High School Language Arts: Expository Writing and Using Citations

Write a short expository essay discussing the Greek and Latin origins of many English words. This should be a summary giving some specific examples but mainly serving as an overview of the topic. This essay must be between 500 and 750 words. 

 

An expository essay is nonfiction writing that is based on facts and explains something in detail. These essays can vary in length with some being five pages or longer. For this. topic, you could easily write several pages. For this assignment, however, you are being asked to keep this short. Your essay is meant to be an overview. Sometimes, writing short essays seems harder than writing long ones. You have to decide what leave out. 

 

Remember that each paragraph needs to be focused on one idea. You will have a topic sentence for each paragraph that smoothly moves you into the new focus. You will provide supporting information, and then you will end each paragraph with a concluding sentence. 

 

Also remember that this essay needs to be a formal academic essay. Don’t use personal pronouns (I, me, my, you, we). Also, document your sources. You need to let the reader know where you found your information. You can choose to follow the MLA citation guidelines or the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines. You must let readers know where you are getting your information from. If you summarize information from a source or quote it directly, you must cite the source to keep from being accused of plagiarizing your work. Common knowledge information does not have to be cited. Example: Nashville is the capital of Tennessee. Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in Kentucky. These examples are considered basic information that could easily be found in many sources. 

 

Citation Examples (MLA)

 

Within the paper:

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. The author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Carson stated that modern poetry was marked by an "exploration of social justice" (263). 

Modern poetry is characterized by the "exploration of social justice" (Carson 263).

Carson extensively explored the role of social justice in modern poetry (263).

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number.

We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has "more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change ." ("Impact of Global Warming" 6).

You may also have to add additional information if the same author wrote two books you are using or if a book has two volumes. The in-paper citation should clearly reflect which book from the works cited list you are referring to. 

 

Works Cited page:

In your citation, the elements should be listed in the following order:

1. Author.
2. Title of source.
3. Title of container,
4. Other contributors,
5. Version,
6. Number,
7. Publisher,
8. Publication date,
9. Location.

Each element should be followed by the punctuation mark shown above here.

 

 

Examples:

Book: 

Solomon, Edward W. Culture and Social Justice. Knopf, 1999.

Thomas, Sharon, and Cathy Holland. Sixteenth Century Poetry for Today’s Students. 4th ed., Pearson, 2016.

A website should be in italics:

London, Sasha. "How to Make Vegan Cookies."eHow, www.ehow.com/how_108541_make-vegan-cookies.html.*

A periodical (journal, magazine, newspaper article) should be in quotation marks:

Banchef, Alaka. "Conflicting Voices: The Voice of the Unheard Women." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 15, no. 1, 1984, pp. 41-50.

A song or piece of music on an album should be in quotation marks:

Beyoncé. "Pray You Catch Me." Lemonade, Parkwood Entertainment, 2016, www.beyonce.com/album/lemonade-visual-album/.

A poem (or story) within a larger work:

Kincaid, Chancery. "Me." The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by Jonas Wolff, Vintage, 1995, pp. 306-07.

An essay in a book, or an article in journal should include page numbers.

Adiche, Ngozi. “On Tuesday of Last Week.” The Thing About You, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, pp. 74-94.

When you cite an online source, the MLA Handbook recommends including a date of access on which you accessed the material, since an online work may change or move at any time.

Bernstein, Mark. "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web." A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites, 16 Aug. 2002, alistapart.com/article/writeliving. Accessed 4 May 2009.

The location of an online work should include a URL.

Wheelis, Mark. "Investigating Disease Outbreaks Under a Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention." Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 6, no. 6, 2000, pp. 595-600,wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/6/00-0607_article. Accessed 8 Feb. 2009.

 

On your Works Cited page, these will be listed in alphabetical order. 

 

The Chicago Manual of Style

 

For bibliographies: 

Books: 

Last name, First name. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

Carson, Amanda  European Travels. Translated by Lexie Robbins. New York: Pearson Books, 2001.

 

Periodicals:

Washington, Sarah. “The Hope of Many.” Journal of American Writings 72, no. 5 (2020): 423-510.

Templeton, Seth. “Japanese Modern Art.” Art and Artistry Magazine, May 2019.

Nash, Vicki. “Visiting Iowa in Winter.” Iowa Daily Post (Lewiston, ME), Dec. 21, 2011.

 

Electronic Periodicals: 

Simon, Henry J. "Education and Technology.” Journal of International Universities 75, no. 7 (2011): 6-98. Accessed April 10, 2020. http://www.jloie.org/simon/6354821.

Websites: 

Last name, First name. “Title of Web Page.” Name of website. Publishing organization, publication or revision date if available. Access date if no other date is available. URL .

Ferguson, Allie. Social Justice and Women's Poetry. Portland: Appleton, 2013. https://fergusonresearch.files.wix.com/2019/05/social-justice-and-american-poetry.pdf.

In-text Citations

The Chicago Manual of Style has two options for in-text citations: 

1. Author-date: you put your citations in parentheses within the text itself. 
2. Notes and bibliography: you put your citations in numbered footnotes or endnotes.

Author-date (plus page numbers):

(Smith and Alexander  2021, 63)

(Carson 2010, 125–36)

 

Endnotes: 

Book: 

1. First name Last name, Title of Book (Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication), page number.

 

Periodical: 

 

2. Sarah Alexander, “The Hope of People,” Journal of American Writings  72, no. 5 (2010): 423-510.

 

Hamilton suggests that the role of poetry in modern society can be “to inspire others and bring hope to many.”¹