Unit 10 - Grammar Pronunciation and Usage

Unit 10 Active Reader

Grammar Punctuation Usage Lens

Page 1

The Impact of Violent Video Games on Youth Violence

Correctly capitalizing and punctuating your written work is critical to your success as a writer. It ensures that your writing is clear and easily understood.

The title of an essay should always be capitalized. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, most adjectives, and adverbs are capitalized, as well as longer prepositions and some other words. Make sure you know which words to capitalize in the title. Although the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” are typically not capitalized, “the” is capitalized in this title because it is the first word. Notice that the short prepositions “of” and “on” are not capitalized.

When a title is at the beginning of an essay, it appears in regular typeface, not in bold, italics, underline, or other modified typeface. Also, the title at the beginning of the essay is not placed in quotation marks. However, when you refer to the title of an essay at other times, for example in a References list citation, you should put the title of the essay in quotation marks.

Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto

Correctly capitalizing and punctuating your written work is critical to your success as a writer. It ensures that your writing is clear and easily understood.

Titles of full-length works such as video games appear in italics. Other examples of full-length works include books, plays, TV shows, movies, journals, magazines, newspapers, paintings, and music albums.

Its most recent installment, Grand Theft Auto V, generated $800 million in sales worldwide in just 24 hours after its fall 2013 debut (Thier, 2013).

Plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional and occurs any time you use another person's words, thoughts, or ideas without giving credit to that person. You can avoid plagiarism by knowing what must be documented when you write.

When you paraphrase or summarize source material, you still have to cite the source in an in-text citation and at the end of the essay in the References list. You must do this in order to avoid plagiarism, which is an academic and professional offense with severe consequences.

Here, the essay author paraphrased the source material: sales statistics for a video game. Since these statistics are not common knowledge, she cites the source with the author’s last name (Thier) and the year of publication (2013). There is no page number because the source is an online article.

Leading experts in video game research Anderson and Bushman (2001) support the theory that exposure to violent video games poses a public-health threat to young people:

Is there a reliable association between exposure to violent video games and aggression? Across the 33 independent tests of the relation between video-game violence and aggression, involving 3,033 participants, the average effect size was positive and significant. High video-game violence was definitely associated with heightened aggression. (p. 357)

When writing an essay, it is important to know how to cite your sources and format your paper correctly. There are several style guides you can use, including APA and MLA. Your teacher will likely provide you with essay guidelines and tell you which style you should use.

When using APA style, you must use a block quotation if the quoted excerpt is forty words or longer. You do not use quotation marks for a block quotation. In order to show the reader that you are quoting material, you indent every line of the block quotation by one-half inch. Additionally, you place the period before the parentheses of the in-text citation instead of after, which is typical of quoted material found within a paragraph. Also notice that since the essay’s author uses the source authors’ names and the year of publication in the attributive phrase, she does not repeat it in the parenthetical citation. Thus, this parenthetical or in-text citation only includes the page number, indicated by “p.” These are the elements of a correct APA block quotation and in-text citation. Always check the most recent APA style guide to ensure you are using the most current requirements for your writing.

Funk maintains that “Playing violent video games probably will not turn a docile, well-socialized child into a bully …But for children who are already bullies or victims there are no corrective messages or experiences in violent video games.”

Quotation marks are used to set off material that is quoted from someone else or another source. They are also used for titles of certain works.

In this sentence, the author directly quotes material from a source, so she places quotation marks around the text that she uses from the source. Notice that at the beginning of the quoted sentence she uses a capital letter; at end of the sentence the period goes inside the quotation marks. The author leads into the quotation with an attributive phrase: “Funk maintains that.” All of these rules apply to using quotation marks effectively.

Page 2

Because the primary characters in video games are men, male gamers are more likely to engage in the game than females, resulting in a larger impact on men (Bartholow & Anderson, 2002, p. 288).

The author avoids plagiarism by including an in-text citation as well as an entry for this source on her References list. She makes it clear the information about the gender of video gamers comes from a source by Bartholow and Anderson, published in 2002, and appearing on page 288. Someone looking for information on this topic can go to the source directly based on the information the author cites. She has ethically provided sufficient information on her source, avoiding any accusation of plagiarism.

Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353–359. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00366

This is a correct APA style References list entry. It gives all the necessary information for a source of its type: a journal article originally published in print that appears online. The elements of the entry consist of several important pieces of information:

the authors’ names, given as last name and first initial;
the date of publication (year followed by comma and month spelled out and day, if available);
the title of the article (only first word capitalized);
the name of the journal in italics followed by a comma;
the volume of the journal;
the page numbers;
and the digital object identifier (DOI) (which enables anyone looking for the article online to find it easily).

Always check the most recent APA style guide to ensure you are using the most current requirements for your writing.

Facts & statistics. (2009). Make Beats not Beatdowns. Retrieved from http://www.makebeatsnotbeatdowns.org/facts_new.html

This is a correct APA style References list entry. It gives all the necessary information for a source of its type: a web page with no author listed. The elements of the entry consist of several important pieces of information:

the name of the article on the website (in regular typeface with only the first word capitalized);
the date of publication (year followed by comma and month spelled out and day, if available);
the name of the website in italics; and
the words Retrieved from followed by the URL or address of the website.

Always check the most recent APA style guide to ensure you are using the most current requirements for your writing.

Kutner, L. & Olsen, C. K. (2008). Grand theft childhood: The surprising truth about violent video games and what parents can do. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

This is a correct APA style References list entry. It gives all the necessary information for a source of its type: a print book (as opposed to an eBook or digital book). The elements of the entry consist of several important pieces of information:

the authors’ names, given as last name and first initial;
the year of publication;
the title of the book in italics (only the first word capitalized);
the city and state abbreviation of publication;
the publishing company.

Always check the most recent APA style guide to ensure you are using the most current requirements for your writing.

Thier, D. (2013, September 18). “GTA 5” sells $800 million in one day. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com

This is a correct APA style References list entry. It gives all the necessary information for a source of its type: an online magazine article with an author’s byline (credit). The elements of the entry consist of several important pieces of information:

the author’s name, given as last name and first initial;
the date of publication (year followed by comma, month spelled out, and day, if available);
the title of the article (only first word capitalized);
the name of the magazine/website in italics;
the words Retrieved from followed by the URL or address of the website.

Always check the most recent APA style guide to ensure you are using the most current requirements for your writing.