Annoying Ways People Use Sources

"Armadillo Roadkill'

Armadillo Roadkill is an annoying method of using a source, in which the writer puts a quotation into the middle of their sentence without anything to set it up. Much like hitting an armadillo on the interstate, it just seems to come out of nowhere.

An example in my text from English 101 would be in this modified version of my discussion post from Week 1, titled "Motivating Today's College Students":

"As many college students are leaving their parents' homes and the strict structure of lesser                                          education such as High School, students are expecting a                                                                                                 continuation of this structure and support from College staff "Frequent communication and an                                         engaged academic adviser or student organization adviser are among the keys to maintaining                                       student initiative and effort (Crone, MacKay, 2017)."

In this paragraph, the quotation from Crone and MacKay comes out of absolutely nowhere. A less-jarring and more comfortable way to write the paragraph would be to reference the source to "setup" the material before you get to, so a reader doesn't have to double-take the paragraph to ensure they missed some text.

An example of the corrected version would be as follows:

"As many college students are leaving their parents' homes and the strict structure of lesser                                            education such as High School, Crone and MacKay wonder if students are expecting a                                                 continuation of this structure and support from College staff.  They posit that "frequent                                                     communication and an engaged advisers are instrumental in maintaining student initiative and                                       effort (Crone, MacKay, 2017)."