Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

There are three basic types of note-taking during research: summarizing, paraphrasing, and direct quotations. These three tools are essential to creating a research paper that avoids plagiarizing and gives individual flavor to any student's writing. It is important to distinguish between the three. I will describe the purpose of each, and how they differ. Summary A summary is a type of note-taking in which you restate the main idea of a reading selection. The information that you include in a summary is more general than that of paraphrasing. Summaries are shortened versions of the reading selection. Summaries must be written in your own words. Paraphrasing Paraphrasing is a type of note-taking in which you include all the ideas in an article or story. It is not necessarily just the main idea of the selection. It is a shortened version (similar to a summary) of the article; however, it is more detailed than a summary since you are including all the ideas ...

Who is your Favorite Author from An Honest Lie Volume 2? Please check out this link and vote for CB Calsing if you haven't already. And don't forget to buy your copy of An Honest Lie Volume Two!

Sung to the theme from Ghostbusters! If you use a source in your bio project, what you gonna do? Citation! If you paraphrase someone else’s words What you gonna do? Citation! I ain’t gonna get in trouble I ain’t gonna get in trouble. If you summarize some big main ideas What you gonna do? Citation! Direct Quotations need the most attention What you gonna do? Citation! Author, page number, in-text Author, page number, in-text Where’s it gonna be? In text! If you don’t know for sure what to do call Ms. Calsing! Last name, lead in, page number Author and Web site address! I ain’t gonna get in trouble Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah What you gonna do? Citation If you’ve used outside sources and you need to cite them you’d better call Ms. Huckabay Lemme tell you something Citing sources makes me feel so good! I’m gonna give credit! I’m gonna give credit!’ Don’t get caught plagiarizing no no Citation! When you put it in Your own words You still need to do citation What you gonna do? Citation What you go...

Works cited pages are definitely an important part of research writing, but it is only one element of an adequately cited and sourced paper. The second important element is using in-text documentation or citation. This is the method generally used by the Modern Language Association. Every piece of information you include in your paper from another source must be cited both in text and in the works cited page. This is true for paraphrasing -- "putting it in your own words" -- summary, and, of course, direct quotations. All in-text documentation must also appear in a works cited entry, and you will not have anything in a works cited entry that is not also cited in text. Failure to include either a works cited or in-text documentation will result in suspicion of plagiarism. Take the time to do it right so that there will be no question later. So what needs to go into in-text documentation. Well, it can be a little different for each source. Commonly for a book...

More and more students every year are relying on the Internet to do their research. You're probably among them. However, just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean it's free for you to use without citing your sources. In fact, if anything it's probably more important for you to cite sources really carefully so your teacher doesn't get suspicious. The first step to citing sources -- the thing that is most basic and most widely asked for -- is the works cited page. Later in the week, we'll get into in-text documentation too, which is probably more important but harder to grasp. What is a works cited page? Well, it's a list of the resources you used to find your information for your research project. It is comprised of entries, which include specific information. A list of Web site addresses, for instance, isn't enough. For a book entry, you will need to include the author, the title of the book, the city it was published in, the publisher, and the ...

The mad days of going back to work after the summer -- of readjusting to six a.m. mornings and going to bed when the clock tells me to and not when I want to -- are slowly fading. And just in time, I get swamped. Work, work, and more work. Still, I somehow find the time to write. Today, two scenes for the screenplay, day before yesterday, a flash sci fi story. Tomorrow I hope to get another scene written before I head off to work on the restaurant. I'm optimistic enough to think that I may have the first draft of the screenplay done before November, which means I could possibly do NaNoWriMo again this year. I'm not quite sure what to do, though. I have an idea for a western fantasy, but part of it is already written as a short story, so that would be cheating. So really the bottom line is I have no real ideas for this year.

Unfortunately, the title of this blog entry makes it sound a lot more exciting than it actually is, doesn't it? You were all thinking, "Whoopee! It's just like Twilight! " but it's not entirely. In some cases it is, though. Just like Jacob can transform into a wolf, but remain the same lovable Jacob on the inside, so can verbs. They can change, but still have the same kernel of meaning. Verbs change in two major ways. Tense. Tense deals with when the action happens. The most basic tenses we use are past, present, and future, but there are many more tenses that we use every day orally that we may not necessarily know the name of when it comes to grammar class. That's okay. The most common way to make something past tense is to add an -ed to the end. To make it future, tack on "will." Some verbs make it more difficult than that though, so you always have to pay attention! Conjugation. The other way verbs change is to take into account the subject of th...

Hellebore & Rue | Drollerie Press Check out the cover art for the new anthology of which I am a contributor.

Last night I went, with my friends from out of town, on the New Orleans vampire tour from Haunted History. It wasn't...that bad. He told some interesting stories, but I did have to call foul on a few. Like he had the bit about the casket girls wrong at the Ursuline Convent. Today, still playing tourist, I'm off to do the plantations on LA 18. I'm also hoping to pick up a pawpaw at a nursery out there. They had them a few weeks back when I called. The screenplay is going quite well. I think I'll have a first draft done far sooner than expected, and then I'll go in and rewrite, sprinkling in foreshadowing and that type of thing. I like the Celtx program. It's a totally free download for the basic form, and it's really easy to use. Keeps track of all the characters and such. Really nice.

This is a book I love! It makes me laugh every time, and it offers super advise for writings of all ages. Everyone should have it on his or her shelf.

Periodically through this blog, I will be offering nuggets of really important writing advise geared toward middle school students. I have been teaching middle school for seven years, and have taught writing specifically for four years. Not only am I a veteran teacher, but also a published writing. Everything I teach is not only to help kids get better grades and pass state tests, but also to help them become writers in all areas of their lives.

Lately I have had two basset hounds visiting. They come for the day, to dig for rats with my Dane/boxer cross Hamlet and to make my pit/Catahoula Zatoichi feel insecure. Zato is normally the "cute" one, the happy-go-lucky one that gets into all types of shenanigans. He eats light bulbs and climbs chain-link fences as Catahoulas are wont to do. Having these oddly-shaped dogs with comically floppy ears around is putting him off his game. While they are around, he mopes. When they leave, Hamlet whines. It's been just great. Everyone should get to test-drive dogs. I used to think it might be sort of neat to have a basset hound. They're funny, at least. And I bet they're super at sitting on feet to keep them warm in the winter. I had a corgi once that was great at that, and I sort of miss it. However, I have come to the realization that I will never, not in a million years, get a full-time basset hound. Here are six things that I've learned this week about bass...