Odyssey Essay Revisions

Today in class you went over your Odyssey essay rough drafts to make sure that you were meeting all of the elements of the checklist.

MLA Format

You also paid special attention to MLA (Modern Language Association) format. Remember that The Odyssey has a special documentation style that requires you to indicate book and line numbers. For direct quotations, cite like this: "They came on Circe's palace / built of dressed stone" (10.229.230). The slash indicates the line break. The cite is for book 10, lines 229 to 230. You need to be so exact that the period is after the parenthesis, not inside the quotation marks.

Another part of MLA format to remember is the spacing of the pages and the headers. Refer to the sample page that is glued into your notebook.

The third part of MLA format that you need to include is to type the Works Cited at the bottom of your essay. When we get to the research paper and you have multiple sources, the Works Cited will appear as its own page (like it is supposed to), but for this paper with only one source, I thought that we'd save paper. I want you to type it on the bottom of your last page so that you practice the format.

Here's what the Works Cited entry for The Odyssey looks like:

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.

NOTE: If an entry goes to two or more lines, you need to use the hanging indent feature.

No Personal Pronouns

Since academic essays are written in the third person, you do not include the personal pronouns you, I, us, we, etc.

Punctuation

In class we worked on two comma rules that seem to be causing students problems. Pay special attention to these rules when you proofread your paper.

Coordinating Conjunctions

for and nor but or yet so

Punctuation: (thumb test) When a subject and a verb appear on each side of the coordinating conjunction, you use a comma; otherwise, you do not. Use the comma when both sides of the coordinating conjunction contain independent clauses.

Examples of correct punctuation:

Susie brought her lunch and one dollar.

Susie brought her lunch, and she brought one dollar.


Subordinating conjunctions

These conjunctions introduce subordinate (dependent) clauses that are not complete sentences.

examples—if, as, because, since, when, although, that, than, until, before, after

Punctuation: Introductory adverb clauses have commas after them; ending adverb clauses do not.

Correct examples:

If I eat a good breakfast, I will not be hungry.

I will not be hungry if I eat a good breakfast.