Citation and Documentation
[ Class
Logs
]
Teraille
Harper Office
The
office is cheerful, the light reflecting off of whitewashed walls and ceiling. A
pattern mimicking musical notation in colors runs along the tops of the walls,
shelf upon shelf rising from the floor to meet it. Desks, cabinets and filing
drawers are arranged about the room, workplaces for those whose job it is to
keep the harpers and hall in order.
The air is fresh, tangy with sea and hides and well-seasoned woods. A decorative
object has been placed in the center of the room, right in the way. Perhaps you
should ask its owner to move it. The window looks out over Main Beach.Through
the open window, you notice that It is a summer afternoon. Watching from a high
shelf are Jester, Nightblade, Shalla, Brynol, and Judithe. You see Staff
Tackboard, Simony, Harper Rulebook, Useful Facts for Harpers, Amara's Tent,
Paybox, Sandtable, and Skippy here. Teraille and Tereza are here.
Petra walks in from the ballroom.
Tomias mopes
in, looking a bit depressed.
Petra slides into the room and sits in the
back.
Judithe glides out into the ballroom.
Teraille sits atop her
desk calmly, glancing up as her class moseys in. "Hello," she greets.
"Right on time. I like that. We all know each other, right?" Her eyes
sweep the students quickly.
Tomias nods.
Tereza looks around,
nodding to Petra, and Tomias each. "I know them both." she says, before
looking back at Teraille, "And you."
Petra
noddernods.
Teraille nods
faintly. "Well, we'll begin," she observes, "and I'll just call on
everyone by name first. Feel free to answer questions addressed generally
without raising your hand, but please do raise your hand for questions or
comments if I'm talking or waiting for someone to respond. Agreed?" Her
eyes again scan the class.
Tomias nods again. He's not very talkative
right now.
Petra noddernods again as she glances at the others..
Tereza grins, "Agreed."
Teraille nods briefly.
"Good," she says. "We're going to be talking about citation today. Someone
define the word for those of us who may not know." Her eyes sweep the room
as she begins with one of those generally addressed questions.
You
say, "Citation I believe means documenting the source of a quotation or
reference."
Petra frowns at the word and listens to Tomaias'
definition wondering if its right.
Teraille nods. "Exactly," she
approves, continuing swiftly. "So, whenever you use another person's
information or words, you need to document where it came from. Now, I'm
sure we all can see why you need to say where it's from if you quote, but
why if you're only giving information? Tereza? Why do we need to document
sources of our facts?"
Tereza snaps up, looking over at Teraille as the
information filters slowly through her head. "Um," she says, stalling for
time, "So that they can be verified, and so that you aren't cheating
anyone of credit where it is deserved?"
Teraille nods. "The
verification is the most important part. Imagine you're writing about a
historical event. People want to know that you didn't just make it up,
right? They also want to know whether the person you got it from was
trustworthy. So, how do we credit our sources? There are a few ways; I'm
going to go with my favorite, which is also the easiest."
Petra nods
her head as she listens and jots notes down in a old notebook
Teraille
produces a thick pile of hides from beside her on the desk, shuffling
through it idly. "This," she informs her class, "is my latest project, a
dissertation on the effects of poor politicians in leadership positions
through history. I used material from a number of sources: interviews,
primary sources, secondary sources. If a reader wants to know all of the
sources I used, they simply turn to the last few pages, where I have a
complete numbered list." She lays aside most of the pile in order to hold
up those few pages for the class's inspection.
Tereza looks closely at
the page, scanning the layout and then nodding slightly once. She looks at
the pile, then at the paper, raising a hand.
"The numbering is
important for the documentation of individual facts," Teraille observes
before nodding to Tereza in quiet acknowledgment.
Petra nods as she looks
over it, "real organized," she frowns to organized for her.
Tereza
grins, "Do you have to mark /everything/? That you took from that
is?"
Petra nods to herself and mumbles, "I hope not."
Teraille
starts to nod, then stops herself. "Almost," she says. "If you found the
information in two places, you only need to mark it once, and if the only
information you found is what we call 'common knowledge', there's no need
to record it. I'll come to that in a moment." She lifts a sheet of
manuscript, tapping at a line with her finger. "The numbers," she
explains, "are there so that when we use that reference in the manuscript,
they don't need to rewrite all of the details. They just write in the
number and the reader knows to go to the source at the back. Here I wrote
in '43', so we flip to the back and discover that the forty-third
reference is the personal diary of Masterhealer Jenkin."
Petra nods her
head still frowning as it sounds more and more complex.
Teraille pauses
briefly. "Petra," she says mildly, "summarize what I've said up to
now."
Petra looks at her notes and says, "you asked what Citation was
then Tomias said that Citation is documenting references and quotes. You
said he was right and asked Tereza why we need to document sources; then,
she said so that they can be verified and you don't cheat people form
there credit." For someone who hates details and being careful her notes
are detailed! "You also showed us you're last pages of a dissertation you
did showing how you displayed your sources. You even," she frowns again at
the thought, "number your documentation."
Teraille nods. "You need to,
so that you can manage the in-text documentation." She draws a long
breath, studying the page. "In a 80-page manuscript, it is hard to say
what facts come from which source without that documentation."
Petra
nods her head quietly jotting more and more and more notes
down.
Teraille nods towards
Tereza. "When you asked whether you had to
list all your sources, I mentioned something called common knowledge.
Common knowledge is the information that everyone has. To name a few
examples: We are in the middle of a Pass. Healers take care of the sick.
Or even something that /you/ know well enough that you don't need to
verify it. A C major triad consists of the notes C, E, and G."
Teraille
sifts through pages briefly before adding. "An example of /uncommon/
knowledge would be this: 'In the seventh year of his time as Lord Holder,
Jarin decided that all crafters were fools outsider of their area of
specialty, and decreed that their advice be ignored except as it pertained
to the specific area of their schooling.' Do you see the
difference?"
Tereza nods, "Yes."
Teraille nods. "Good. Any questions
thus far?" She glances around the room.
Tereza shakes her head, "No
none."
Teraille nods faintly. "All right." She pauses to look down at the paper. "I'm going to tell you all my way of making up the works cited page at the end; feel free to concoct your own or ask your other teachers for advice. Every time you use a source, write it down and number it in the text an on the page. Your numbers should run sequentially through the manuscript. The first should be one, and the last whatever your final endnote is. Once you've finished, write them all down on their own pages. And if there aren't any questions now, class is dismissed."
