“Google” something you want an answer to and what
you’ll find at the top is either paid for or the person who wrote the website embedded
language within the title and somewhere else in the coding that mirrored your
search phrase. It means nothing...money, skills or luck, gets information its
location. We are literally swimming in information—we are information—Planet
Money said in a podcast recently that the world has turned into data and
data-miners. People are writing code now to find out the best place to buy a
slice of pizza. This kind of saturation makes it easy to find evidence that
will support even the most outlandish claims…we live in a world where everyone
is right…at least we can find credible sources that say so.
Let’s start small. Let’s say you want to know how many spaces should follow a period. Well some teachers will tell you two, others one. Go to any MLA website and they will say one or the other, sometimes both. Thanks to Slate Magazine via a shared posting on fb, I can proffer one possible solution to the quagmire. In the early 20th century typographers in Europe established the one space rule and it wasn’t until typewriters came along that the two space rule was devised because typewriting machines work on what’s called “monospaced type.” This was a new development. Typesetting was an artform and relied on “proportional type,” when the typewriter came, it was mass-produced and easier and more cost-efficient to create all the little letters the same size, thus allowing for easy repair and or production. According to Slate magazine who cites James Felici, author of The Complete Manual of Typography, “Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read” (Slate). An interesting note about the two space rule, once word processing programs entered the equation, “monospaced type,” disappeared, but because a generation of typists learned on manual typers, the two space rule remained.
The point is, information suitable to your needs, can be found anywhere—if you’re patient and read through it—carefully. When I do my own research here in Germany, I start with our library’s databases…Gale and Ebscohost. These are excellent starting points. If you are in 10th thru 12th grade, consider the John F. Kennedy Institute’s library. With your parents’ permission you can get a library card there and are granted access to the known literary and historical world. JSTOR, Eric, US Library of Congress, Galileo, not to mention they have a massive collection of periodicals. For those of you who don’t know what periodicals are…they’re essays…millions of essays, and what any teacher over the age of 30 had to swim through in order to write a literary critique in high school and college.
If you’re a youngster, Gale from the library is perfect. Do your wiki and your google scholar searches to get to know your topic and then dive into the database offered right here. A little-known tip—and this is a keeper—often times when searching a database, it only provides an abstract (a brief synopsis) of the article. Cut-n-paste the title into your favorite search engine followed by dot pdf (.pdf) and 9 out of 10 times the article will pop up. Sometimes it’s only an image, but a usable source nonetheless.
Everyone can start using “educational search engines.” Refseek (my favorite) and google scholar, these will get you access to the abstracts and then you can—dot pdf—your way to a bevy of legitimate essays, journals and articles.
The older students should find Owl.english.purdue an invaluable resource. Anything you want, and free. I have found some rules to be outdated, but in those cases…don’t worry, your teacher is probably still doing it that way too.
The younger kids…partner-tongue especially…check out chompchomp.com for all your grammar questions. This place gives you easy to follow rules and practice exercises…I use this site in my own classes.
Frontline, Nova, PBS—these places give you legitimate and topical information in easy to digest formats, i.e., videos. Get a podcast downloader and listen to Fresh Air, Science Friday, Planet Money and This American Life…Prairie Home companion you should add just because it’s fun. These are all English options…but any public library will surprise you with its wealth. In the states, I went to libraries instead of going out. Nothing better than a late-night alone in a quiet library reading. I wish the JFK Institute was open on weekends. The world is become information kids—the number one tool you’ll need in deciphering it—reading. Read—read—read…that’s free of charge, and not available on wiki.
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