The lost art of typography essays

The lost art of typography essays Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was published in 1985. The theories and concepts described in the book could easily apply to today's world. Postman goes to great detail in his book about the development of public discourse (verbal and written communication) over the centuries. He explains how the development and evolution of communication over mankind's history has changed at critical points. These critical points include the development of the alphabet, the development of the printing press, the development of the telegraph and the development of the television. Postman argues that American society in particular is in danger since it relies so much on television. Postman's book is divided into two parts. Part one documents the development of communication in Western civilization. The main course of his documentation is that the oral and printed methods of communication tend to be held in higher prestige because they take more "brain power" to learn and perfect. If a person wants to learn in an oral or printed communication based culture, he or she must learn the language, memorize customs, learn to read, learn to write, etc. Postman even goes so far to say that print communication controls your physical body as well that a person's body must remain at least semi-mobile in order to pay attention to what the words are trying to say. In chapter 4, Postman details how the development and success of the printed word in Western civilization created what he calls "The Typographic Mind", a mind set where a person from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries could endure and pay attention to lengthy written tomes or lengthy speeches. Postman cites the 1858 U.S. presidential debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. One debate lasted three hours while another in 1854 went seven. When I read this, I admit I was amazed. I had known that the debates were important for many reasons,...

Quotations and Block Quotes in Chicago Referencing

Quotations and Block Quotes in Chicago Referencing Quotations and Block Quotes in Chicago Referencing When writing an academic paper, you may need to quote something you’ve read somewhere. But how to do this depends on the referencing system being used, so it pays to do some research. In this blogpost, we’re looking at how quotations work in Chicago referencing. Quoting vs. Paraphrasing When citing a source, you can either use a direct quotation or paraphrase what you’ve read. Direct quotation involves using the exact words written in the source you’re citing. To do this, you should place the quoted text inside double quotation marks (i.e., â€Å" †). It’s a good idea to quote a source directly if your argument depends on the exact wording of what you’re quoting. Air quotes are a bit different.(Source: Rob Cottingham/YouTube) If you don’t want to quote a source directly, you can paraphrase it instead. This means explaining what you’ve read in your own words. However, you still need to cite a source when paraphrasing, and you should be careful not to accidentally copy the original author’s wording. Footnotes or In-Text Citations? Since Chicago referencing offers two ways of citing sources, the exact rules will depend on which version you use. With the footnote and bibliography system, you should indicate citations using superscript numbers (e.g. 1, 2, 3) after the quoted text: Mitchell investigates â€Å"possible causal pathways connecting genetic replicators and social behaviors.†1 The first time you cite a source, you then need to give full bibliographic information in the accompanying footnote (including page numbers for the section quoted). With the author-date version of Chicago referencing, sources are cited in the main text of your paper. When quoting, this means giving the author’s surname, year of publication, and relevant page numbers in parentheses after the quotation: It is important to investigate â€Å"possible causal pathways connecting genetic replicators and social behaviors† (Mitchell 1996, 132). If the author is named in the text, however, the citation is given after their name: Mitchell (1996, 132) investigates â€Å"possible causal pathways connecting genetic replicators and social behaviors.† Full bibliographic information of all cited sources is then given in the reference list. Long Quotations The other key fact to remember is that longer quotations are formatted differently in Chicago referencing. These are known as â€Å"block quotes† and should be: Prose quotations of five or more lines Not enclosed in quotation marks Preceded and followed by a blank line Indented .5† from the left margin The rules for citing a block quote are the same as when quoting a source elsewhere in your text. As such, a Chicago-style block quote using footnote citations would look something like this: Discussing genetics and behavior, Mitchell writes that: In order to evaluate the legitimacy of such explanations it is, thus, necessary to explicate the variety of possible causal pathways connecting genetic replicators and social behaviors. If phenotypic variation is the direct object of natural selection, one must understand the underlying relationship between the phenotypic expression and genetic replicators to argue that any such phenotypic trait is, or can be, an adaptation.1 This suggests that the relationship between genetics and behavior in animals is†¦ The full citation for the source would then be given in a footnote at the bottom of the page.