Lord of the Quotes

After reading chapter 9 from Murray’s Write to Learn I decided to use this blog to share one of my outlining techniques.
When writing a research paper (or any paper that contains quotes) I find one of the most difficult things is keeping track of who said what and which quote goes where, so I came up with this little technique.

Step #1:
Gather together all of the quotes you need for your article. It is always best to air on the side of too many quotes than not enough so collect as many as you can and remember to collect the citing information for EVERY quote. I usually type out all of my quotes and on the line below each one I enter in the citing information (if you format it properly to begin with i.e. in MLA format then you will know right away if you have all the information you need and it will save you time later.)

Step #2:
Print out all of your quotes along with the quoting information (make sure that it is all typed in double spacing because this will come in handy for step #3).
Step #3:
Cut out each quote so that it is on its own strip of paper. Organize quotes so that all quotes from the same book or article are in one pile and then place the strip of paper with that book/article’s bibliography information next to the pile.

Step #4:
Colour-coordinate quotes with source information. By this I mean highlight or underline all the quotes from one source and then highlight the bibliography information in that same colour. For example, if you have 2 quotes from Murray’s book Write to Learn highlight each quote in orange and then also highlight in orange the information you collected for citing the source in your bibliography.

Step #5:
I like to clear off a table for this step. At this point I create an outline for my quotes. I set aside all of the strips of paper with citing information (now colour-coded to their corresponding quotes) and I organize the strips of paper containing the quotes according to where I want them to appear in my paper.

Step #6:
Once I am satisfied with the order of my quotes I tape the strips of paper onto sheets of plain A4 paper, which are much easier to file away or carry around. I only tape the left hand side of the strip, though, so that it forms a flap. Underneath each flap I then write the bibliography citation for that source.

Step #7:
I type out my article/essay, following the outline I created and whenever I come to a quote that needs to be cited in my paper I simply look underneath the flap and find the corresponding citing information and enter it into my essay i.e. (Murray, 2005).

Step #8:
I now type out my Bibliography and my paper is complete!

Hope this helps!
~ Lauren Bersaglio.