1. Each sentence must begin
with a capital letter and end with
an appropriate punctuation mark (period, exclamation point, or question mark).
2. Quotation-ending punctuation:
With source in the parentheses ( ):
According to Lewis, “Atheism turns out to be too simple” (39).
With source in the
sentence: Jesus says, in John 3:16, that “God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten son.”
3. A
full dash looks like this—not like
this- or this – , ok? Type two hyphens
and no spaces, and--should automatically turn into—.
4. This/that noun
shows that… (Always add a noun. Do not make your readers work hard: tell us
what you want us to notice about “this.”)
5. Give
context to lead into each quotation
(do not waste a moment of your argument!)
6. Use
present tense (says) or present
perfect (has said) except inside quotations. (For some history-based essays, past tense is appropriate for
historical discussion—Jesus’s miracles, World War II, garden of Eden, etc.—but
sources are still quoted in the present tense thus: So-and-so says….)
7. No contractions,
please. Isn’tàis
not.
8. Book Titles
appear in italics. “Article Titles”
appear in quotation marks. Capitalize the Bible like I just did, but do not
italicize it.
9. No you/I/me,
etc. (For some essays, “we” may be allowed if it is used carefully and
accurately. “We” will only work if you
have clearly established that the speaker and the readers are part of the same population—if
you mean your paper to be read by non-Christians, you may not refer to “we
Christians.”)
10. No
singular/plural disagreement. Wrong:
“Someone lost their keys.” Right:
“Someone lost his keys.”
11. Your Works Cited page must adhere to MLA
guidelines perfectly, including
correct information, formatting, alphabetization, etc. Do not trust Easybib blindly!
No comments:
Post a Comment