c# render pdf to image: C# fill out pdf form control SDK platform web page .net html web browser walker--everything-changes0-part3

Everything Changes, or Why MLA

Isn’t (Always) Right

by Janice R. Walker

This essay is a chapter in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2, a

peer-reviewed open textbook series for the writing classroom.

Download the full volume and individual chapters from:

•

Writing Spaces: http://writingspaces.org/essays

•

Parlor Press: http://parlorpress.com/writingspaces

•

WAC Clearinghouse: http://wac.colostate.edu/books/

Print versions of the volume are available for purchase directly from Parlor

Press and through other booksellers.

This essay is available under a Creative Commons License subject to the Writing Spaces'

bottom of the first page of the chapter.

original author(s).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Writing spaces : readings on writing. Volume 1 / edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel

Zemliansky.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60235-184-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-185-1 (adobe ebook)

1. College readers. 2. English language--Rhetoric. I. Lowe, Charles, 1965- II. Zemliansky,

Pavel.

PE1417.W735 2010

808’.0427--dc22

2010019487

C# fill out pdf form - C# PDF Form Data fill-in Library: auto fill-in PDF form data in C#.net, ASP.NET, MVC, WinForms, WPF

Online C# Tutorial to Automatically Fill in Field Data to PDF

convert pdf fillable form to html; create a fillable pdf form from a pdf

C# fill out pdf form - VB.NET PDF Form Data fill-in library: auto fill-in PDF form data in vb.net, ASP.NET, MVC, WinForms, WPF

VB.NET PDF Form Data fill-in library: auto fill-in PDF form data in vb.net, ASP.NET, MVC, WinForms, WPF

convert pdf to fill in form; pdf fill form

257

Everything Changes, or Why MLA

Isn’t (Always) Right

Janice R. Walker

“The only thing that doesn’t change is the fact that everything

changes.”

I’ve heard this saying all my life, but until I wanted to

use it for this essay, it never occurred to me to check where it came

from. According to Bartleby.com, this pithy saying is attributed to

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, and should actually read, “Change

alone is unchanging.” But then Bartleby cites The Columbia World

of Quotations, edited by Robert Andrews, Mary Biggs, and Michael

Seidel, as the source of the information about Heraclitus.

So, now what do I do? Do I change the opening quotation? I like

my version better than Heraclitus’s (maybe because it’s the way I al-

ways heard it, right or wrong). Do I cite Heraclitus? Do I cite Bartleby.

com? Or do I cite The Columbia World of Quotations? Or maybe I don’t

need a citation at all. But then, will I be charged with plagiarism? Of

course, if I can argue it’s common knowledge, maybe I can get away

with leaving it alone?

I’m so confused!

When it comes to citation practices, the saying is not only confus-

ing to cite, but apt. Often citing sources for an academic project is a

bit like trying to hit a moving target: the rules seem to keep changing.

What doesn’t seem to change, of course, is the need to know where

* This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-

Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License and is subject to the

Writing Spaces’ Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative

Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105,

USA. To view the Writing Spaces’ Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces.

org/terms-of-use.

C# HTML5 PDF Viewer SDK to view PDF document online in C#.NET

Process. Data: Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field C# PDF - View PDF Online with C#.NET HTML5 PDF Viewer. Support to zoom in and zoom out PDF page.

convert pdf form fillable; create a pdf form to fill out and save

VB.NET PDF- View PDF Online with VB.NET HTML5 PDF Viewer

Data: Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field Data. Field for DNN, C#.NET Winforms Document Viewer, C#.NET WPF Support to zoom in and zoom out PDF page

create fillable forms in pdf; pdf signature field

Janice R. Walker

258

information comes from. Otherwise, how do we (both authors and

readers) know if the information is reliable? If we don’t know or un-

derstand the context from which information is gleaned, how do we

know what it means? And, of course, failure to cite words, ideas, or

information obtained from other sources is considered plagiarism and

can have serious repercussions.

So, in the face of so much turmoil and because the issue can have

very high stakes, in the classroom and beyond, most of us are, admit-

tedly, confused. While attempting to clear up this confusion may ac-

tually complicate it still further, nonetheless, in this article, I explore

citation as a rhetorical practice, one which does not always fit precisely

within the boundaries of traditional style guides but that nonetheless

follows a logic that does make sense and that can be learned.

Citation as a Rhetorical Act

Strict attribution of sources has not always been necessary, and indeed

in many cultures and contexts, it is still not (necessarily) required.

Ancient texts often did not follow any formal rules of attribution, since

it was assumed that the audience would already be familiar with the

body of scholarly work. I have also heard (somewhere) that in Chinese

culture, the words of others are used without attribution as a way of

honoring those whose words were considered so important that they

needed no attribution

. That is, it would insult the reader to tell him

or her where a quotation was from as much as it would insult an author

to assume that his or her words would not be recognized by a reader

without such attribution.

In most Western cultures, the invention of the printing press is

often cited as an important turning point, especially in discussions

of citation and intellectual property. For one thing, the printing press

allowed for texts to extend in both time and space in ways that oral

texts could not. Even the elaborately illuminated and hand-copied-by-

monks texts were prohibitively expensive and jealously guarded so that

it could safely be assumed that the audience for these works would be

limited. However, the printing press (eventually) allowed for cheaper

yet supposedly perfect copies, making knowledge—or at least making

printed works purporting to be knowledge—more readily available to

the general public. And, of course, free public education extended that

general reading public to, well, anyone who wanted to take the time

VB.NET PDF - WPF PDF Viewer for VB.NET Program

Data: Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field Data. for DNN, C#.NET Winforms Document Viewer, C#.NET WPF PDF pages, zoom in or zoom out PDF pages and

converting a word document to a fillable pdf form; form pdf fillable

VB.NET PDF- HTML5 PDF Viewer for VB.NET Project

Data: Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field Data. Field C#.NET users and developers can view PDF online with PDF page and zoom in or zoom out PDF page

acrobat fill in pdf forms; create a fillable pdf form online

Everything Changes, or Why MLA Isn’t (Always) Right

259

to read a given work. Thus, it could no longer be assumed that read-

ers would be familiar with the body of work referenced by an author.

Even so, we still don’t cite every fact, idea, or quotation. So-called

common knowledge, we are taught, does not need to be cited. That is,

I can write “the world is round” without needing to provide a source to

prove the statement. Of course, there was a time when this statement

would have been considered heretical and not common knowledge at

all! And, quite frankly, it is not technically true that the world is round

at all (see http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_the_earth_round). Apho-

risms, or famous sayings, such as “A rolling stone gathers no moss,”

or “A stitch in time saves nine,” or even “I’ll be back!” may also need

no attribution. But academic writing is written (or composed) for au-

diences who expect strict adherence to guidelines for citation. One

reason for this is that the persuasiveness of a work depends upon the

information the author herself has relied on. Indeed, in some disci-

plines, citation of sources is a hallmark of credibility:

Today, a scientific publication is easily recognized by its foot-

notes, endnotes and references to other scientific articles or

books. This is one of the features which make scientific texts

so different from a journalist’s story or a novel. A scientist

seems to be—at least in his [or her] professional life—an an-

noyingly precise person, whose claims are painstakingly doc-

umented. (Wouters 2)

Outside of academia, of course, citation practices aren’t always so

formal. Newspapers and magazine articles do not usually include a list

of works cited or references after all. But they do (usually) cite their

sources. The Associated Press allows use of anonymous sources only

under condition that

1. The material is information and not opinion or speculation,

and is vital to the news report.

2. The information is not available except under the conditions of

anonymity imposed by the source.

3. The source is reliable, and in a position to have accurate infor-

mation. (APME)

Of course, not all news organizations are as careful about their use

of sources. Nonetheless, even tabloids often attempt to present infor-

mation in such a way as to appear credible. For example, an article on

C# WPF PDF Viewer SDK to view PDF document in C#.NET

Process. Data: Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field one PDF page or whole PDF while in viewing in C#.NET. Abilities to zoom in and zoom out PDF page

add signature field to pdf; pdf create fillable form

VB.NET PDF - View PDF with WPF PDF Viewer for VB.NET

Data: Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field Data. for DNN, C#.NET Winforms Document Viewer, C#.NET WPF Abilities to zoom in and zoom out PDF page.

pdf add signature field; auto fill pdf form from excel

Janice R. Walker

260

UFOs in The Sun, a British tabloid known for sensationalist reporting,

does identify its source even if the claims presented may be question-

able according to scientific standards: “Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of

the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists an alien space-

craft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into

us above Siberia on June 30, 1908” (Watson). But what does an aver-

age reader know about Dr. Labvin’s credentials? Would it matter if his

doctorate is in UFOlogy from the University of Mars or if, instead, he

holds a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT? And what about the foundation

over which he presides?

What do we know about it? Well, I think you

get my point!

A tongue-in-cheek example of the importance of evaluating the

possible biases of one’s sources can be seen in the movie trailer ad-

vertising the 1959 Peter Sellers film, The Mouse that Roared (TCM).

“Here’s what some of the world’s keenest and most objective minds

have said about The Mouse that Roared,” the advertisement proudly

exclaims:

“Could not be improved upon!”

—The Producer

“Completely delightful!”

—The Director

“The title role is exquisitely played!”

—The Mouse

Even if we agree that the Mouse’s acting was superb, we probably

wouldn’t want to cite the Mouse as saying so!

Television commercials and magazine advertisements may include

what is often termed fine print to qualify the claims they make. One

mouthwash claims to be the “#1 Dentist Recommended Brand” but

with an asterisked note that modifies the claim: it is the number one

brand “among fluoride mouth rinses” (ACT). The ad also includes

a note identifying a study to support its claim (and, in the case of

this online ad, a link to the study itself). Of course, not all research

studies are equal. Publication information is essential to aid scholars

in determining the authority of a given source: Where was the study

published? Was it a scholarly journal or a book published by a univer-

C#: XDoc.HTML5 Viewer for .NET Online Help Manual

Click to draw an arrow annotation. Shape outline and shape fill can be set. Loaded file. C# HTML5 Viewer: Other Options ( ). Click to zoom out current file. 7.

allow users to attach to pdf form; pdf fillable form

C# PDF Text Redact Library: select, redact text content from PDF

Read, Extract Field Data. Data: Auto Fill-in Field for PDF text content protecting in Visual C#.NET project. library and components for blanking out PDF text in

adding signature to pdf form; attach file to pdf form

Everything Changes, or Why MLA Isn’t (Always) Right

261

sity press? If not, did it undergo peer review? Scholarly and profession-

al journals in the field may agree—or not—with the results of such

commissioned studies. Thus, it is essential to conduct further research

to determine the credibility of such sources before relying on them

to make an effective argument. (For more information on evaluating

sources, see “Evaluating Sources of Information” at http://owl.english.

purdue.edu/owl/resource/553/01/).

Academic writers, in other words, are held to the highest standards

of reliability for sources. Thus, academic citation formats include in-

formation that will not only help a reader to locate a given source and

give credit to others for their work, but that will also help a reader to

determine a source’s credibility, for example, by identifying authorship

and/or publication information. However, just as the printing press

made it necessary to develop ways to cite information for unfamiliar

readers, the advent of new media has made it necessary to develop new

ways to cite them. That is, scholars nowadays may rely equally (or even

more) on types of resources that quite simply didn’t exist a century—

or even a decade—ago.

Traditional Style Guidelines and New Media

Just when word processors finally automated the process of footnot-

ing, the Modern Language Association (MLA) decided that we should

cite sources using parenthetic notes instead. And when Microsoft Word

2007 included an automatic (sort of) bibliography generator, MLA

responded by changing its formats so the generator is useless.3 Of

course, bibliography generators generally aren’t very good (they are

all GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out—after all). Nonetheless, it

does seem that whenever a technology emerges that can facilitate the

process of documenting sources, MLA changes its rules. Now, MLA

has decreed that we have to include the medium of publication, even

for books and journal articles (the medium for these, by the way, is

“print”). For journal articles accessed through library databases, it is

no longer necessary to include the library information (which was silly

anyway—if you know the name of the database, you can access it

from any library that subscribes to it, but you can’t access a library’s

resources if you aren’t a patron of that library). Instead, MLA now

stipulates that one should designate the medium as “Web” for these

resources. Technically, of course, library databases aren’t on the web

C# PDF Text Extract Library: extract text content from PDF file in

adobe PDF document in C#.NET class. Able to extract and get all and partial text content from PDF file. Ability to extract highlighted text out of PDF document.

create fillable pdf form from word; convert excel spreadsheet to fillable pdf form

Janice R. Walker

262

although they are accessed (usually) through a web portal. So, are you

confused yet?

To make matters worse, MLA has now decreed that it is no longer

necessary to include the Uniform Resource Locator, or URL (the In-

ternet address), for sources that are on the web (182). Why? Because

many students, teachers, and scholars were trying to type in very long

and complex URLs that didn’t work anyway, perhaps because they

don’t understand that many URLs are created dynamically and can’t

be accessed just by typing them into a browser. In other words, be-

cause many people did not seem to be able to figure out how to cite

Internet sources, many styles have all but given up. Hey, you can just

Google it, right?

The American Psychological Association (APA)

now contends that, if a scholar has reason to believe that a given source

accessed online is the “same” as the printed version, then perhaps cit-

ing the print source instead of the version actually consulted might be

okay (271). In case you can’t tell, I disagree that URLs should be omit-

ted from these entries.

Moreover, if a source happens to be in some format other than

“print” or HTML (that is, “Web”), the medium gets, well, even more

complicated. MLA now requires that we designate the medium for

all sources—web, print, Microsoft Word document, JPEG, television,

radio, DVD, CD, PDF, and so on. In other words, we have to know

a lot of things about a given source that most of us don’t know—and,

quite frankly, usually don’t need to know:

An important feature of electronic files is that they are readily

transferable from one medium to another: files may be down-

loaded from their online homes and saved to disks; CD-ROM

titles may be installed on a user’s hard drive; and most formats

may be printed out. For this reason, identifying the publica-

tion medium in the bibliographic reference may be meaning-

less. It certainly violates the principle of economy in that the

protocol or publication information is usually sufficient to lo-

cate the source. (Walker and Taylor 57)

Our computers usually know how to handle files—regardless of pub-

lication media—from the file extension (the letters after the “dot” in a

file name) regardless of whether a given file is online, downloaded to a

hard drive or diskette, included on a CD-ROM, or whatever. I do not

need to tell my computer what program to use to open a file as long as

Everything Changes, or Why MLA Isn’t (Always) Right

263

I have the software to open it. Of course, if my computer doesn’t have

the software installed, then, yes, I may need to do some research to

find out the type of file and what software to use to open it—but even

this process is often automated (try opening a file that your computer

doesn’t recognize; most operating systems and browsers will offer to

search the web for the application for you, for good or ill).

Oh, yeah, and now MLA has (finally) decided to allow students

and scholars to use italics instead of underlining. Actually, that isn’t

quite accurate: MLA always allowed this use, but few people seemed

aware that MLA stipulated that underlining indicated text that should

be italicized (Gibaldi 94). Now, finally, it’s clear that it is okay to use

italics to indicate text that should be italicized (MLA 78) and there

should be only one space after a period, not two (77).

If you’re beginning to think that citation styles are just too compli-

cated, you may be right. However, they don’t have to be. There really

is a logic to citing sources, whether they are online, in print, or in some

other medium, now extant or yet to be developed.

The Logic of Citation

In The Columbia Guide to Online Style, citation is defined as “the

practice of systematically indicating the origins and thoughts, ideas,

knowledge, or words that one uses to author a report, essay, article,

speech, book, website, or other work” (Walker and Taylor 29). The

Columbia Guide, thus, takes a rhetorical approach, including an entire

section on the logic of citation, based on the following five principles:

access, intellectual property, economy, standardization, and transpar-

ency (Walker and Taylor 31).

The principle of access is satisfied by providing sufficient informa-

tion to allow interested readers to locate the sources of information

upon which a writer has relied. That information includes the ele-

ments of citation discussed in the next section, including author, title,

and publication information. The principle of intellectual property en-

sures that proper credit is given for the work of others (hence, avoid-

ing plagiarism), as well as ensuring that a writer’s reliance on another’s

work is not so extensive that it is detrimental to that others’ property

rights. (For more information on intellectual property in the class-

room see http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jwalker/ip/ipdummie.

html). The principle of economy simply means that citations should pro-

Janice R. Walker

264

vide all of the necessary information in as economical a form as pos-

sible, that is, by using a readily recognizable format or code rather than

having to stipulate every aspect of a citation. Imagine how obnoxious

it would be to read the following:

The quotation I included in the first paragraph following the

sub-heading on page 9 of this essay, wherein I defined “cita-

tion” as “the practice of systematically indicating the origins

and thoughts, ideas, knowledge, or words that one uses to

author a report, essay, article, speech, book, Web site, or other

work” is from page 29 of the 2

edition of The Columbia

Guide to Online Style, a book written by Janice R. Walker and

Todd Taylor, and published in the year 2006 by Columbia

University Press, which is located in New York City.

Compare this to the brief parenthetic note inserted in the text

which merely lists the authors’ last names and the page number (i.e.,

Walker and Taylor 29). The principle of standardization ensures that

those readers and scholars within any given discipline will recognize

this note as providing important information. In this case, the read-

ers will know to look in the alphabetical list of Works Cited, usually

at the end of the essay, under “W” to locate the source authored by

Walker and Taylor. Then, if the reader is so inclined, he or she may

choose to locate the book in a library or bookstore, and turn to page

29 to check the quotation or to obtain more information. The paren-

thetic note also helps fulfill the principle of transparency, ensuring that

the citation is as unobtrusive as possible so as not to interfere with the

writer’s presentation of his or her own ideas while still providing all of

the necessary information.

Like most styles, MLA style is designed to fulfill the needs of a

specific discipline. It is thus often difficult to force one style to fit the

needs of work in other disciplines. That is, following MLA style to

cite work in the hard sciences may be just as awkward as attempting

to cite work in languages and literature following IEEE style, which

is designed for the needs of those working in electrical and electron-

ic engineering fields. Different disciplines may use slightly different

arrangements of the elements of citation in order to facilitate com-

munication of important information. For instance, disciplines in the

humanities (MLA and Chicago styles, for instance) often focus on the

author; scientific disciplines (for example, APA or the Council of Sci-

Everything Changes, or Why MLA Isn’t (Always) Right

265

ence Editors) follow what is known as an author-date format. Thus,

elements need to be arranged in such a way as to be readily understood

and recognized by members of the discipline for or in which one is

writing. While most high school and first year college composition

classes require students to adhere to MLA format, students will usually

find that other styles are required in courses in their majors. And, of

course, electronic or electronically accessed sources have further com-

plicated the situation.

Luckily, by using an element approach and understanding the el-

ements of a citation, it is possible to then fit the elements into the

various codes that you may be tasked with following. The standard

elements of most citations are those elements that will aid a reasonably

knowledgeable person to locate the source and help in determining its

credibility for a particular context (in our case, a scholarly one). Thus,

regardless of which style you choose or are directed to follow—and

regardless of how many iterations or changes the styles undergo—not-

ing these elements will ensure that you will be able to adequately cite

your work.

• Author information. Usually, this is the person or persons pri-

marily responsible for a given work, but this could also include

performers, producers, or directors (for plays or films); artists

or composers (for works of art or music); editors (for edited

collections); and/or corporate, group, or organizational authors

(for work-for-hire, government agencies, or unsigned news

articles, for example). Don’t be too quick to assume that an

unsigned article or web page has no author. While this will oc-

casionally be true (in which case, your bibliographic entry will

begin with the title of the article rather than an author’s name),

more often the piece is considered “authored” by the group or

organization that sponsored it.

• Title information. Generally, an article title is enclosed in quo-

tation marks, and preceded by the name(s) of the author(s); if

the article is included in a larger work (for instance, a news-

paper or magazine or an edited anthology), you will also need

to note the title of the larger work (in italics), and include the

name(s) of the editor(s) of the collection, if applicable. Title

information for online sources is often confusing, especially

for personal web pages or sites. A blog entry may have a title

Documents you may be interested

c# render pdf to image : C# fill out pdf form control SDK platform web page .net html web browser walker--everything-changes0-part3