Katy Hanratty Blog #13

While reading Chapter 9 of the Pearson text, the first hot spot I came across was “Whenever you place an in-text citation in the body of the paper, your reader knows to turn to the Works Cited or References list at the end of the paper to get the full bibliographic information” (Pearson 221).  This is one of the most important elements of your paper because the reader wants to make sure that your information is credible and that you are able to back up what you are saying in your essay.  In-text citations are essential to have in your essay because it proves everything your saying in your essay.  Placing an in-text citation is important because then the reader is able to see where your getting your information from.  The second hot spot I found while reading Pearson was “A typical in-text citation contains two elements:  (1) the last name of the author and (2) the page number of the quoted or paraphrased passage” (Pearson 222).  This is also very important in your essay because you need to give credit to the person you got the information from.  Without this information it makes your essay less credible.

The first element of an exploratory essay that I think is important is “The essential move for exploratory thinking and writing is to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or point of view” (Pearson 107).  I think that this is an important element in exploratory writing because in order to keep your essay going you need to think of several different views in order to keep writing.  You need to think of several outside opinions to the problem in order to write about solutions.  The second element of an exploratory essay I think is important is “The key to effective exploratory writing is to create a tension between alternate views” (Pearson 108).  I think that this in an important element in exploratory writing because creating tension between alternate views allows the writer to provide different angles to the problem.  By showing two different angles of a problem, you are giving the reader two sides of the story instead of only one. When the reader is given two sides of the story, there are more ideas, opinions, and points that the reader can now think about.