Drafting and Revising: Researching

The Purpose of the Rough Draft

The first draft of an essay will not be a polished, well-written piece. Drafting allows a writer to craft what his or her paper will look like and the opportunity to continue in the writing process to look over and make adjustments. However, a rough draft is not a hastily put together paper. A rough draft should be as close as possible to the final draft, so only minor modifications are needed. Therefore, beginning with organizational planning and support in a rough draft is necessary to generate a well-written rough draft.

Gathering Support

Remember from the Writing Workshop that each essay written needs to include support from primary and secondary sources. You may also hear people refer to support as proof or quotes. In our brainstorming example, if we write that the theme of Olaudah Equiano is perseverance, the essay should contain information from the text that supports the theme. So, we could use the example where Olaudah survived the slave ship or the issues he had with his master. Any information from the text that you find to back up, or prove, your idea is considered support.

You will find proof and support from both primary and secondary sources. Remember that sources are the various books, essays, and other places a writer finds support for an essay. The primary source is the main work of literature a writer focuses on and uses for an essay.

For example, you might look for books or articles where other people have written about the characters in your novel. However, remember to make sure that your sources are reliable. When using Internet sources, make sure to look at the very end of the link to determine the ending. Remember the different types of websites that can be sources:

Works Cited Entry Reminders

Remember from Writing Workshop, if an essay uses proof from the novel The Great Gatsby to support the essay's thesis statement, the writer must cite the source. Citing a source means to reveal where the information comes from because writers must give credit to any author they borrow proof from.

The way the Works Cited entry looks depends on the type of source. Web source citations look different from magazine article citations or novel citations.

Make sure to determine the type of source in order to find the correct Works Cited entry formula. 

For example, the Works Cited entry for the novel looks like this:

However, putting all of this information into the body paragraph of an essay can distract the reader. So, remember that in-text citations shorten the Works Cited entries by just using the author and the page number of the proof in the body paragraphs of an essay. Notice that the punctuation comes after the closed parenthesis. The in-text citation for The Great Gatsby would be:

The information comes from the author with the last name of Fitzgerald and appears on page 3 of the novel. Then, the reader can find "Fitzgerald" on the Works Cited page of the essay and see all publication information about that particular source.

Citation Interactivity

Now that you have looked over the Works Cited and In-Text Citations information, practice identifying the correctly written formulas.

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