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How body language affects your presentation

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We all know that when we give a presentation or speak in front of a group, not only are our words important, but the body language that accompanies them.

Your words may give the audience one message while your body sends quite another.

As if getting the words out wasn't hard enough, right?

An infographic from SOAP Presentations lists 10 body language tips to employ during your next presentation. These tips range from how to get the audience to like you, to how to make sure the audience remembers your key points.

For example:

1. To get the audience to like you, make eye contact. People tend to pay more attention to and like those who look them in the eye.

2. To boost your confidence, open your chest and arms, and keep your back straight.

3. To demonstrate authority, be calm and use small, stiff gestures.

4. To draw the audience's attention to something, point directly at it and look at it yourself. The audience will follow your lead.

5. To convince the audience of something, use positive gestures - smiling, nodding, open movements, etc. - throughout the presentation.

Check out the full graphic for more:

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10 Body Language Tips Every Speaker Must Know (Infographic)

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We all know that when we give a presentation or speak in front of a group, not only are our words important, but the body language that accompanies them. Your words may give the audience one message while your body sends quite another. As if getting the words out wasn't hard enough, right?

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                  Speeches and Presentations 

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                  Speeches and Presentations 

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Lists common issues to avoid when writing a rhetorical analysis

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Outline of how to write a Rhetorical Analysis

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Adapted from Fannon's guide

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Not a great sample, but an average one.

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Tips for writing argumentative essays

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The Purdue University Online Writing Lab serves writers from around the world and the Purdue University Writing Lab helps writers on Purdue's campus.

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Explains what a rhetorical analysis essays does

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Guide and tools for the entire writing process

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We are a globally renowned resource that provides assistance with English to students, teachers, professionals, and organizations across the world. Our goal is to assist clients in their development as writers - no matter their skill level.

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Purdue OWL® - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University

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We are a globally renowned resource that provides assistance with English to students, teachers, professionals, and organizations across the world. Our goal is to assist clients in their development as writers - no matter their skill level.

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                                  Writing Genres

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                                  Writing Genres

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Saugus High School - Library Media Center

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Contact Us Databases Destiny Quest Research & Writing Guide Resources Standards Tools

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US demographic information

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The Census Bureau's mission is to serve as the nation's leading provider of quality data about its people and economy.

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Great for primary documents

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The world’s largest library. View historic photos, maps, books and more. Contact experts for help with research. Plan a visit. Home of U.S. Copyright Office.

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On-line library to find newspaper and magazine articles

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College Essays, Research Papers, Book Reports | Internet Public Library

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Need writing help for your college essays and research papers? Your search ends here. IPL provides suitable samples to enhance your essay writing, so you can produce top-notch papers every time.

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Good place for global population statistics

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De domeinnaam www.geohive.com is geregistreerd in opdracht van een klant van Argeweb. U kunt hieronder checken of uw domeinnaam vrij is.

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Search for various government statistics

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World Statistics Day was celebrated on October 20, 2015!

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Statistical Programs of the United States Government

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World Statistics Day was celebrated on October 20, 2015! Federal Registers We welcome your comments/proposals and encourage you to share these notices with other organizations, advisory committees, and interested individuals. To ensure that any comments are included in the respective dockets, please follow the process for submitting comments as indicated in the notices.

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Resources to find good sources

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Use for help with grammar and punctuation confusion and questions

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A Guide to Grammar, Punctuation and Style

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Click on MLA8 at the top for the most current citation rules.

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EasyBib®: Free Bibliography Generator - MLA, APA, Chicago citation styles

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Automatic works cited and bibliography formatting for MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian citation styles. Now supports MLA 9.

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Free version checks spelling, grammar, plagiarism, syntax, gives suggestions for stronger writing, and automatic scoring to give you an idea of how strong your writing is.

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Requiring no downloads, the proofreader and plagiarism checker use AI to scan your essays and papers for any errors and assign them an automated score. This will help you correct any grammatical and spelling mistakes, address unintentional instances of plagiarism and earn a higher grade for your work.

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PaperRater: Free Online Proofreader with Grammar Check, Plagiarism Detection and more

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PaperRater proofreads and rates your essays & papers. It picks out grammar & spelling errors, detects plagiarism and grades your writing. It includes resources on grammar, writing, spelling & more.

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Free to add to Firefox. Advanced spelling and grammar checker

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Millions trust Grammarly's free writing app to make their messages, documents, and posts clear, mistake-free, and effective.

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Suggestions for strong verbs

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A list of words to use instead of "said"

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Suggested words to use instead

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Helpful tool in writing transitions, introducing evidence, etc...

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Helpful tools for varied word choice and style for use during the revising process.

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Helpful tool for improving concise writing.

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Tips on understanding what an assignment is asking you to do

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Help on gathering and using evidence

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What this handout is about

This handout will provide a broad overview of gathering and using evidence. It will help you decide what counts as evidence, put evidence to work in your writing, and determine whether you have enough evidence. It will also offer links to additional resources.

Introduction

Many papers that you write in college will require you to make an argument; this means that you must take a position on the subject you are discussing and support that position with evidence. It's important that you use the right kind of evidence, that you use it effectively, and that you have an appropriate amount of it. If, for example, your philosophy professor didn't like it that you used a survey of public opinion as your primary evidence in your ethics paper, you need to find out more about what philosophers count as good evidence. If your instructor has told you that you need more analysis, suggested that you're "just listing" points or giving a "laundry list," or asked you how certain points are related to your argument, it may mean that you can do more to fully incorporate your evidence into your argument. Comments like "for example?," "proof?," "go deeper," or "expand" in the margins of your graded paper suggest that you may need more evidence. Let's take a look at each of these issues-understanding what counts as evidence, using evidence in your argument, and deciding whether you need more evidence.

What counts as evidence?

Before you begin gathering information for possible use as evidence in your argument, you need to be sure that you understand the purpose of your assignment. If you are working on a project for a class, look carefully at the assignment prompt. It may give you clues about what sorts of evidence you will need. Does the instructor mention any particular books you should use in writing your paper or the names of any authors who have written about your topic? How long should your paper be (longer works may require more, or more varied, evidence)? What themes or topics come up in the text of the prompt? Our handout on understanding writing assignments can help you interpret your assignment. It's also a good idea to think over what has been said about the assignment in class and to talk with your instructor if you need clarification or guidance.

What matters to instructors?

Instructors in different academic fields expect different kinds of arguments and evidence-your chemistry paper might include graphs, charts, statistics, and other quantitative data as evidence, whereas your English paper might include passages from a novel, examples of recurring symbols, or discussions of characterization in the novel. Consider what kinds of sources and evidence you have seen in course readings and lectures. You may wish to see whether the Writing Center has a handout regarding the specific academic field you're working in-for example, literature, sociology, or history.

What are primary and secondary sources?

A note on terminology: many researchers distinguish between primary and secondary sources of evidence (in this case, "primary" means "first" or "original," not "most important"). Primary sources include original documents, photographs, interviews, and so forth. Secondary sources present information that has already been processed or interpreted by someone else. For example, if you are writing a paper about the movie "The Matrix," the movie itself, an interview with the director, and production photos could serve as primary sources of evidence. A movie review from a magazine or a collection of essays about the film would be secondary sources. Depending on the context, the same item could be either a primary or a secondary source: if I am writing about people's relationships with animals, a collection of stories about animals might be a secondary source; if I am writing about how editors gather diverse stories into collections, the same book might now function as a primary source.

Where can I find evidence?

Here are some examples of sources of information and tips about how to use them in gathering evidence. Ask your instructor if you aren't sure whether a certain source would be appropriate for your paper.

Print and electronic sources

Books, journals, websites, newspapers, magazines, and documentary films are some of the most common sources of evidence for academic writing. Our handout on evaluating print sources will help you choose your print sources wisely, and the library has a tutorial on evaluating both print sources and websites. A librarian can help you find sources that are appropriate for the type of assignment you are completing. Just visit the reference desk at Davis or the Undergraduate Library or chat with a librarian online (the library's IM screen name is undergradref).

Observation

Sometimes you can directly observe the thing you are interested in, by watching, listening to, touching, tasting, or smelling it. For example, if you were asked to write about Mozart's music, you could listen to it; if your topic was how businesses attract traffic, you might go and look at window displays at the mall.

Interviews

An interview is a good way to collect information that you can't find through any other type of research. An interview can provide an expert's opinion, biographical or first-hand experiences, and suggestions for further research.

Surveys

Surveys allow you to find out some of what a group of people thinks about a topic. Designing an effective survey and interpreting the data you get can be challenging, so it's a good idea to check with your instructor before creating or administering a survey.

Experiments

Experimental data serve as the primary form of scientific evidence. For scientific experiments, you should follow the specific guidelines of the discipline you are studying. For writing in other fields, more informal experiments might be acceptable as evidence. For example, if you want to prove that food choices in a cafeteria are affected by gender norms, you might ask classmates to undermine those norms on purpose and observe how others react. What would happen if a football player were eating dinner with his teammates and he brought a small salad and diet drink to the table, all the while murmuring about his waistline and wondering how many fat grams the salad dressing contained?

Personal experience

Using your own experiences can be a powerful way to appeal to your readers. You should, however, use personal experience only when it is appropriate to your topic, your writing goals, and your audience. Personal experience should not be your only form of evidence in most papers, and some disciplines frown on using personal experience at all. For example, a story about the microscope you received as a Christmas gift when you were nine years old is probably not applicable to your biology lab report.

Using evidence in an argument

Does evidence speak for itself?

Absolutely not. After you introduce evidence into your writing, you must say why and how this evidence supports your argument. In other words, you have to explain the significance of the evidence and its function in your paper. What turns a fact or piece of information into evidence is the connection it has with a larger claim or argument: evidence is always evidence for or against something, and you have to make that link clear.

As writers, we sometimes assume that our readers already know what we are talking about; we may be wary of elaborating too much because we think the point is obvious. But readers can't read our minds: although they may be familiar with many of the ideas we are discussing, they don't know what we are trying to do with those ideas unless we indicate it through explanations, organization, transitions, and so forth. Try to spell out the connections that you were making in your mind when you chose your evidence, decided where to place it in your paper, and drew conclusions based on it. Remember, you can always cut prose from your paper later if you decide that you are stating the obvious.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself about a particular bit of evidence:

1. OK, I've just stated this point, but so what? Why is it interesting? Why should anyone care?

2. What does this information imply?

3. What are the consequences of thinking this way or looking at a problem this way?

4. I've just described what something is like or how I see it, but why is it like that?

5. I've just said that something happens-so how does it happen? How does it come to be the way it is?

6. Why is this information important? Why does it matter?

7. How is this idea related to my thesis? What connections exist between them? Does it support my thesis? If so, how does it do that?

8. Can I give an example to illustrate this point?

Answering these questions may help you explain how your evidence is related to your overall argument.

How can I incorporate evidence into my paper?

There are many ways to present your evidence. Often, your evidence will be included as text in the body of your paper, as a quotation, paraphrase, or summary. Sometimes you might include graphs, charts, or tables; excerpts from an interview; or photographs or illustrations with accompanying captions.

Quotations

When you quote, you are reproducing another writer's words exactly as they appear on the page. Here are some tips to help you decide when to use quotations:

1. Quote if you can't say it any better and the author's words are particularly brilliant, witty, edgy, distinctive, a good illustration of a point you're making, or otherwise interesting.

2. Quote if you are using a particularly authoritative source and you need the author's expertise to back up your point.

3. Quote if you are analyzing diction, tone, or a writer's use of a specific word or phrase.

4. Quote if you are taking a position that relies on the reader's understanding exactly what another writer says about the topic.

Be sure to introduce each quotation you use, and always cite your sources. See our handout on quotations for more details on when to quote and how to format quotations.

Like all pieces of evidence, a quotation can't speak for itself. If you end a paragraph with a quotation, that may be a sign that you have neglected to discuss the importance of the quotation in terms of your argument. It's important to avoid "plop quotations," that is, quotations that are just dropped into your paper without any introduction, discussion, or follow-up.

Paraphrasing

When you paraphrase, you take a specific section of a text and put it into your own words. Putting it into your own words doesn't mean just changing or rearranging a few of the author's words: to paraphrase well and avoid plagiarism, try setting your source aside and restating the sentence or paragraph you have just read, as though you were describing it to another person. Paraphrasing is different than summary because a paraphrase focuses on a particular, fairly short bit of text (like a phrase, sentence, or paragraph). You'll need to indicate when you are paraphrasing someone else's text by citing your source correctly, just as you would with a quotation.
When might you want to paraphrase?

1. Paraphrase when you want to introduce a writer's position, but his or her original words aren't special enough to quote.

2. Paraphrase when you are supporting a particular point and need to draw on a certain place in a text that supports your point-for example, when one paragraph in a source is especially relevant.

3. Paraphrase when you want to present a writer's view on a topic that differs from your position or that of another writer; you can then refute writer's specific points in your own words after you paraphrase.

4. Paraphrase when you want to comment on a particular example that another writer uses.

5. Paraphrase when you need to present information that's unlikely to be questioned.

Summary

When you summarize, you are offering an overview of an entire text, or at least a lengthy section of a text. Summary is useful when you are providing background information, grounding your own argument, or mentioning a source as a counter-argument. A summary is less nuanced than paraphrased material. It can be the most effective way to incorporate a large number of sources when you don't have a lot of space. When you are summarizing someone else's argument or ideas, be sure this is clear to the reader and cite your source appropriately.

Statistics, data, charts, graphs, photographs, illustrations

Sometimes the best evidence for your argument is a hard fact or visual representation of a fact. This type of evidence can be a solid backbone for your argument, but you still need to create context for your reader and draw the connections you want him or her to make. Remember that statistics, data, charts, graph, photographs, and illustrations are all open to interpretation. Guide the reader through the interpretation process. Again, always, cite the origin of your evidence if you didn't produce the material you are using yourself.

Do I need more evidence?

Let's say that you've identified some appropriate sources, found some evidence, explained to the reader how it fits into your overall argument, incorporated it into your draft effectively, and cited your sources. How do you tell whether you've got enough evidence and whether it's working well in the service of a strong argument or analysis? Here are some techniques you can use to review your draft and assess your use of evidence.

Make a reverse outline

A reverse outline is a great technique for helping you see how each paragraph contributes to proving your thesis. When you make a reverse outline, you record the main ideas in each paragraph in a shorter (outline-like) form so that you can see at a glance what is in your paper. The reverse outline is helpful in at least three ways. First, it lets you see where you have dealt with too many topics in one paragraph (in general, you should have one main idea per paragraph). Second, the reverse outline can help you see where you need more evidence to prove your point or more analysis of that evidence. Third, the reverse outline can help you write your topic sentences: once you have decided what you want each paragraph to be about, you can write topic sentences that explain the topics of the paragraphs and state the relationship of each topic to the overall thesis of the paper.

For tips on making a reverse outline, see our handout on organization.

Color code your paper

You will need three highlighters or colored pencils for this exercise. Use one color to highlight general assertions. These will typically be the topic sentences in your paper. Next, use another color to highlight the specific evidence you provide for each assertion (including quotations, paraphrased or summarized material, statistics, examples, and your own ideas). Lastly, use another color to highlight analysis of your evidence. Which assertions are key to your overall argument? Which ones are especially contestable? How much evidence do you have for each assertion? How much analysis? In general, you should have at least as much analysis as you do evidence, or your paper runs the risk of being more summary than argument. The more controversial an assertion is, the more evidence you may need to provide in order to persuade your reader.

Play devil's advocate, act like a child, or doubt everything

This technique may be easiest to use with a partner. Ask your friend to take on one of the roles above, then read your paper aloud to him/her. After each section, pause and let your friend interrogate you. If your friend is playing devil's advocate, he or she will always take the opposing viewpoint and force you to keep defending yourself. If your friend is acting like a child, he or she will question every sentence, even seemingly self-explanatory ones. If your friend is a doubter, he or she won't believe anything you say. Justifying your position verbally or explaining yourself will force you to strengthen the evidence in your paper. If you already have enough evidence but haven't connected it clearly enough to your main argument, explaining to your friend how the evidence is relevant or what it proves may help you to do so.

Common questions and additional resources

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Lunsford, Andrea A., and John J. Ruszkiewicz, John J. Everything's an argument. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999

Miller, Richard E., and Kurt Spellmeyer. The New Humanities Reader. 5th ed. Boston: Cengage, 2016.

Research Using Primary Sources. University of Maryland Libraries.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

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What this handout is about This handout will provide a broad overview of gathering and using evidence. It will help you decide what counts as evidence, put evidence to work in your writing, and determine whether you have enough evidence. ... Continued

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How to determine if a print source is valuable

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What this handout is about

This handout will discuss strategies to evaluate secondary printed sources-books, journal articles, magazines, etc.-based on three criteria: objectivity, authority, and applicability to your particular assignment. Printed sources, whether primary or secondary, provide the evidence for most of the academic essays you will write in college. Non-print sources, such as webpages, works of art (performance and fine), and interviews often provide significant source material for analysis but are not covered in this handout.

Introduction

At some point in your college career, you will be asked to write a research paper. While you may associate research papers with history or political science classes, the study of most disciplines involves the collection and interpretation of data with the intent of making and supporting an argument. To do this, you must use some printed texts, whether they are primary documents or secondary sources that analyze primary sources.

If you have never written a research paper at the college level, the process may appear daunting. The first step, of course, is to develop a topic that investigates a problem important to your discipline. For this, talk to your instructor or the library Reference staff and check out our handouts on understanding assignments, constructing thesis statements, and making arguments in academic writing.

So you come up with a good idea and head to the library to begin research. UNC's Davis Library contains over five million books and journals. Which ones are useful to your study? What if the information they present is false, outdated, or biased to the point of inaccuracy? How can you tell? This handout will help answer these questions.

Researchers approach an unfamiliar source and ask questions of it with the intention of discovering clues that will tell them if they can trust the source and if it can add anything to the argument. The steps that are outlined below may appear drawn-out and perfunctory to some; each step is outlined in detail so that both novice and advanced researchers can benefit. This will help you approach your sources more carefully and critically.

Primary and secondary sources

This handout will focus on how to evaluate secondary sources, but the critical skills you learn here will help in analyzing primary sources too. Before we can get to secondary sources, we need to differentiate primary from secondary sources. Primary sources come in various shapes and sizes, and often you have to do a little bit of research about the source to make sure you have correctly identified it.

In a nutshell, a primary source was produced at the same time that the events described in the source took place. Sound easy? In most cases it is. Here are some examples and problem areas:

Diaries and letters written by people who were participants in the actions they describe are easy to classify as primary sources, but what about memoirs or autobiographies ? These are usually written well after the events took place and often will tell you more about the period in which they were written than about the period they describe.

What about newspapers ? The author of an article presents an interpretation, but if the article reports current events, it is primary. If the article reports past events, it is secondary. Keep in mind that an article about a past event can present valuable primary evidence concerning the author's context.

What about fiction? If you are studying the novel or poem for its own sake, it is a primary source. If you are using the novel or poem as evidence-a historical novel, for example-it is a secondary source. In the same vein, a 19th-century history textbook can be considered a primary source if you are studying how the work was influenced by the period in which it was written or how it fits into a continuum of historical analysis (that is called historiography).

Check out this table to help differentiate primary and secondary sources.

Primary

Secondary

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

An article that analyzes the motif of the 'savage other' in The Tempest.

The Diary of Anne Frank

A book about the Holocaust

The Declaration of Independence

A biography of Thomas Jefferson

Population statistics on Ethiopia from The World Factbook

An article titled "The impact of population growth on infant mortality in Ethiopia."

Secondary sources will inform most of your writing in college. You will often be asked to research your topic using primary sources, but secondary sources will tell you which primary sources you should use and will help you interpret those primary sources. To use them well, however, you need to think critically about them.

There are two parts of a source that you need to analyze: the text itself and the argument within the text.

Evaluating the text

You evaluate a text to determine the objectivity of the author and the credibility of the work. Do not assume that your sole motive or goal is to eliminate sources. While this may be a consequence of your analysis, your goal should be to understand the context of the work so you can assess how it can inform your argument. To do this, you must analyze the text according to three criteria: the author, the publisher, and the date of publication.

Author

Remember back at the beginning of this handout I wrote that critically analyzing sources is all about asking questions? Well, here is where you show off that skill. The next time you pick up a book in the library, look at the author's name. Have you heard of her? Do you know if he is cited in other books on the subject? Has your instructor mentioned the author's name? Is she affiliated with a university (which may or may not add to her authority)? Does the author acknowledge an organizational affiliation? The acknowledgements and preface are good places to get the answers to most of these questions.

Publisher

The questions you will ask about the publisher are similar to those asked about the author. Look in the first few pages of the book for the copyright and publisher information. Did a university press-for example, UNC Press, UT Press-publish the text? Did a popular press-Jones and Bartlett, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich-publish it? You can be relatively sure that if a university press published the book, it has been held to a high academic standard. Popular presses differ in their standards. You may have to look at other aspects of the book (see below for tips on identifying tone and audience) or look at other books produced by the same publisher to judge the credibility of the text. Remember, you are not looking for ways to exclude works. Rather, you are trying to understand the context in which the book was written so you can better analyze its content.

Date of Publication

If you are researching a current issue, it stands to reason that you want the most up-to-date sources you can find. If your topic is not so current, it is often acceptable to go back ten or even twenty years for your sources. If there is a more recent book on the same topic, make sure that you look at it. Maybe the author found new evidence that drastically alters the argument of the first book. The age of a work can be easy to determine, but it is sometimes tricky. The page that has all the publisher's information has a copyright date. Has the work been translated? If so, that date is probably the date of the translation. Is there more than one date listed on the page? In that case, you probably have a newer edition. If so, the author wrote most of the book at the time of the first date of publication, although new information may have been added since then.

Objectivity

After analyzing the text, you may find some bias. That does not mean you should discard it. Perhaps the author thanks an anti-homosexual religious organization for funding his research on same-sex marriages. You may be tempted to toss the book aside because you feel that a biased work will not provide the 'facts.' But you may be missing out on some good evidence. No secondary work is going to give you the 'facts.' Secondary sources provide interpretations of primary data. Every interpretation is influenced by the author's context. Find out where the author is coming from and use the evidence accordingly. For example, the book about same-sex marriages funded by the Southern Baptist Convention may provide a clear presentation of the conservative side of the issue. Paired with a book that provides a liberal interpretation, the conservative book may provide valuable information about the various positions within the discussion.

Evaluating an argument

Analyzing the author, publisher, and age of the text provides a good place to start your analysis. You should not stop there, however. You have to move beyond the appraisal of the text and begin to analyze the content. To do this, you can use the same technique of asking questions and searching for responses.

Applicability

Is the work applicable to your study? The first place to look for answers is the table of contents. A book can have a great title but then can be full of tangential ideas or take an approach that simply may not add to your study. The next place to check out is the index. The index is a wonderful resource for researchers. You can use it to quickly jump to particular passages if your topic is well defined. More often, you'll scan the index to get a feel for the authority and scope of the text. Often you can learn most of what a book can tell you by reading the preface and the introduction and scanning the table of contents and index.

Argument

Analyzing the argument gets to the heart of a critical approach to your sources. While this task may seem daunting at first, here are some tips and techniques you can learn to make it a lot easier:

Is the information supported by evidence? Take a good look at the footnotes or endnotes. What kinds of sources did the author use? Does the bibliography mention the important books in the field?

What is the major claim or thesis of the book or article? Is it clear what the author is trying to prove?

What are the primary assumptions on which the author bases the argument's main claim? Do you agree with those assumptions? Is the author taking too much liberty in making those assumptions?

Check out the Book Review Index in the Reference section of the library. Read what other scholars have written about this book. Are the reviews generally positive? Do they consider the book useful or important to the field? This is not considered cheating. On the contrary, it will enable you to read the book with your eyes open, so to speak.

Audience

An analysis of the audience can tell you a lot about how much authority a book or article can claim. Most of what you uncovered in your analysis of the text will inform your judgment of the intended audience. You can find out more by looking at how the book is written and what type of format it is written in. Is the work full of technical terms or graphs? Then the audience may be academic. Is the language very simple with lots of pictures? Then the audience may be a younger crowd, or the book may be intended for light reading. If you are reading a newspaper or magazine, look at the advertisements. Who does the publisher hope will read the source? An advertisement for Lexus automobiles or Johnny Walker Red scotch in "Newsweek" may indicate a wealthy, educated (and possibly male) audience. An advertisement in "People" for Tommy Hilfiger or Pepsi may indicate a different audience.

Tone

The tone of a book is how the author represents himself or herself through language. Strong and impassioned language may indicate to you that the author is too emotionally connected to the work to provide an objective analysis. Most academic authors try to appear impartial in their writing by always writing in the third person and staying away from loaded adjectives. Here are some questions you can ask about the author's tone:

Does the author's language seem impartial to you? Are wild claims made? Is a lot of emotional language used?

Does the author remain focused on the argument? Does he or she jump from point to point without completing any thoughts?

Does the author seem objective? Does the information appear to be propaganda to you? Is a specific agenda put forth through the selection of data or the manipulation of evidence? Remember, finding a bias does not necessarily mean you should discard the book. Take it in stride and use it accordingly.

Authority

Answers to all the questions posed above will help you determine whether you can accept a source as an authority. Can you trust it? What can you trust about it? There is no easy way to answer that question, but by carefully approaching both the text and the argument you can feel more confident about the source.

Following the trail

It may happen that you come up with a topic and go to the library to find sources. You sit down with ten books that you gleaned from a keyword search on the library's online catalog. You put all ten books through the critical analysis steps outlined above, and only one fits all your criteria. What do you do now? Go back to the library catalog? Browse the shelves near where you found the first ten? Those methods may work, but a quicker way is to follow the trail of sources in the one book you have decided to use. Look at the footnotes and bibliography. Note titles that the author relies on or refers to as pillars of the discipline. Then look up those book or articles in the library catalog and begin the critical analysis process all over again. This time, however, you know what one author thinks about the book, so it already has achieved a level of authority or importance. Following the trail from one book or article to others can lead to an understanding of the entire structure of the literature on a particular topic.

Apply what you've learned

Now that you know the key terms and what questions to ask, put your newfound knowledge to the test. What questions would you ask of this handout?

Is the author an authority?

Is the author biased?

Can I learn anything from this handout?

How would you go about finding out the answers to these questions? For the first question, go to the UNC Writing Center Homepage. There you will find out who funds the Writing Center and who works there. The answer to the second question is yes, I do have biases, although I am probably not aware of all of them. Do they affect what I write? Of course. Is that necessarily bad? Of course not. The answer to the third question is more difficult. There is no table of contents because this is a short work, but the bold section breaks and bulleted lists should help you scan the document for applicability. Everyone approaches a learning situation from a different angle, and what is useful to one person might not be for the next. That is an assessment you must make from your own perspective.

Don't forget to follow the trail of this handout to continue thinking about these ideas: check out the list below.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Ede, Lisa. Work in Progress: A Guide to Academic Writing and Revising. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/skill26.htm
http://www.lib.calpoly.edu/infocomp/modules/05_evaluate/index.html

http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/lue/evalu.html
[Thanks to Emily Jackson-Sanborn of Duke University's Perkins Library Reference Department for the web references.]
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You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

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