Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [201]
The album “OK Computer,” with titles like “Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police,” and “Climbing Up the Walls,” pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person’s panicky embrace of it (Ross 85).
Using ellipses, you could emphasize the source’s claim by omitting the song titles from the middle of the sentence:
The album “OK Computer” … pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person’s panicky embrace of it (Ross 85).
In most cases, the gap between quoted passages should be short, and in any case, you should be careful to preserve the sense of the original. The standard joke about ellipses is helpful here: A reviewer writes that a film “will delight no one and appeal to the intelligence of invertebrates only, but not average viewers.” An unethical advertiser cobbles together pieces of the review to say that the film “will delight … and appeal to the intelligence of … viewers.”
5. Use square brackets to alter or add information within a quotation. Sometimes it is necessary to change the wording slightly inside a quotation to maintain fluency. Square brackets indicate that you are altering the original quotation. Brackets are also used when you insert explanatory information, such as a definition or example, within a quotation. Here are a few examples that alter the original quotations previously cited.
According to one music critic, the cultural relevance of Radiohead is evident in “the album ‘OK Computer’ … [which] pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person’s panicky embrace of it” (Ross 85).
Popular music has always “[challenged] the mores of the older generation,” according to Nick Hornby (168).
Note that both examples respect the original sense of the quotation; they have changed the wording only to integrate the quotations gracefully within the writer’s own sentence structure.
E. Preparing an Abstract
There is one more skill essential to research-based writing that we need to discuss: how to prepare an abstract. The aim of the nonevaluative summary of a source known as an abstract is to represent a source’s arguments as fairly and accurately as possible, not to critique them. Learning how to compose an abstract according to the conventions of a given discipline is a necessary skill for academic researched writing. Because abstracts differ in format and length among disciplines, you should sample some in the reference section of your library or via the Internet to provide you with models to imitate. Some abstracts, such as those in Dissertation Abstracts, are very brief—less than 250 words. Others may run as long as two pages.
Despite disciplinary differences, abstracts by and large follow a generalizable format. The abstract should begin with a clear and specific explanation of the work’s governing thesis (or argument). In this opening paragraph, you should also define the work’s purpose, and possibly include established positions that it tries to refine, qualify, or argue against. What kind of critical approach does it adopt? What are its aims? On what assumptions does it rest? Why did the author feel it necessary to write the work—that is, what does he or she believe the work offers that other sources don’t? What shortcomings or misrepresentations in other criticism does the work seek to correct? (For specifics on writing abstracts in the Natural Sciences, see Chapter 16, Introductions and Conclusions Across the Curriculum.)
You won’t be able to produce detailed answers to all of these questions in your opening paragraph, but in trying to answer some of them in your note-taking and drafting, you should find it easier to arrive at the kind of concise,