Editing Problem-Solution Essays
After you finish revising your problem-solution essay, you should make sure you have correctly cited all sources of information and included a works-cited entry for each, using the style of the Modern Language Association (MLA).You should also edit for punctuation, mechanics, grammar, usage, and spelling. The following activities will help you.
Editing for MLA Citation Style
Whenever you use ideas from others, you need to credit the source. You do so to show who originated an idea, to avoid plagiarism, and to allow readers to explore the same materials.
All credits begin with an in-text citation that names the source and page number (if there is one). The simplest in-text citation gives the source in the sentence itself.
Roland Zahn, M.D., explains his recent study in Archives of General Psychology: “Our research provides the first brain mechanism that could explain the classical observation by Freud that depression is distinguished from normal sadness by proneness to exaggerated feelings of guilt or self-blame."
If the sentence doesn't give readers enough information to find the correct work-cited entry, provide the last name of the author in parentheses before the end punctuation. If the source has no author, use the first significant word(s) of the title, in italics for longer works or quotation marks for shorter works.
Mayo Clinic defines major depressive disorder as "prolonged and persistent periods of extreme sadness" and defines seasonal affective disorder as "a form of depression most often associated with fewer hours of daylight in the far northern and southern latitudes from late fall to early spring" ("Mood Disorders").