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Developing a strong controlling idea
Student's First draft: EBay is god’s catalogue. It is everything Norton describes about online shopping and a step further. EBay can contribute its success in having no target audience, no taxes, and endless ever-changing items. Also the bidding and winning items takes online shopping to a new level of excitement.
This statement sounds more like advertising than critique. EBay wants you to think that they are god’s catalogue. They want you to think that the items up for auction are infinite and ever-changing. They want you to think that the bidding and winning take you to a new level of excitement. How has EBay gotten you to believe this? What is their strategy? It is your job to be a skeptic.
The second sentence needs content. What does Norton say about online shopping, exactly, and how does EBay purport to take that “a step further”?
Student's First draft: In viewing the catalogue “Anthropologie,” the designer is focusing on human civilization which directs the attention to young, married women. The creators have produced clothes that are comfortable and remake clothing from previous generations. “Signs of Shopping” concludes the fact that manufacturers target certain types of people who want to buy their clothes with style, taste, put together well.
Remember to make sense: What does it mean to focus on human civilization? Be specific: What about the catalogue implies the audience is young, married women? How can we know that the clothes are comfortable from looking at them in a catalogue? How is that signaled? And be accurate: is that what Norton says, that manufacturers target people who want to buy their clothes with style, taste?
What is interesting here – and the possible seed for a paper – is the notion of remaking clothes from previous generations. To whom does the retro clothing appeal? Which generations do they allude to? And what do those eras signal? Don’t look just at the clothing, either, but at the design of the catalog itself: the models, the backgrounds, the accessorizing objects that are not for sale, the colors, the paper, the fonts, etc.
Student's First draft: A typical mall is a place of social gathering. It is both a place of meeting for the young and one of the rare places where the young and old go together. An outlet, on the other hand, is less social. A trip to an outlet mall is a mission. You go to get what you need and get out, not to be social.
This statement has potential. I buy that an outlet mall is a less social space than a regular mall. But how do we know this? What is it about the architecture, parking, location, types of shops, advertising, etc., that reveals that different purpose? And what is the bigger significance of the different type of mall? Why, exactly, should your reader care?
Also remember to mention your author and her/his article. And by “mention,” I do not mean “plagiarize from.” The second sentence is lifted directly from the article without quotation marks, without giving Norton any credit at all. Don’t do that.
Student's First draft: While Norton feels that shopping at malls provides many social opportunities, online shopping presents many advantages and aversions to unpleasant experiences, but it does take away from the personal connections.
Avoid being completely abstract. What advantages? What aversions? What unpleasant experiences? What personal connections? I need more content here.
Student's First draft: Thomas Hine mentions that packaging is a cultural phenomenon, which works differently in different cultures. I notice that this is true by the way cereal companies package cereal. Sweet cereals are marketed to children by sweet and sugar filled cereal. Adults want cereal that is good for you not sweet.
The first sentence is great. It was great the first time I read it in Hine’s article. This time, the author is at least given credit for the idea, but this is still plagiarism because the words are lifted exactly from the author without quotation marks. Learn to paraphrase.
Now, that said, I think the sentence here is one of Hine’s more interesting points, and a great place to start. But the second half of the statement does not shed any light upon the idea of packaging as a “cultural phenomenon.” In fact, it goes in a totally different direction. And yes, certain cereals are marketed to kids and others to adults. But… I think something more interesting, more skeptical, smarter could be said about cereal packaging, given specific boxes to look at and “read.”
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