Stedman

Summary:

            In the article “Annoying Ways People Use Sources”, Stedman uses the analogy that slow driving is like sloppy writing. He makes an argument that the people who drive slow and use the left lane on the high way are like the people that do not know how to effectively integrate sources into their writings. Stedman then discusses “annoyances” that are actual writings from his first year composition class. The name that he gives one example is “Armadillo Roadkill” which refers to dropping a quotation without the introduction of it. Stedman then refers to other examples of bad writings and relates them to other clever names such as “Dating Spiderman”.

Questions:

1.     I do not think that Stedman’s advice relates to that of Greene, Kantz, and Porter because Stedman focused mainly on the way you use your citations and make your paper flow, while Kantz, Greene, and Porter focused on how to establish your own thoughts about a topic and how to effectively find resources.

2.     I have been taught to use my information, cite it with parenthesis, and have a list of all the sources cited at the end of the paper.

3.     My views about how to use sources hasn’t necessarily changed however, I will definitely try to use Stedman’s advice the next time I attempt to use citations in my writings.

Response:

            I thought that Stedman’s analogy that he used was a very effective way of getting his ideas across about mistakes people make when citing information in papers. I also enjoyed how he used real examples of bad writing and gave each of them a name to go along with it.