Organizing with Sub-Topics
Subtopics are useful for organizing research in a way that is helpful to readers. Look at your big topic --let's say you picked the topic of "Chivalry"-- and think of the different aspects of Chivalry: it's definition, source, history, and criticism might come to mind. The image on the right is the table of contents for the Wikipedia article about Chivalry. If you look at a list of subtopics, it acts like an overview or summary of the most important information related to your overall topic.
Activity:
Your research topic is "international schools." With the person sitting next to you, make a list of possible sub-topics related to this overall topic. Organize your sub-topics like the table of contents on the right. You must create your list on PAPER, and you must include at least five sub-topics. When you write the research article itself, you should have a "subheading" for every "subtopic" you thought of. A subheading is a secondary heading that goes below the main heading (or title) of the article. See example below:
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Subheadings are not only useful on websites like Wikipedia. They are also used in high-level research writing. Click here to see an example of subheadings being used in a formal college research paper.
Wikipedia Featured Articles
"Featured articles are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. They are used by editors as examples for writing other articles. Before being listed here, articles are reviewed as featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to our featured article criteria. There are 4,716 featured articles out of 5,092,999 articles on the English Wikipedia (~0.1% are featured)."
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What makes an article good enough to be "featured"?
Is it possible to apply what you observe about featured articles to the article that you chose to revise?
Is it possible to apply what you observe about featured articles to the article that you chose to revise?
Activity:
Visit the featured article homepage, and investigate what makes a featured article better than the rest. View at least two examples of featured articles, then fill out this form.
Visit the featured article homepage, and investigate what makes a featured article better than the rest. View at least two examples of featured articles, then fill out this form.
Cite a website in MLA Format
When you cite a website, you need to find the information listed in the image to the right (which comes from the Purdue OWL). However, if the website does not give you one or more of these pieces of information, you should skip over them in your citation. See the following examples:
Article on a web page with an author and no publishing date: Lundman, Susan. "How to Make Vegetarian Chili." eHow. Demand Media. Web. 6 July 2015. Article on a web page with no author: "Athlete'sFoot - Topic Overview." WebMD. WebMD, 25 September 2014. Web. 6 July 2015. |
Activity:
Cite this webpage in your class writing journal: "What is 3D Printing?"
Cite this webpage in your class writing journal: "What is 3D Printing?"
Adding in-text Citations
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When you add new research to your Wikipedia article, cite the information in MLA format: this means that you should use in-text citations.
In-text citations help the reader connect your quotes and paraphrases to their original sources. Wikipedia often uses footnotes (little numbers that correspond to a list of citations). You will NOT be using footnotes. You also do NOT need to change the pre-existing footnotes into in-text citations. Just make sure that any NEW research you add includes an in-text citation. |
Activity:
Complete this citations practice worksheet. Can you write in-text citations in five different ways?
Complete this citations practice worksheet. Can you write in-text citations in five different ways?
Citing Photos in MLA format
Adding new images to your Wikipedia article is a great idea! Images will not count towards your 5 required new sources, but they are a great way to improve the overall quality of your article. Click on the images above to see how to properly cite them.
Remember, if you can't find a certain piece of information for the citation, skip over it. (Your image might not be held in a museum, for example!) You need a full-length MLA citation in the "references" section of your Wikipedia page for EACH image you include. Activity:
Write a citation for this image in your class writing journal. |
Smoothly Incorporating Quotes
Tip #1: Always give your reader warning that a quote is coming next. (A quote should never stand alone without any introduction).
Don't do this:
Activity:
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Tip #2: Use signal phrases to indicate that a quote is coming next.
Do this:
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