The Source of Annoyance

Kyle D. Stedman's article, "Annoying Ways People Use Sources," attempts to point out the most common source related issues. I was familiar with a lot of these, as I have had other teachers point out how annoying a lot of these issues are, especially the "armadillo roadkill" one, in which the author doesn't introduce the source he is dropping in at all. 

My favorite of his hilariously titled annoyances was Am I in the right movie? I say "favorite" not because I like this mistake but because, in all of the peer reviews I have had to do in college, it is the most bothersome to me. Am I in the right movie? is the analogy Stedman uses to explain the feeling one gets when the quotation in a paper is not grammatically analogous to the preceding lead in. A lot of these seem like tense and subject-verb agreement patterns. His suggestion is practical: read your work aloud. If it doesn't make sense, change it. This seems like it should be logical advice for the entirety of most essays, but people don't usually have the time to go in and proofread. (or take the time, I guess, for all the non-procrastinators out there)

The annoyance entitled I swear I did some research! was somewhat bothersome for me because of its vague nature. I have taken to only citing after quotations, because it is hard to know where to drop in citations after summaries. I think that as long as the information isn't super specific, it is okay to write a summary style section without citing a specific source. It seems like a good rule of thumb might be, "if I had to look this information up, I should cite it." Perhaps our time in the library will help to make this a little more clear. 

I thought that this was a very clever, approachable, useful article. I didn't know Oprah's boyfriend was capable of such writing.