Blog Post #8: Chapter 7

After reading Chapter 7 of The Bedford Book of Genres, it was mostly information that I am familiar with such as: quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Personally, I prefer to use quoting the author, and then pairing that up with an in-text citation so that I don’t have parenthesis interrupting the flow of my paper. However, this can get repetitive, especially after switching from one document to another constantly, having to say “According to New York Times,” and then “Miami Herald says that.” So in this case, I will use the quote to finish my sentence, and then cite the quote immediately after.

When referring to documentation sources and styles, I find it annoying to have to worry about what type of style I’m writing in, such as MLA or APA. In my opinion, there should be a globalized writing style that everyone uses so that there isn’t any confusion.

One thing discussed in this chapter that I tend to have trouble with is, is determining whether a source is credible enough to use in a research paper. The book states “quote from a source when the author or speaker is an expert in a given field,” but fails to specify what qualifies as an expert. Is it a person with a PhD in a specific field, or simply a person who know a large amount about the subject?