Writing About Literature

Your Title

Your title should reflect your thesis

Don’t underline or put your title in quotation marks

Structure

Let the structure of your paper take priority over the structure of the text

Organize your paper first, and then arrange your notes and evidence to fit that organization

Evidence

Tie each piece of evidence into your thesis statement

Show the connection between the evidence and your thesis statement

Interpreting

Give your interpretation of a text

Do your own reading and develop your own opinions

Don’t let the experts do the writing and thinking for you

Praising the Author

Do not praise the author or text no matter how great they are

Concentrate on how an author achieves his/her great effects

Referring to the Writer

When you first refer to a writer, give his/her first and last name

In subsequent references use the last name

Quoting Prose

Incorporate direct quotes into your sentence

Break up quotations with your own words

If a quote is longer than 4 lines, set it off from your own writing by indenting five spaces

Ellipsis

Three spaced periods (. . .) form an ellipsis

The ellipsis shows that you have deleted words from a quotation without changing its meaning