Your task in textual analysis is to explain some key point in the text. This
means that you should keep these things in mind:
1. Focus on the text itself.
2. Provide quotations to let the reader see the text.
3. Provide quotations to support your claims about the text.
4. Do not go on at length about generalizations about life or people or history
or personal experiences—stick to the text.
5. Be sure to focus on related key points that exemplify the point you are discussing.
In other words, do not simply discuss a series of unrelated points.
1. Always write a coherent outline before you write your final draft.
2. Be sure that your paragraphs are focused and limited to one main topic.
1. Always read your paper aloud to catch any obvious mistakes.
2. Look for spelling and grammar mistakes.
3. Write at least the full length of the minimum length. 5-7 pages means that
you must have at least five full pages (with appropriate font size and margin
size).
4. Open with powerful and contextual statements rather than vague statements
or clichés. (Avoid “Ever since the beginning of time . . .”
or “Love is a wonderful thing” or “All people experience love
at some time.”
5. Follow MLA style. See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html
1. Quotations should flow in and out of your own words seamlessly.
2. Periods and commas go within the closing quotations marks unless a parenthesized
page reference closes the sentence.
Foulkes claims that dreams express "profound aspects of personality."
Foulkes claims that dreams express "profound aspects of personality," though others disagree.With parenthesized page references:
According to some, dreams express "profound aspects of personality" (Foulkes 184), though others disagree.
According to Foulkes's study, dreams may express "profound aspects of personality" (184).
3. Do not begin or end your quotations with ellipses. Ellipses only go inside
the quotations to signal omitted words.
4. Do not enclose block quotations with quotation marks unless they are in the
original. Only in this case does the period precede the parenthetical page reference.
5. If you lead into a quotation with an independent clause, end that clause
with a colon.