Read and Remix #6: Bedford Book of Genres Chapter 7

Chapter 7 of the Bedford Book of Genres focuses primarily on integrating and documenting sources, specifically how and when to utilize the many different techniques of referring to a text and in which way to credit the authors. Citing texts is something that was extremely isolated for me throughout high school and my past writing endeavors; we were told to either summarize, paraphrase, directly quote, or use a bibliography for each different assignment, but never to incorporate multiple techniques into one paper. Encountering the different ways to integrate and document sources like I did in high school never taught me how to best format my references into my paper and how to best convey my particular message. Fortunately, this chapter cleared up most, if not all, of my confusion on how to best support my arguments with references to a text. I learned that research papers best benefit from directly quoting an author when it directly conveys or supports my message, and that summarizing is best for generally incorporating the ideas presented in one piece. Paraphrasing is not very well-suited for formal papers, such as Project 2, as it can distort the intended meaning of a work and is less factually intact. Additionally, chapter 7 of the textbook helped clear up my worries about which way to cite my sources, which we were instructed to do based on the format our major most often uses. For me, this is APA style. Having never really encountered this method of citation, the examples presented in the text clearly outlined the way in which I should approach my bibliographies, and will pose extremely useful for my next project, and help me actually learn how to cite, rather than relying on EasyBib.