Formating and Citations

 Formating
 Since you are writing a persuasive LETTER (not just a regular essay), there is a specific format you must use. Please see the following EXAMPLE.  Note: Your letter should look like the letter on page 3 of the example.

•  Re: You should also include a Re: line between the address and your "Dear XYZ," that informs the recipient about the topic of the letter.
• Ex.  Re: School Bullying, Re: Homework, Re: School Hours
• See other the other sample letters that have been previously posted for how this should look.

• Note: In order to properly format your letter, you must insert the address of the person you are sending your letter to (the recipient). You may need to conduct a internet search to find a correct mailing address for your recipient. 

Citing Your Sources / Avoiding Plagarism
It is critically important that you give proper credit for the evidence you rely on in your letter. Read the following GUIDE for tips and information on proper citation and avoiding plagarism. Make sure you look at the example at the bottom, "A Tale of Two Papers," I think it's really helpful. Also, the sentence frames posted below give really good examples on how to properly cite evidence in your letter. Remember to USE YOUR CITATION VERBS!

• Persuasive sentence frames 1
• Persuasive sentence frames 2
• Persuasive sentence frames 3
• Citation Sentence Frames and Citation Verbs

Creating a Bibliography
Creating an MLA formatted bibliography is easy! The internet provides numerous websites that allow you to simply plug in your source information, and it does all the rest of the work for you! While there are many sites to choose from, I recommend www.easybib.com. Using this site, you'll either paste in the URL of the website you used, or manually enter some simple information about the title, author, publication, and date. Once EasyBib has done it's job and created your citation, you'll copy and paste the citation into your own bibliography document. Remember: MLA bibliographies must be alphabetized and each line after the first line is indented (the opposite of what a paragraph looks like). See the example below:

 REMINDER: You need to bring in a printed copy of your letter tomorrow. This will be worth 10 points. You will NOT be able to print your draft in class.