International Bibliography Online
Citations and indexing of more than 1.2 million scholarly journal arti-
cles, book chapters, monographs, and dissertations on all areas of
modern language and literature.
Periodical Abstracts
Citations with abstracts and many complete articles from
periodicals in all subject areas.
The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature
Online version of the classic library reference, indexing popular and
general-interest magazines. An expanded version, Readers’ Guide
Full-Text, Mega Edition, provides an index and some full-text articles
from 1983 to the present.

Full-Text Databases
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature
Citations of journal articles on all aspects and periods of English lit-
erature, with full texts from 120 scholarly publications.
EBSCO Academic Search Premier
Indexing for nearly 8,200 periodicals, with full text for 4,700
of those titles, in the social sciences, humanities, general
science, multicultural studies, education, and much more.
Humanities Full Text
Online indexing of journal articles, some full text, from
400 major humanities periodicals (1984 to present).
InfoTrac Expanded Academic Index ASAP
Abstracts and many complete articles from scholarly and
general interest journals in the social sciences, humanities, and
nontechnical sciences (1980 to present).
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60 PART I Composing: An Overview

Chart 4-1 (Continued)

JSTOR (Journal Storage Project)

Full-text, searchable archive of digitized (scanned) back issues of
more than 500 well-known academic journals.
LexisNexis Academic Universe
Full-text access to a wide range of sources, including newspapers
and magazines, legal publications, radio and television transcripts,
and reference works.
ProjectMUSE
Full-text collection of more than 100 scholarly journals in the arts
and humanities, mathematics, and the social sciences, including
more than 30 literature titles.
WilsonSelectPlus
Citations, abstracts, and complete articles from almost 1,400
periodicals in general science, the humanities, current events, and
business (generally 1994 to present).

pages by a technique called hypertext, which provides paths to additional

material on other pages and at other Web sites. The Web is also search-
able. Several different search engines—such as Netscape, Google,
Teoma, Yahoo!, Ask.com, and Microsoft Explorer—catalog Web sites in
directories and allow you to conduct keyword searches.
You can also join electronic communities called newsgroups, through
which members exchange information about a common interest or affil-
iation by posting questions and answers to online sites. Or you can
become a member of an Internet discussion group, frequently called a
listserv, whose subscribers use e-mail to converse on a particular subject.
You will find e-mail discussion groups to join at Google Groups
(http://groups.google.com), Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com), and
Tile.net (www.tile.net/lists).
It is not possible for us to give you detailed instructions for using
the Internet and the Web—it would simply take up too much space.
If you need additional information, you can visit one of these helpful
reference sites:

The Librarians’ Internet Index http://lii.org/search/file/netsearch

Using the Internet http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/internet
Matisse’s Glossary of http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html
Internet Terms
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 61

Chart 4-2 Internet Sources for Literature

Directories for Finding Sites
Voice of the Shuttle http://vos.ucsb.edu
An annotated guide to literary resources online, with more than
70 pages of links.
Literary Resources on the Net http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/
~jlynch/Lit
A collection of links dealing primarily with English and American
literature.
IPL Literary Criticism Collection http://www.ipl.org/ref/litcrit
From the Internet Public Library, a collection of critical and bio-
graphical Web sites about authors and their works.

Virtual Reference Works

Bartleby.com http://www.bartleby.com
Bills itself as the “preeminent Internet publisher of literature,
reference, and verse, providing students, researchers, and the
intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and
information on the Web, free of charge.”
Encyclopedia Mythica http://www.pantheon.org
Online encyclopedia covering mythology, folklore, and legends.
*Literature Online http://www.online-literature.com
A full-text, searchable library of more than 330,000 works of
English and American poetry, drama, and prose; 400 author
bibliographies; 1,000 biographies of the most studied authors;
200 journals (with 30 in full text); and links to author
Web sites.
*Literature Resource Center http://www.gale.com/LitRC
Biographical, critical, and bibliographical coverage of more than
100,000 writers from all time periods and genres.

Reviews and Criticism

Arts & Letters Daily http://aldaily.com
A service of the Chronicle of Higher Education; includes daily links to
essays, book reviews, interviews, obituaries, and news in a wide range
of online publications; coverage of literary topics is substantial.
*Book Review Digest Plus http://www.hwwilson.com/databases/
brdig.htm
Provides excerpts from and citations to reviews of current adult
and juvenile fiction and nonfiction, extending back to 1983.
* Indicates a subscription site. Check to see if your library subscribes.
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62 PART I Composing: An Overview

Evaluating Online Sources

Although many online sources are informative and valuable, determin-
ing their credibility can be challenging. With scholarly books and journal
articles, you can consider the information credible because it has been
reviewed and edited; the authors are often recognized authorities and
their claims are documented. But anyone can create and post information
on a Web site or join a newsgroup. So when you use information from an
electronic source, you want to be confident that it is reliable and that it
comes from someone with the appropriate authority. Here are some
guidelines for evaluating online materials:

● Look for credentials. What do you know about the people supplying the
information? What’s the basis of their expertise? Is the source also available
in an established, conventional printed form?
● Track down affiliations. Who sponsors the online site? Is it a reputable
group that you can easily identify? Is the information influenced by
commercial or political sponsorship? Does the site include links to other
resources?
● Analyze motives. What purpose does the site serve? Many online postings
are trying to buy or sell something; others are promoting a favorite cause.
These don’t usually make good sources for research.
● Consider currency and stability. Is the material updated regularly? Is there
an archive for older information?
● Confirm your information. Can you find other sources to verify what
you’ve found online? Ideally, you want to have several different kinds of
sources to achieve a credible balance of research material.

For more details about evaluating online sources, you can visit one of
these sites:

Evaluating Web Sites, a comprehensive and instructive guide to judging

information resources for reliability and accuracy, at http://www.lesley
.edu/library/guides/research/evaluating_web.html
LibrarySmart, an online guide to “smart information”; created and main-
tained by the Washington State Library, at http://www.librarysmart.com/
working/home.asp

Using Reference Works in Print

As you can see, the library’s computers provide an overwhelming num-
ber of sources and service options. You will have to spend some time with
these data systems to find out how they work and how useful they are
for your research. Most libraries still hold much of this material in old-
fashioned print. The MLA International Bibliography, for example, continues
to be issued in book form. Your library probably has print versions of many
indexes and guides to articles on literature. Some of the most useful ones
are listed in Chart 4-3. So if the computer terminals are crowded or not
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 63

Chart 4-3 Selected Reference Works in Literature

Encyclopedias and Research Guides
Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century
Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century
Encyclopedia of the Novel
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The New York Public Library Literature Companion

Guides to Criticism of Fiction

Critical Survey of Long Fiction
Critical Survey of Short Fiction
Short Story Criticism
Twentieth-Century Short Story Explication

Guides to Criticism of Poetry

Critical Survey of Poetry
Poetry Criticism
Poetry Explication: A Checklist of Interpretation Since 1925 of British
and American Poems, Past and Present

Guides to Criticism of Drama

Dramatic Criticism Index
A Guide to Critical Reviews
New York Theater Critics’ Reviews
New York Times Theater Reviews

Guides to Authors and Their Works

Contemporary Authors
Contemporary Literary Criticism
A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers
Short Story Writers
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism

Some of these reference works may be available online. Check with

your school’s librarian.
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64 PART I Composing: An Overview

working, or if you simply want some peace and quiet while researching, the
reference librarian can tell you where on the shelves these books are kept.
You are likely to run across valuable material on shelves near the books you
seek, an advantage to this often neglected ambulatory research system.

Working with Sources

Once you have located the books and articles you want to read and
assimilate, you can begin reading, taking notes, and synthesizing the
material.

Taking Notes
Many researchers use note cards for keeping track of the facts and
opinions they find. If you decide to use cards, work out some system for
recording information. Here are some suggestions:

1. Fill out a bibliography card every time you consult a new source, and
record all the details necessary for citing this source in your paper,
including where to find the source again. Then put the author’s last
name, an abbreviated title, and the page number or numbers on all the
note cards you use for this source.
2. Write only one idea or point on each card. This allows you to shuffle
the cards as you figure out the precise organization of your paper.
3. Put subject headings on the cards—one or two words in the upper
right-hand corner to tell you what each note is about.
4. Summarize the ideas in your own words. If you think you might want
to quote directly from the source, copy the author’s exact words and
enclose them in quotation marks.

Computers now come with a note card program, or you can purchase
software for a note card system. You can use the computer note cards just
as you would use index cards: title each card by topic, and then type your
notes onto the card provided by the computer.

Using the Printout/Photocopy Option

If the time you can spend in the library is limited, you might want to
print out an online article or photocopy portions of books in order to have
these materials available to study at your convenience. In fact, you might
find it easier to take notes from a printout than from a computer screen.
You can underline or highlight key ideas, even color coding these high-
lighted passages to fit different subtopics in your paper. You can also write
comments or cross-references to other sources in the margins. It’s a good
idea to put the information from printouts and photocopies on note cards.
This procedure forces you to summarize the material in your own words
and makes it much easier to sort the separate items into categories.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 65

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting

In most of your notes, you will be summarizing or paraphrasing your
source materials, rather than quoting the author’s exact words. In a summary
you condense the main point of an argument or passage in your own words.
A summary is useful when you want to capture the gist of an idea without
including the background or supporting details. Compare these sentences
from an article about “Eveline” with the summary that follows it.

Original
“Joyce indicates why Eveline will not, in fact, be able to escape. Paralysis
will win because she is not worthy to defeat it. Her inertia is revealed
by the excessive value she places on the routine satisfactions of her pres-
ent existence, and on the pathetically small indications of affection which
her father has been prepared to give.” (Clive Hart, James Joyce’s
Dubliners).
Summary
Eveline won’t be able to leave because she’s too attached to her father and
to the familiarity of her everyday life.

In a paraphrase you restate comments and ideas from a source, using

approximately the same number of words as the original. Although writ-
ten in your own words and style, a good paraphrase will reflect the author’s
idea, tone, and point of view more clearly than a summary does. Here’s a
paraphrase of the passage from Clive Hart’s article:

Joyce shows us that Eveline is incapable of leaving home. That she doesn’t
have the strength of character to break away can be seen in her desperate
attachment to the comforts of a familiar life, as well as to her father’s meager
expressions of love.

You will also find comments and observations that are so well expressed
that you want to use the original wording rather than summarize or para-
phrase it. Be sure to record the exact words of the original quotation, as
well as the number of the page on which it appears.

Devising a Working Outline

As you are reading and taking notes, you should also be thinking about
the organization of your points and ideas. Chances are the best arrange-
ment won’t emerge until you are fairly well along with your research—
possibly not until you have finished it. But as you collect more and more
notes, leaf through your cards or printouts occasionally to see if you can
arrange them into three or four main categories to form the major claims
in your argument or analysis. The sooner you can get a plan worked out,
the more efficient your research becomes. You can see exactly what you
are looking for and avoid wasting time on sources that would prove irrel-
evant or redundant.
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66 PART I Composing: An Overview

Writing a First Draft

As we pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, some people write
a preliminary draft before beginning their research, especially if they are
eager to get their arguments written down before they forget them.
If you use this method, you should devise a thesis, assemble your evi-
dence from the primary source, order your ideas, and write a first draft,
following the procedures discussed in Chapter 2. Then you can go to the
library, as Wendy did, to locate and read a number of pertinent sec-
ondary sources and incorporate ideas from this reading into your paper
at appropriate places.
On the other hand, if you are not sure about your topic or your
approach, you can go to the library, locate some relevant secondary
sources, and study them carefully. Then return to the primary source and
begin the discovery process again, using freewriting or questioning or
problem solving to refine your topic, devise a thesis, and generate ideas.
You may have to do further research as you work through your interpre-
tation, but that’s all part of the recursive nature of writing.

Organizing Your Notes

Once you have a clearly focused thesis, go back and read through your
note cards. Using the headings that you put on the cards, group the ones
with similar ideas together in stacks. If you photocopied most or all of
your sources, write headings on the first page of each photocopy and sort
the articles that way. Then consult your working plan or rough outline,
and arrange the stacks in the order that the headings appear there. As you
write, the necessary information will be in front of you, ready to be
incorporated into the first draft of your paper.
If your stacks of cards don’t follow the outline but lie there in a con-
fused, overlapping mess, all is not lost. You can still bring order out of
chaos. Here are a few methods:

1. Tinker with your outline. It may seem like a step backward, but now that
you have new information from your research, the whole topic may
look different. Look at the main headings and change any that don’t
seem to fit; add others that you have good material for but overlooked
when you made the working outline.
2. Put your note cards into different groupings. This process may suggest an
organizing strategy that you wouldn’t think of any other way.
3. Set your notes aside and begin writing—even if you begin in the middle
of a thought. Force yourself, as in freewriting, to keep going, even if
your paper seems repetitive, disorganized, and sketchy. Eventually, the
writing will begin to take shape, giving you an idea about where to
start your first draft.
4. Find a key article on the topic, and examine its structure. You may be able
to find an organizational scheme that will work for your paper.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 67

5. Explain your ideas to a friend who agrees to ask questions along the way.
Tape-record your discussion, and see whether it suggests a sensible
order of exposition.

Using Quotations and Paraphrases

A research paper involves incorporating the words and ideas of others
into your writing. You want to be judicious in using the material you have
gathered from secondary sources. Your main goal is to argue your thesis or
advance your interpretation, not simply to paste together other people’s
thoughts and words. Don’t just sprinkle your discussion with quotations and
paraphrases; work them into your analysis and explain how they support
your points. Take a look at this example from a paper about “The Lottery”:

The author reveals the savagery that is hidden just beneath the surface of
seemingly civilized exteriors. This duality of human nature is exhibited
through the characterization and actions of the villagers. As Cleanth
Brooks and Robert Penn Warren point out, “The cruel stoning is carried
out by ‘decent’ citizens who in many other respects show themselves kind
and thoughtful” (130). When it was time for the scapegoat to be murdered,
Mrs. Delacroix, who earlier had made neighborly conversation with the
victim, was one of the first to pick up a stone.

As you can see, the student writer backed up her observation about the
duality of human nature with a direct quotation from a secondary source.
She then used a detail from the primary source to nail down the point.

Integrating Sources
Whether you are quoting directly or simply paraphrasing someone
else’s ideas and observations, you should always give credit in the text of
your paper to the person from whom you are borrowing. The MLA doc-
umentation style requires you to cite all sources within the paper. These
in-text citations contain three important parts:

1. an introduction of the source, telling your reader that material from

some authority is coming up, who or what the source is, and what the
person’s credentials are, if you know them;
2. the material from the source, quoted or paraphrased; and
3. the parenthetical documentation, which tells your reader that your use
of the source is over and gives the page number for the source of that
particular material.

More details about in-text citations are given in the explanation of the
MLA documentation style at the end of this chapter (pages 80–81).
If you want your paper to read smoothly, pay particular attention to the
way you introduce quotations and paraphrases. You need a ready supply of
introductory phrases to slide the source material in gracefully—phrases
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68 PART I Composing: An Overview

like “As LeSeure discovered,” “Professor Weber notes,” and “According to

Dr. Carter.” These attributions help your readers to evaluate the source
material as they read it and to distinguish source material from your
remarks about it. Here are some more models for you to go by:

As critic Lawrence Stone explains, daughters in Shakespeare’s England

were “often unwanted and might be regarded as no more than a tiresome
drain on the economic resources of the family” (112).
According to biographer Joan Givner, the failure of Porter’s personal rela-
tionship with Josephson caused a temporary inability to write (221).
D. G. Gillham remarks that the “male ‘worm’” and “female ‘rose’” in “The
Sick Rose” have Freudian significance and “give rise in the speaker to half-
hidden feelings of indecency, guilt, and fear so easily associated with sexu-
al experience” (11).
Prospero’s suite in “The Masque of the Red Death” has been described by
Kermit Vanderbilt as “a metaphor of nature and mortality” (382).
“A beautiful virgin walled off from an imperfect world,” Rachel Brownstein
points out, “is the central figure in romance” (35).

Quoting from Primary Sources

The advice for handling quotations from secondary sources also applies
to quoted material from primary sources: keep quoted passages brief; use
them as support for your own observations, and don’t rely on a quotation to
make a point for you; integrate quotations smoothly and grammatically
into your own sentences; vary the way you introduce the quotations.
You will also need to cite the work you are quoting from so that your
readers know exactly which passage you are referring to and where it is
located. For short stories and novels, give the author’s last name and the
page number in the parenthetical citation. The author’s name may be omit-
ted if you mention it in your paper or if authorship is clear from context.

We are told that Dorie “loved that woman’s husband with a fierce love that
was itself a little ugly” (Oates 112).
The narrator of Oates’s story tells us that Dorie “loved that woman’s hus-
band with a fierce love that was itself a little ugly” (112).

For poems, line numbers alone are usually sufficient to identify the
source—provided that the author and title are given in your essay.

Coleridge’s assertion that poetic life is a “miracle of rare device / A sunny

pleasure dome with caves of ice” (35–36) proves paradoxical.

You do not need to include the word line or lines or its abbreviation in the
parenthetical citation. When citing a play, give the act and scene num-
bers (without abbreviations), plus the line numbers if the work is in verse.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 69

In Othello, Iago’s striking comment, “What you know, you know. / From
this time forth I will never speak a word” (5.2.299–300), serves as a philo-
sophic closure.

The numbers separated by periods mean “act 5, scene 2, lines 299

through 300.” In plays that are not written in verse, you may simply cite
page numbers, as you would with a quotation from a short story.

Jim’s role in the play is best described by Tom, who calls him “an emissary
from a world of reality” and the “long-delayed but always expected some-
thing that we live for” (643).

You can get additional guidance for quoting primary sources on pages
00–00 (short stories), pages 000–00 (poetry), and pages 000–00 (drama).
You will also find details about punctuating quoted material on pages
0000–00 in “A Handbook for Correcting Errors.”

Avoiding Plagiarism
The failure to give proper credit to your sources is called plagiarism.
It usually involves carelessly—or, far worse, deliberately—presenting the
words or ideas of another writer as your own. You can avoid this dishon-
esty by using a moderate amount of care in taking notes. Put quotation
marks around any passages, even brief phrases, that you copy word for
word. Circle the quotation marks in red or highlight the quoted materi-
al in some way, as a reminder to give credit to the source.
You must also avoid the original wording if you decide to paraphrase
your sources, rather than quoting directly. Changing a few words or
rearranging the phrases is not enough: such close paraphrasing is still
considered plagiarism. The following examples may help you to see the
difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing:

Original Passage
“The interest of the story lies not in the events, but in the reasons for
Eveline’s failure to accept the offer of salvation.” (Clive Hart, James Joyce’s
Dubliners)
Plagiarism
One critic notes that the story’s main interest is not in its events but in the
reasons why Eveline fails to accept Frank’s offer of salvation.
Plagiarism
Most readers are interested not in the events of “Eveline” but in the rea-
sons for the protagonist’s failure to accept her salvation.
Paraphrase
As Clive Hart notes, we are interested not in what happens in the story but
in why Eveline doesn’t take the chance to save herself (48).
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70 PART I Composing: An Overview

Combined Paraphrase and Direct Quotation

Hart notes that the main interest for the reader “lies not in the events” but
in “Eveline’s failure to accept the offer of salvation” (48).
Direct Quotation
“The interest of the story lies not in the events,” critic Clive Hart claims,
“but in the reasons for Eveline’s failure to accept the offer of salvation” (48).

Rewriting and Editing

Many people who do researched writing make no attempt to work in
direct quotations or provide complete citations in the first draft because
pausing to do so interrupts the flow of their ideas. They just jot down the
name of the person who has provided the information or idea; they go
back later to fill in page numbers and integrate exact quotations as they
revise their first draft. Putting self-stick notes on pages of sources you
intend to use will help you find the precise material later.

Documenting Your Sources

Various academic disciplines use different documentation styles.
Because you are writing about literature, the appropriate one for you to
follow is the Modern Language Association style. Sample entries illus-
trating the MLA format appear at the end of this chapter. You may also
use as a model the documentation included in the sample student research
papers on pages 73–79 and pages 000–000.

Revising the Draft

Because a research paper entails the extra demands of incorporating
other people’s ideas and acknowledging these sources, you will want to
take special care in rewriting your early drafts. The checklist for revising
and editing researched writing, Chart 4-4, will help you to turn your
draft into a successful essay.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 71

Chart 4-4 Checklist for Revising

and Editing Researched Writing
Check the Usual Things
1. Be sure the introduction states your thesis (see pages 14–17, 24–25).
2. Be sure each paragraph is unified, coherent, and directly related
to your thesis (see pages 36–37, 40–41).
3. Be sure that the transitions between paragraphs are clear and
effective (see pages 41–42).
4. Be sure your conclusion reinforces your main argument (see pages
25–26).

Check the Special Things

1. Be sure that you have introduced direct quotations gracefully,
using the name and, if appropriate, the title or occupation of the
person quoted.
2. Be sure each citation is accurate.
3. Be sure that paraphrases are in your own words and that sources
are clearly acknowledged.
4. Be sure that you have not relied too heavily on a single source.
5. Be sure that you have written most of the paper yourself; you
need to examine, analyze, or explain the material, not just splice
together a lot of quotations and paraphrases.
6. Be sure to separate quotations with some comment of your own.
7. Be sure to underline or italicize the titles of books and magazines;
put quotation marks around the titles of articles, stories, poems,
and chapters in books.

Formatting Your Paper

The document format recommended by the MLA Handbook is fairly
simple. But individual course requirements may vary from the MLA
design, so check with your instructor before you begin preparing your
final copy. Here are some features to examine:

Margins. Provide margins of at least one inch at the top, bottom, and
both sides of the page.
Spacing and indentions. Double-space throughout, including quota-
tions and the Works Cited page. Indent paragraphs one-half inch or
five spaces. Long prose quotations (five or more typed lines) and quo-
tations of more than three lines of poetry should be double-spaced and
indented one inch or ten spaces from the left margin.
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72 PART I Composing: An Overview

Page numbers. Number all pages, beginning on the first page. Put
the numbers in the upper-right-hand corner about one-half inch from
the top. Place your last name before the page number in case the pages
later become separated. Note the correct page numbering on the sam-
ple student paper, which follows.
Heading. The MLA does not require a separate title page. If your in-
structor asks you to use one, follow the format he or she provides.
Otherwise, give your name and the date, plus any other information
requested by your instructor (such as the title and number of the
course), on the first page of your text. Place this heading an inch from
the top of the page, aligned with the left margin. Note the heading on
the sample student paper.
Title. Double-space after the heading and center the title of your
paper. Do not underline or place your title in quotation marks, and
do not set it in large type or capitalize all the letters. Do capitalize
the first and last words and all other words except articles (a, an, the),
prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, and the to in infinitives.
Double-space between your title and the first line of text.
Textual headings. If you use headings within your paper to guide read-
ers through the discussion, keep them as short as possible and make
them specific to the material that follows. Do not boldface, italicize, or
use bigger type or all capitals for these headings.

Sample Documented Student Paper

The following is the documented version of the essay that Wendy
Dennison wrote about “Eveline.” See pages 51–54 for the undocumented
version.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 73

Dennison 1

Wendy Dennison
Professor McMahan
English 102
11 March 2005
Fear of Failure in Joyce’s “Eveline”
In his short story “Eveline,” James Joyce
gives the protagonist an exciting chance to
leave her old life and begin a new one. But she
rejects this offer that Frank--or Fate--makes,
preferring instead to settle back into the
dreary life she has known all along. Why does
she not go away with Frank when the opportunity
seems so attractive? One critic, Magda de
Tolentino, says, “Nothing but family bonds hold
her back” (74). Another critic thinks Eveline is
“imprisoned” in her passive, feminine role of
housekeeper (Ingersoll 4), while another calls
her “a meaningless sacrificial victim for a
religious community lacking charity” (Torchiana
75). Some commentators think she’s afraid of
marrying Frank. Professor Edward Brandabur, for
example, claims Eveline “is ever conscious of
the effects on her mother of a brutal marriage”
(63), and Professor Thomas Dilworth maintains
that “her mother’s marriage to her father must
subconsciously condition her anticipation of
married life” (458).
Obviously many factors affect Eveline and
influence her decision not to go with Frank. But
in the last analysis, I think, we need to
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74 PART I Composing: An Overview

Dennison 2

examine Eveline’s own character, especially her

timid personality, to discover the answer to our
question. For, as Professor Warren Beck has
pointed out, “Eveline is not simply timid; she
is racked by inner conflict, finally to the
point of distraction” (113).
Since Eveline has been raised a Catholic, we
know she would not take her deathbed promise to
her mother lightly. But surely her promise to
“keep the home together as long as she could”
(Joyce 6) was given under extreme circumstances.
It was unjust of her mother to ask such a
sacrifice of her, and Eveline is aware of the
unfairness: “Why should she be unhappy? She has a
right to happiness” (6). We know that Eveline will
always be haunted by that promise, but we do not
expect her to give up her chance for a life of her
own in order to be a dutiful daughter. Surely that
promise cannot be the only reason she stays.
We certainly should not be surprised that
Eveline might wish to leave her abusive father.
A hot-tempered heavy drinker, he has taken
advantage of his daughter’s promise to her
mother. She is forced to keep house for him, yet
must beg for money to feed the family. He
practically accuses her of stealing, claiming
that “she used to squander the money, that she
had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her
his hard-earned money to throw about the
streets” (4–5). He has so frightened her with
threats of beatings that she has “palpitations”
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 75

Dennison 3

(4). Eveline realizes that with her brothers

gone, there is “nobody to protect her” (4) from
her father’s rage. Her father has treated Eveline
badly and may abuse her even worse in the future.
On the other hand, as Professor Ingersoll points
out, Eveline’s father offers “the comfort and
security of the familiar” and as he grows older
will probably be “less likely to have the
strength to abuse her, as he did her mother” (3).
Yes, getting away from her father would be in her
best interests, but something keeps her there.
Eveline’s home life is so unhealthy that we
feel she would be wise to leave. Despite all the
chores she performs, she still does not feel
entirely at home in her father’s house. For
example, she knows nothing about the picture of
the priest (Joyce 4), not even his name, yet the
portrait seems quite important to her father. The
dustiness of the house, of which Joyce reminds us
periodically, suggests the pervasive dreariness
of her daily life as she looks around “wondering
where on earth all the dust came from” (4).
Critic Clive Hart sums up her condition this way:
Eveline has memories of a happier,
freer past which contrasts both with
the tedium of the present and with
the uncertainty of the future . . . .
The evenings, which used to be a
time for play, are now one of
drudgery, and even in childhood it
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76 PART I Composing: An Overview

Dennison 4

was evident that happiness was

something transient. (49)
Since her home is clearly not conducive to
happiness, why does she stay there?
The main reason Eveline would remain in
Ireland is that she is desperately afraid of the
unknown. If she leaves the familiar, no matter
how unpleasant, she risks failure. “She was about
to explore another life with Frank” (Joyce 5), we
are told, in faraway Buenos Ayres. The word
explore is significant, as it brings to mind
uncertainty and risk, two factors that Eveline is
not prepared to deal with. She admits that hers
is “a hard life,” yet thinks that “now that she
was about to leave it she did not find it a
wholly undesirable life” (5). According to
Professor Hart, Eveline is psychologically
incapable of breaking away, and it shows in “the
excessive value she places on the routine
satisfactions of her present existence, and on
the pathetically small indications of affection
which her father has been prepared to give” (50).
When she sits in the growing darkness with the
letters in her lap, Eveline calls up a couple of
good memories--of her father being jolly once on
a picnic, of his kindness once when she was sick
(Joyce 6). We see her trying to calm her fears,
trying to convince herself that her home life is
more bearable than it is. But, as Martin Dolch
points out, “Change is already beyond her
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 77

Dennison 5

capacity and fills her with a crazy fear which

mistakes salvation for destruction” (99).
Afraid of failing on her own, Eveline
retreats into the familiar, telling herself that
life with her father cannot be as frightening as
a risky, unknown life with Frank. In Professor
Warren Beck’s view, Eveline doesn’t doubt Frank:
“What she doubts is herself” (116). Eveline’s
doubts and her fear of failure override her fear
of her father. She seems to decide that a
predictable--if dreary and abused--life is
better than a life without security or pattern.
As William York Tindall puts it, “The end [of
this story] is not a coming of awareness but an
animal experience of inability” (15).
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78 PART I Composing: An Overview

Dennison 6
Works Cited
Beck, Warren. Joyce’s Dubliners: Substance,
Vision, and Art. Durham: Duke UP, 1969.
Brandabur, Edward. A Scrupulous Meanness: A
Study of Joyce’s Early Work. Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 1971.
de Tolentino, Magda. “Family Bonds and Bondage
within the Family: A Study of Family Ties
in Clarice Lipsector and James Joyce.”
Modern Language Studies 18.2 (1988): 73–78.
JSTOR. Illinois State U Lib., 28 Feb.
2005.
Dilworth, Thomas. “The Numina of Joyce’s
‘Eveline.’” Studies in Short Fiction 15.4
(1978): 456–58. Humanities International
Index. EBSCO. Illinois State U Lib., 28 Feb.
2005.
Dolch, Martin. “Eveline.” James Joyce’s
Dubliners: A Critical Handbook. Ed. James
R. Baker and Thomas F. Staley. Belmont:
Wadsworth, 1969. 96–101.
Hart, Clive. “Eveline.” James Joyce’s Dubliners:
Critical Essays. Ed. Clive Hart. New York:
Viking, 1969. 48–52.
Ingersoll, Earl G. “The Stigma of Femininity in
James Joyce’s ‘Eveline’ and ‘The Boarding
House.’” Studies in Short Fiction 30.4
(1993): 501. Academic Search Premier: 10
pp. EBSCO. Illinois State U Lib., 28 Feb.
2005.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 79

Dennison 7
Joyce, James. “Eveline.” Literature and the
Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan,
Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 7th ed. Upper
Saddle River: Prentice, 2005. 3–7.
Torchiana, Donald T. Backgrounds for Joyce’s
Dubliners. Boston: Allen, 1986.
Tindall, William York. A Reader’s Guide to James
Joyce. New York: Noonday, 1959.
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80 PART I Composing: An Overview

EXPLANATION OF THE MLA

DOCUMENTATION STYLE

The documentation style of the Modern Language Association

(MLA)—used in English, foreign languages, and some other humanities—
requires that source citations be given in the text of the paper rather than
in footnotes or endnotes. This in-text style of documentation involves
parenthetical references.
Throughout this section, titles of books and periodicals are italicized.
Your instructor may prefer that you underline these titles instead of itali-
cizing them.

In-Text Citations
A. You will usually introduce the cited material, whether quoted or
paraphrased, by mentioning the name of the author in your lead-in
and giving the page number (or numbers) in parentheses. Put the
parenthetical reference near the cited material, but preserve the
flow of your writing by placing the citation where a pause would
naturally occur, preferably at the end of the sentence, as in this
example:
Edmund Wilson tells us that the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin felt
“the book had been written by God” (5).
B. Your readers can identify this source by consulting your Works Cited
at the end of your paper. The entry for the source cited above would
appear like this one:
Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the Ameri-
can Civil War. New York: Oxford UP, 1966.
C. If you do not mention the author in your lead-in, include his or her
last name in parentheses along with the page number, without an
intervening comma, like this:
One of the great all-time best-sellers, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold over
300,000 copies in America and more than 2 million copies world
wide (Wilson 3).
D. If you have to quote indirectly—something from another source not
available to you—use “qtd. in” (for “quoted in”) in your parenthetical
reference. This example refers to a book written by Donald Johanson
and Maitland Edey:
Richard Leakey’s wife, Maeve, told the paleoanthropologist David
Johanson, “We heard all about your bones on the radio last night” (qtd.
in Johanson and Edey 162).
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 81

Note: It is always best to track down the original source, in case it has not
been quoted precisely. You may also find even better material for your
purposes in the original.
E. If you are using a source written or edited by more than three people,
use only the name of the first person listed, followed by “et al.” (mean-
ing “and others”), in your lead-in.
Blair et al. observe that the fine arts were almost ignored by colo-
nial writers (21).
Since et means “and,” it isn’t an abbreviation and therefore doesn’t need a
period.
F. If you refer to one of two or more works by the same author, put a
comma after the author’s last name and include a shortened title in the
parenthetical reference.
(Gould, Mismeasure 138).

Preparing the List of Works Cited

On a separate page at the end of the paper, alphabetize your Works Cited
list for all sources mentioned in your paper. Format the list according to
these rules:
● Center Works Cited at the top of the page.
● Arrange your sources in alphabetical order by the last name of the
author. If the author is not given in the source, alphabetize the source
by the first main word in the title (excluding A, An, or The).
● Double-space the entire list, both within and between entries.
● Use hanging indention: put the first line of each entry flush with the
left margin, and indent any subsequent lines in the entry one-half
inch.
● In both titles and subtitles, capitalize the first and last words and
all other words except articles (a, an, the), prepositions, coordinating
conjunctions, and the to in infinitives.
● Omit any use of the words page, pages, line, and lines. Do not even
include abbreviations for these terms. Use numbers alone.
Kinsley, Michael. “Continental Divide.” Time 7 Jul. 1997: 89–91.
● Shorten publishers’ names: for example, use Prentice instead of Prentice
Hall or Norton instead of W. W. Norton and Co. or Oxford UP instead
of Oxford University Press or U of Illinois P instead of University of
Illinois Press. See sample entries 1 through 14.
● For books, include the city of publication, usually given on the title page
of the work cited. If you find two or more cities, use only the first.
● Use lowercase roman numerals (ii, xiv) for citing page numbers from a
preface, introduction, or table of contents; use roman numerals in
names of monarchs (Elizabeth II).
● Abbreviate months and titles of magazines as shown in the sample
entries.
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82 PART I Composing: An Overview

Sample Entries for a List of Works Cited

The following models will help you write Works Cited entries for
most of the sources you will use. If you use a source not illustrated in
these examples, consult the more extensive list of sample entries found in
the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., or ask your
instructor for guidance. The MLA’s Internet home page includes a list of
frequently asked questions (FAQs) that address a number of thorny cita-
tion issues: www.mla.org/www_mla_org/style/style_faq.

Books
1. Book by one author
Chused, Richard H. Private Acts in Public Places:
A Social History of Divorce. Philadelphia: U of
Pennsylvania P, 1994.

2. Two or more books by the same author

Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York:
Norton, 1981.

-–. The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural

History. New York: Norton, 1980.

[Give the author’s name in the first entry only. Thereafter, use
three hyphens in place of the author’s name, followed by a period
and the title.]

3. Book by two or three authors

Anderson, Terry, and Donald Leal. Free Market
Environmentalism. Boulder: Westview, 1991.

McCrum, William, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The

Story of English. New York: Viking, 1986.

[Notice that only the first author’s name is in reversed order.]

4. Book by more than three authors

Medhurst, Martin J., et al. Cold War Rhetoric:
Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology. New York:
Greenwood, 1990.

[The phrase et al. is an abbreviation for et alii, meaning “and

others.”]
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 83

5. Book with an editor

Gallegos, Bee, ed. English: Our Official Language? New
York: Wilson, 1994.
[For a book with two or more editors, use “eds.”]
6. Book with an author and an editor
Whorf, Benjamin. Language, Thought, and Reality:
Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. J. B.
Carroll. Cambridge: MIT P, 1956.

[“Ed.” in front of a name means “Edited by.”]

7. Essay or article in a collection, casebook, or critical edition
Geist, Stanley. “Portraits from a Family Album: Daisy
Miller.” Hudson Review 5 (Summer 1952): 203–6.
Rpt. in James’s Daisy Miller. Ed. William T.
Stafford. New York: Scribner’s, 1963. 131–33.

[If an italicized title contains another title that should be

italicized, leave the second title without italics.]
Matthews, James H. “Frank O’Connor.” Lewisburg:
Bucknell UP, 1976. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski and Laurie Harris.
Vol. 14. Detroit: Gale, 1983. 399–402.

[Rpt. means “reprinted.”]

8. Work in an anthology
Butler, Octavia. “Bloodchild.” The Norton Anthology of
African American Literature. Ed. Henry Louis Gates
Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. New York: Norton, 1997.
2480–94.

9. Reprinted (republished) book

Jespersen, Otto. Growth and Structure of the English
Language. 1938. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.

10. Later (second or subsequent) edition

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers. 6th ed. New York: MLA, 2003.
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84 PART I Composing: An Overview

11. Book in translation

Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. Jack
Sage. 2nd ed. New York: Philosophical Lib., 1976.

Journals and Magazines

12. Article from a journal with continuous pagination throughout
the whole volume
Mason, John B. “Whitman’s Catalogues: Rhetorical Means
for Two Journeys in ‘Song of Myself.’” American
Literature 45(1973): 534–49.

13. Article from a journal that paginates each issue separately

Frey, John R. “America and Her Literature Reviewed by
Postwar Germany.” American-German Review 10.5
(1954): 4–7.

[10.5 means volume 10, issue 5.]

14. Article from a monthly or bimonthly magazine

Tocalino, Rob. “The 20-Century American Short Story:
Three Authors, Three Generations.” Bookmarks
May/June 2006: 26–31.

15. Article from a weekly or biweekly magazine

Heilbrun, Carolyn. “The Masculine Wilderness of the
American Novel.” Saturday Review 29 Jan. 1962:
41–44.

Newspapers
16. Signed newspaper article
Weiner, Jon. “Vendetta: The Government’s Secret War
Against John Lennon.” Chicago Tribune 5 Aug. 1984,
sec 3:1.

17. Unsigned newspaper article

“No Power Line-Cancer Link Found.” Chicago Tribune 3
Jul. 1997, final ed., sec. 1: 5.
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 85

[If an edition is specified on the paper’s masthead, name the edi-

tion (late ed., natl ed., final ed.) after the date and before the
page reference. Different editions of the same issue of a newspa-
per contain different material.]

18. Letter to the editor

Kessler, Ralph. “Orwell Defended.” Letter. New York
Times Book Review 15 Dec. 1985: 26.

19. Editorial
“From Good News to Bad.” Editorial. Washington Post 16
Jul. 1984: 10.

Other Sources
20. Book review
Emery, Robert. Rev. of The Divorce Revolution: The
Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for
Women and Children in America by Lenore Weitzman.
American Scientist 74(1986): 662–63.

21. Personal interview or letter

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Personal interview. 12 Feb. 2003.
Vidal, Gore. Letter to the author. 2 Jun. 1984.

22. Article from a reference work (unsigned and signed)

“Psychopharmacology.” The Columbia Encyclopedia. 5th
ed. 1993.
Van Doren, Carl. “Samuel Langhorne Clemens.” The
Dictionary of American Biography. 1958 ed.

[Treat a dictionary entry or an encyclopedia article like an entry

from an anthology, but do not cite the editor or publisher of the
reference work.]

23. Film and video recordings

Brokeback Mountain. Dir. Ang Lee. Perf. Heath Ledger,
Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams; screenplay by
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Universal, 2005.
DVD. Focus Features, 2006.
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86 PART I Composing: An Overview

[Begin with the title and include the director, distributor, and
year of release. Add any other data you think pertinent (such as
the names of actors, writers, or producers) between the title and
the distributor. For video recordings, include the original release
date (if relevant) and the medium (such as videocassette, DVD)
before the name of the distributor.]
24. Lecture
Albee, Edward. “A Dream or a Nightmare?” Illinois
State University Fine Arts Lecture. Normal, IL. 18
Mar. 1979.

For other sources (such as televised shows, performances, advertise-

ments, recordings, works of art), include enough information to permit
an interested reader to locate your original source. Be sure to arrange
this information in a logical fashion, following as much as possible the
order and punctuation of the entries above. To be safe, consult your
instructor for suggestions about documenting unusual material.

Citing Electronic Sources

If you get material from a full-text database or online source, you need
to indicate that you read it in electronic form. You will probably use a
service to which your library subscribes. Many of the items you access
have also appeared in print. Give the print information first, and com-
plete the citation by giving the name of the database (italicized), the
name of the online service (such as InfoTrac or EBSCO), the library you
used, and the date of access.
25. Article from a searchable database
Wells, Walter. “John Updike’s ‘A & P’: A Return Visit
to Araby.” Studies in Short Fiction 32.2 (1993):
127–34. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO.
Eastern Illinois U Lib., 6 Mar. 2005.

You might also consult journals, magazines, and newspapers that are
available independently on the Internet. For these sources, cite the author,
title, and publication data for the printed version as usual; then give the
number of pages, paragraphs, or other sections of the electronic version, if
provided on the site—followed by the date of access and the electronic
address, or Uniform Resource Locator (URL), in angle brackets.
26. Article from an online journal
Dorval, Patricia. “Shakespeare on Screen: Threshold
Aesthetics in Oliver Parker’s Othello.” Early
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CHAPTER 4 Researched Writing 87

Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May, 2000):15 pars. 5

Sept. 2003 <http://purl.oclc.org/emls/06-1/
dorvothe.htm>.

[Pars. stands for paragraphs. Pages, paragraphs, or other sec-

tions are sometimes numbered in electronic publications. In-
clude these numbers in the Works Cited list and the in-text
citations.]

27. Article from an online magazine

Yeoman, Barry. “Into the Closet: Can Therapy Make Gay
People Straight?” Salon.com 22 May 2000. 23 May
2000 <http://www.salon.com/health/feature/
2000/05/22/exgay/html>.

28. Review from an online newspaper

Ebert, Roger. Review of Real Women Have Curves, dir.
Patricia Cardoso. Chicago Sun-Times Online
25 Oct. 2002. 2 Feb. 2003 <http://
www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/
2002/10/102510.html>.

29. Article from an online reference book or encyclopedia

Daniel, Ralph Thomas. “The History of Western Music.”
Britannica Online: Macropaedia. 1995. Online
Encyclopedia Britannica. 14 June 1995
<http//www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/
g:DocF=macro/5004/45/O.html>.

30. Material accessed on a CD–ROM

Shakespeare. Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare.
Interactive multimedia. Cambridge, UK: Chadwick-
Healey, 1995. CD-ROM. Alexandria: Electronic Book
Technologies, 1995.

“Silly.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. CD-

ROM. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
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88 PART I Composing: An Overview

31. Internet site

Voice of the Shuttle. Ed. Alan Liu. 1994. Dept. of
English, U of California, Santa Barbara. 17 Sept.
2004 <http://vos.ucsb.edu/>.

32. Message posted to a discussion list

Coleman, Linda. “Teaching Cause-Effect Thinking.”
Online posting. 10 Aug. 2001. Writing Discussion
List. 15 Aug. 2001 <news:comp.edu
.writing.instruction>.

[Include a title or description of the posting, the date of the post-

ing, the name of the discussion forum, the date of access, and the
URL or e-mail address of the list’s moderator or supervisor in
angle brackets.]