RR - Chapter 3: Ballenger

Advice for your research and writing:

• Take notes! Don't just copy passages out of books, check out books from the library that are seemingly relevant to your topic, or print of entire articles without reading through and making note of what is important. This lack of effort in the research stage makes for a far more challenging writing stage.
• ie: "I was always a slow writer, but I now realize that one major reason I got bogged down writing my research paper drafts was my inattention to notetaking [...] I now believe that the writing that takes place in the middle of the research process - the notetaking stage - may be as important, if not more so, than the writing that takes place at the end - composing the draft."
• Making sense of the information you are acquiring during research is the most important foundation of your paper. Without taking the time to make it your own, you are far more likely not only to misinterpret the information, but also to plagiarize. 
• "The relationship between a source and a research writer is often complex." What exactly does this mean? 

- "Paraphrase is the academic equivalent of this therapeutic method for getting people to listen to each other. Try to say in your own words - and in about the same length as the author said it - what you understand that author to mean."

- Summary: "a reduction of longer material into some brief statement that captures a basic idea, argument, or theme from the original."

- "As a general rule, the college research paper should contain no more than 10 or 20 percent quoted material [...] The fact that a quote sounds good isn't reason enough to use it. LIke anything else, quotes should be used deliberately, with purpose."