Revised Journal #3 Benefiting from MLA instruction

I think purchasing the "Rules for Writers" by Diana Hacker is a very good investment for English 202. For the research paper that we are going to be writing it will be very important for us to know how to use MLA formatting and especially how to do the formatting and the citing correctly. I have the sixth edition of the "Rules for Writers" book that I borrowed from a friend and it has a huge section about MLA formatting. I think the sixth edition works just as well as the seventh edition. The MLA formatting section goes from page 411 all the way to 475. I found this to be extremely helpful. The book provides numerous of different examples from different types of texts you may be citing, along with sample papers that include MLA formatting in the paper. Overall, I have found these types of books to be very resourceful and beneficial while writing annotated bibliographies and research papers through the years. I would definitely recommend that all students take advantage of this book and refer to it if there is any question about formatting.

Journal #4 Revised

I read an editorial from our text Practical Argument on page 344-345. The editorial is called "Wikipedia with Caution" and it was published in the Stanford Daily on March 8th, 2012. I found this article to be very interesting since we as a class are now getting into our research projects. With this we are trying to find information and sites that are credible for usage in our papers. The editorial discusses how The Department of History at Middlebury Collage forbade kids to cite wikipedia in their papers. A lot of people became upset about this ban and it gained national attention including an article in the New York Times. This editorial took the position where they thought it was okay to do this and was not an issue of censorship. However, they felt like most kids already knew not to cite Wikipedia in a paper. I mainly agree with this. I think that Wikipedia can be helpful for some quick research. But I also think that it is always important to double check the information from a credible site. I really do not see a reason for people to be upset about not being able to cite Wikipedia as a source in a paper. Also, in the editorial it talks about how Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia did not see Middleburry's action as a "negative thing." Wikipedia had now introduced a citation function where contributors can direct readers to other well-established sources. I did not know that and I think that it was very helpful and a very nice feature for Wikipedia to provide for people. I really liked this editorial and think English teachers should discuss Wikipedia with their students to help them better understand what kind of a role it can play in their papers.