At the beginning of the semester, using quotes in a paper for evidence was something I had done before but never really learned how to do properly. I was used to just throwing in a quote where it sounded like it fit with no introduction and no explanation. Over the semester Professor Spain introduced new paragraph styles, first the TRIAC then the Barclays, that gave structure and acted as a map for writing with quotations. Both the Barclays and TRIAC were helpful to my learning of how to properly quote in papers to create an argument because they specifically outlined what to do before, during, and after the quote drop. In both of these paragraph styles the common idea is to introduce the quote, state the quote and citation, then analyze what the quote is saying and how it relates to your claim. Throughout the semester we were assigned homeworks after reading new articles to make us practice using these formats. In addition to these paragraph templates we used the “They Say, I Say” book which supplemented what was being taught in class. There were many chapters that discussed how to use and introduce quotes (they say), and then summarize, analyze, and conclude about what the source means in relation to your argument (I say). This book was also useful because it provided templates for introducing quotes. At the beginning of the semester I relied heavily on these templates until I became more comfortable with writing and began to use my own verbiage. This can be seen in paper 1 where I mostly use “Yoshino claims that…” and “In other words this means…” whereas in papers 2 and 3 I used stronger verbs.

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When it came to writing a rough draft, I found it easy to integrate these old homeworks since they were already structured the right way. When choosing quotes to use, I would look back at annotations and see where I marked claims or good quotes. I would then check my outline to see if it supported what I wanted to say in the paragraph. In paper 2 I made sure to introduce all my quotes with something like “The author claims that,” in order to avoid coyote quotes. I would then follow each quote with something like “In other words,” to provide analysis after. While reviewing I would use a word search to make sure I never used the word “says” to introduce a quote, and if I did I would switch it to a more powerful verb. Over the semester the TRIAC and Barclays paragraphs became more second nature and I became confident in my ability to use quotes in my papers.