my mom is an adjunct professor at CBC for some early childhood courses, and sometimes she asks me questions about students' writing and such. mostly if she's being too much of a hard ass grader. (she used to be).
today she asked me to look over a works cited page (which these four students labeled 'Bibliography') and see if there is anything in the general realm of a citation style. there really wasn't, but this is what I had to write back to her. proof that one day i want to be a professor so i can give this kind of feedback to my students:
"Yikes.
It looks like each person did a different couple and then put them all together. The books are cited ok -- the first one is alright except the title of the book should be italicized. It looks like they attempted to use MLA format, but just started guessing when it came to the websites and articles on the websites.
The websites are painful to look at, and they should be marked down for copying and pasting a website logo in their Works Cited page. It's not that difficult to type out the website.
They probably used a MLA citation generator, but many times those can't do complicated stuff (e.g. shit from articles on a website). Hence, wrong.
if we're going on GENERALITIES, i guess give them points. but not full points. the whole thing is discombobulated.
also - it's called a WORKS CITED page, not a bibliography. you wrote bibliographies for your 4th grade report about sea turtles. (which i completely copied from national geographic, by the way).
ALSO - WIKIPEDIA?! you should outlaw that as a source. any joe blow can update that crap. it should never be quoted in a paper. you look at wikipedia when you want to figure out when the last czar of russia died, not when you're writing a college paper.
- sarah"
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