The Joy of Citation
I don’t give a great deal of personal history here, so I will need to fill in some quick gaps.
I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology through Walden University. Right now I am in my first course, which is an introduction to graduate studies in psychology. The course is mostly put in to warm students up to graduate studies. This is probably rather important since the majority of students at Walden have not been students for awhile. However, for someone like me, who has not been out of school very long, it ends up mostly being touchy feely time wasting that has gems of information scattered throughout.
Now as I just said, there are a number of important bits of information scattered in this course. There is a lot of practice in APA style (which I need badly) and a number of development exercises that force us to make a plan for our courses, professional development, and steps to licensure. In between those gems though are thins that are mostly fluff.
Some of the fluff is worthwhile too.
For example, right now we are covering the aspects of scholarly writing. This is includes a couple of video segments that a fifth grader could understand. The best part so far has been the warm up statement which compares/contrasts scholarly writing to things the everyday person has probably written. One thing the speaker in the video brings up is that, “you may have written a note to your child’s teacher…”
Being that I have a mind that thinks in a rather different way from yours, I may be the only person to find a good bit of humor in writing a note to a teacher. I now want to combine the scholarly writing style with all types of usually casual writing. Why simply tell a teacher that your student will be absent on Friday when you can inform them the of the exact reason and a number of important studies that relate to the condition relating to the absence. This is not to poke fun at scholarly writing, but more to make life more enjoyable for people forced to read what I hand them. As such:
Regular Note:
Johnny will be absent Friday.
-Chris
Enhanced Note:
Johnny will be absent Friday. This absence is due to a required visit to the doctor to be inoculated for infectious diseases identified as harmful by the school board (CDC, 2005; SHS, 2009). Any missed work may be forwarded to my home so that negative consequences due to this absence may be mitigated…
Why would anyone use the enhanced note? Because it is fun to use skills you have worked on for years to get quizzical looks from others. Besides, the first sentence is the same, thus within the first two seconds the vital information has been given. Everything after that will give the poor soul on the receiving end a chance to learn and a proper works cited list in order to find your primary source documents.
On a more serious note. Many business documents get far too casual. If you need to write a document for software or policy revisions it will, in reality, benefit your reader to cite source documents and be overly specific. After all, the person reading your recommendations probably does not do your job every day and being very specific will help them understand why the document you have sent to their desk matters rather than just being a vague of a problem you seem to have.
So, for now I am back off to learn to properly cite study notes, video segments, and student forum posts. It may seem inane now, but it will be handy to be in the practice of proper citation once it really matters.
Know what makes citations way better? Endnote. Get it and it’ll do the work for you. Screw remembering the proper style. You can set it to your style.
Chris Schaffer Reply:
October 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I actually got the same recommendation from another friend the other day. And in line with such I am currently trying out the EndNote X3 demo version, it does seem like quite the tool!
Wow, Ph.D. eh? I don’t know if I would ever decide to go that far with my education. I don’t see how it would help me actually. I think it would be funny if someone used APA formatting when writing a letter to a teacher about a child’s absence. In fact, when I am a full time teacher (I’m a substitute right now) I hope that some people will write humorous notes to me. It would make the morning that much more enjoyable.
As for citations, I don’t think you really have to go through all that training. I just go to a website (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/), it tells me everything I need to know. Of course, doing it my way you will have to go back to the website every time you go to cite something…
Chris Schaffer Reply:
October 9th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I will keep it in mind that notes like that will actually provide a good bit of humor for people!
And a Ph.D., while neat to have, does not play well with all fields. If you want to teach at the college level you need it for almost any field, but for working only a few fields really require it. Luckily, psychology is one of those fields where having the extra letters tacked on to your name really does open up a lot more options.
Also, thank you for the citation resource, it will certainly be useful.
There’s often humor in business writing. When I wrote lawyer letters, and I was ordering the party opponent to do something he really didn’t want to do, like turn over discovery they were hiding, I loved signing, “Thanking you in advance for your cooperation.” So passive aggressive!