magazine annotation

Abramsky, S. (2012, May 14). The other America 2012.  (20), 11-18. 

(Author's Last Name, Year)

Example: (Abramsky, 2012)

(Author's Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example: (Abramsky, 2012, p. 14)

Gross, A., & Murphy, E. (2010, January/February). Seal of disapproval.  (1), 34-37. 

Magazine Article from a Library Database or in Print - Unknown Author

Article title: Subtitle if any. (Year of Publication, Month Day if Given).  Name of Magazine, Volume Number (Issue Number), first page number-last page number if given. 

Magazine Article from a Library Database or in Print - Signed Anonymous

Anonymous. (Year of Publication, Month Day if Given). Article title: Subtitle if any.  Name of Magazine, Volume Number (Issue Number), first page number-last page number if given. 

Note : If and only if the work is signed "Anonymous", use Anonymous where you'd normally put the author's name. If the work has no named author but is not signed "Anonymous", follow the example for Unknown Author.

Magazine Article from a Website

Author's Last Name, First Initial. Second Initial if Given. (Year of Publication). Title of article: Subtitle if any.  Name of Magazine, Volume Number (Issue Number if given), first page number-last page number if given. URL

In-Text Citation for Two or More Authors/Editors

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Magazines Analysing a Magazine

In the UK alone, there are approximately 8000 different magazine titles for general sale.

Part of Media Studies Industries

Analysing a Magazine

A magazine's cover is the most important element, in terms of how it appeals to potential buyers

At a glance, you can generally tell if a magazine is going to satisfy your interests, outlook and aspirations close aspiration A hope or ambition in life. .

Different magazines have distinct house styles that convey their brand identity close brand identity The image a company constructs for itself through the use of logos, slogans and other marketing tools in order to appeal to an audience. .

The brand identity and point-of-view (or ideology close ideology A set of ideas or thoughts that someone, or a group of people, believe in. The plural of this is 'ideologies'. ) conveyed by a magazine is vital when we consider that magazines are selling us content that is often aspirational.

Modes of address

Different magazines have different modes of address close mode of address The ways in which a media text uses language to speak to its target audience - for example, formal or informal. .

This may be formal and informative, or more casual and catchy.

Magazines use design and language to stand out from their competitors in the same subgenre close subgenre A subcategory within a particular genre. .

For example, Kerrang! and NME both use an informal tone and style but Kerrang! uses language that will appeal specifically to heavy metal fans. NME , which is also informal, uses language that will appeal to indie music fans.

A magazine contents page lists all of its content including regular pages and special features. The audience (or readers) will normally expect to find regular pages in the same place for each editon.

For example, readers of Empire will know where to find cinema reviews, as opposed to feature articles. Readers of a lifestyle magazine will expect to find items like horoscopes near the back.

Features are particular to each magazine issue. They will contain new content on current topics and may be an exclusive for the magazine.

More guides on this topic

• Industries overview
• Advertising
• Computer and video games

Related links

• BBC News: Press regulation
• BBC Bitesize: Publishing
• A history of magazines

APA Annotated Bibliography

• Step 1: Find Sources
• Journal Article

Magazine Article

• Step 3: Write Annotations
• Step 4: Format
• Step 5: Review

Author(s) of Article. (date of publication). Complete title of article.  Name of Magazine. Direct URL for article

Dickey, C. (2016, November 14). The broken technology of ghost hunting. The Atlantic . https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-broken-technology-of-ghost-hunting/506627

Where do I find . . . ?

Click the info icons on the magazine website page below to see where you would find the items needed for a citation.

Check your understanding by answering these review questions. If you get one wrong, read back through the material and try again!

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• Last Updated: May 7, 2024 4:09 PM
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Sample Annotations - UNDER CONSTRUCTION

• PAPER FORMAT
• Formatting Note
• Sample Annotation: Scholarly Source
• Sample Annotation: Trade/Professional Source
• Sample Annotations: Substantial News
• Sample Annotations: Popular Source

If you want an A...

• Information Literacy Rubric, All Levels Read the Rubric! Revised in 2020
• Annotation Builder Use this FORM to help you write your evaluative annotations.
• MLA Citation Guide Learn how to format your paper and identify your sources

Always check with your faculty on whether to format your annotation with these brackets, or as a paragraph.

Scholarly / Academic Source

Zemel, Carol. “Sorrowing Women, Rescuing Men: Van Gogh’s Images of Women and Family.” Art History , vol. 10, no. 3, Sept. 1987, pp. 351-368. Art & Architecture Source , https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.1987.tb00261.x.

[Author Credentials] Carol Zemel is an art historian with a PhD from Columbia University. She has authored many books and articles in art journals. She was a Professor in the Department of Visual Art & Art History at New York University.

[Audience / Type of Information] Art History is a peer-reviewed journal. The audience for it is art historians and probably undergraduate majors in art history. The article is an in-depth discussion (24 pages) on the topic. It contains only black and white illustrations. Otherwise, the text is mostly text-based with lots of footnotes and a bibliography.

[Purpose / Bias / Point of View] The author has a feminist focus, and she uses historical information to demonstrate that VG's paintings of women reflected society views on female sexuality and prostitution. She argues that he viewed prostitutes as fallen women who could be saved through a proper domestic life.  The author questions the 19th century male assumption of what all women inherently wanted.

[Currency of the Source] This article was published in 1987, which was after the feminist theory had been well developed so that perspective is included. There were a couple of other articles about Van Gogh and women that I can also use as a comparison.

[Coverage / Scope / Content] The author thoroughly covers this content, although the subject is quite narrow in scope.

[Relevance to Paper] This article discusses the images of women and family in the paintings Vincent van Gogh. I was interested in Van Gogh’s views about women and there was a substantial number of examples and theories of Van Gogh’s view about women that I can use in my paper.

Trade / Professional Source

Stasukevich, lain. "Reclaiming Art." American Cinematographer , vol. 96, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 30-36. Art & Architecture Source .

[Author Credentials] Stasukevich is a staff writer for American Cinematographer . I could find no other information on him anywhere except in IMDB, it says he is a camera person and he has one TV credit.

[Audience / Type of Information] American Cinematographer is a trade magazine published in Hollywood. I can tell because it is filled with ads for cameras and movies. The information in the articles is fairly technical providing information on camera settings, lighting, and lenses.

[Purpose / Bias / Point of View] The article interviews Bruno Delbonnel, cinematographer for Burton, asking him questions about his vision for the movie Big Eyes . The purpose is to share Delbonnel’s approach to visual effects and photography with other filmmakers.

[Currency of the Source] This article was published at about the same time Big Eyes was released.

[Coverage / Scope / Content] There are lots of pictures and lots of questions. When asked about the aesthetics of the film, Delbonnel comments on his goal of achieving a hyperrealistic or surreal effect and goes on to discuss his preferred diffusion levels. Other topics covered include lighting techniques, his collaboration with Burton, and digital cinematography.

[Relevance to Paper] Because I am a digital major, I found this information very relevant to me. It gave me information about why and how Burton and his cinematographer collaborate to make an interesting movie. Collaboration is one of the points I plan to discuss in my paper.

Substantial News

Cashdan, Marina. “Tim Burton: Hailing Filmdom’s Oddest Artist.” Modern Painters , vol. 21, no. 8, Nov. 2009, pp. 48–57. Art & Architecture Source , search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=asu&AN=505267791&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

[Author Credentials] Marina Cashdan attended Columbia University. She is writer and editor whose work regularly appears in the New York Times , Huffington Post , Style Magazine , Frieze , Art in America , among other arts magazines. She was formerly the executive editor at Modern Painters . She is currently the editorial director of Artsy .

[Audience / Type of Information] Modern Painters is very glossy arts magazine, filled with photos and advertising. The audience for this is definitely artists, but also the general educated public with an interest in the arts. Tim Burton has mass appeal, so this could also be classified at General Interest/Substantial News. [Purpose / Bias / Point of View] I think the point of view is promotional. Essentially, the publication promotes activities of the art world, especially New York. This article promoted Tim Burton who was having an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. She is basically arguing that Burton is an artist as well as a filmmaker.

[Currency of the Source] This article was published in 2009, but that is not too old to be relevant.

[Coverage / Scope / Content] It's a fairly lengthy article that covers Burton's painting practice thoroughly.

[Relevance to Paper ] This article is perfect for my paper because she interviewed Burton and includes quotes to show how he perceives himself. There are also many images of his work, most of which are not seen in the books I’ve found.

TechInsider. “Mickey Mouse And Copyright Law.” YouTube , 3 Oct. 2015, https://youtu.be/_6u7JkQAFMw.

[Author credentials] TechInsider is part of Business Insider , a business news site. The video has no credits, not even for the narrator.

[Audience/Type of Information] Short news video that appeals to the general public.

[Bias / Point of View] It is decidedly anti-Disney and negative towards other big media companies. It favors shorter copyright terms and the public domain. It is a passive aggressive call to arms.

[Content / Coverage / Scope] It focuses on one character owned by one company, and how that has affected the length of copyright terms in the United States.

[Currency of the Source] This video was created in 2015 to alert viewers about possible major changes in copyright law. It was wrong; Disney and other big media did not pursue another copyright term extension.

[Relevance to Paper] I wanted a video that had a negative point of view. It succinctly covered major changes in US copyright law over the last 100 years.

Popular Source

Wallace, Amy and Tim Burton. "Tim Burton I." Los Angeles Magazine , vol. 56, no. 5, May 2011, pp. 38-40. OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson).

[Author Credentials] Amy Wallace is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared many well-known popular magazines including GQ , The New Yorker , Vanity Fair , Esquire , and Elle. She spent four years as a Senior Writer at Los Angeles Magazine and is now Editor-at-Large. 

[Audience / Type of Information] Los Angeles Magazine is a large-circulation popular magazine. Tim Burton has mass appeal, so this could be classified at General Interest/Substantial News.

[Purpose / Bias / Point of View] I think the point of view is promotional. Essentially, the publication promotes people or activities associated with Los Angeles. In this case, Burton was having an exhibition at LACMA.

[Currency of the Source] This article came out when the exhibition was running.

[Coverage / Scope / Content] This is a short but Burton does discusses various aspects of his relationship to Los Angeles including his childhood in Burbank, his time in CalArts' Disney animation program, and the exhibition of his work at LACMA.

[Relevance to Paper]  This article is very short, but Burton does discuss his involvement with Los Angeles, his education at CalArts and his exhibition at LACMA. It gave me some basic facts, but not much more.

U.S. Copyright Office. “What Is Copyright?” YouTube , 30 Oct. 2019, https://youtu.be/ukFl-siTFtg.

[Author credentials] The US Copyright Office is the federal department in charge of copyright.

[Audience/Type of Information] The audience is the American general public, especially people who create content that is copyrightable. Since it is a promotional video, it skews more towards Popular than News.

[Bias / Point of View] Although it takes a neutral tone, the US Copyright Office is promoting itself and its services. It strongly encourages people to register their copyrights even though it is no longer required.

[Content / Coverage / Scope] Brief introduction to copyright law in the United States.

[Currency of the Source] This video is very current, as it was published in 2019, and no new major copyright legislation has been passed.

[Relevance to Paper] I liked how it differentiated between copyright, trademarks, and patents. I wanted to see how a government entity tried to appeal to the masses.

Wikimedia Foundation. “What Is Creative Commons?” YouTube , 7 Feb. 2017, https://youtu.be/dPZTh2NKTm4.

[Author credentials] The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit that runs Wikipedia and other sites. Victor Grigas is a photographer and video producer who works for the Foundation.

[Audience/Type of Information] It is an advertisement meant to appeal to tech-savvy creators in the general public.

[Bias / Point of View] It is heavily biased against copyright laws. It promotes using Creative Commons licenses as a way to empower creators. In fact, it is used as a promotional resource on CreativeCommons.org.

[Content / Coverage / Scope] Introduction to Creative Commons licenses by illustrating its principles. It does not go into any detail about the actual licenses.

[Currency of the Source] The information is still current, though its video style and music may be a little out-of-date now.

[Relevance to Paper] CC licenses can be intimidating. I liked how it presented the concepts in a non-threatening manner, including attributions in the end credits (where I found Victor Grigas).

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Writing an Annotated Bibliography: Citing a journal or magazine article in APA

• What is an Annotated Bibliography?
• Dissertations
• Test Instruments
• Citing a journal or magazine article in APA
• Citing a journal or magazine article in MLA

Basic Journal/Magazine Article Citation

Author's Last Name, Author's First Initial. Author's Middle Initial. (Year, Month/Date/Season). Title of article. Title of Journal/Magazine,                          Volume (Issue), Page(s). https://doi:xx.xxxxxxx

(Note: Not every article will have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number in the reference citation. The DOI is an alphanumeric string that is assigned to some electronic articles, and if it appears in the citation information for an article you are citing from an electronic source, it should be included. Reference citations without a DOI will look the same as the example citation above, but without "doi:xx.xxxxxxxx". If no DOI is assigned to an article, but you retrieved the article online, be sure to include the URL for the page where you found the article, using the following format: Retrieved from http://www.websiteaddress.com)

Example Journal article, one author

Sutherland, M. B.   (2000, May).   Problems of diversity in policy and practice: Celtic  languages in the United Kingdom .   Comparative 

          Education ,   36 (2),199-209.  https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060050045363

Example Journal article, 3 to 6 authors

List all authors up to 20, with the ampersand (&) used between the last two authors. If 21 authors are listed, list up to 19, ellipsis and no ampersand before the last author. 

Kennedy, L. F., & Yavuz, M. S. (2019). Metal and musicology.  Metal Music Studies,  5 (3), 293-296.  https://doi.org/10.1386/mms.5.3.293_2

Example Magazine article

Elmer-DeWitt, P., & Farley, C. J. (1994, March 21). People who eat Hostess Twinkies. Time , 143 (12), 22.

Basic Newspaper Citation

Newspaper article with an author.

Schultz, S. (2005, December). Calls made to strengthen state energy policies.  The Country Today , 1A, 2A.

Title of the article. (Year, Month, Day). Title of the article.  Title of The Newspaper or News Website, ( Page(s) if print).   URL of the article if online

In-Text Citations

For an overview of the various ways to cite information in text in APA style, see the Purdue OWL, which provides an overview of the basic in text citation formats.

• Purdue OWL In-Text Citations
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How to Annotate Texts

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Annotation Fundamentals

How to start annotating , how to annotate digital texts, how to annotate a textbook, how to annotate a scholarly article or book, how to annotate literature, how to annotate images, videos, and performances, additional resources for teachers.

Writing in your books can make you smarter. Or, at least (according to education experts), annotation–an umbrella term for underlining, highlighting, circling, and, most importantly, leaving comments in the margins–helps students to remember and comprehend what they read. Annotation is like a conversation between reader and text. Proper annotation allows students to record their own opinions and reactions, which can serve as the inspiration for research questions and theses. So, whether you're reading a novel, poem, news article, or science textbook, taking notes along the way can give you an advantage in preparing for tests or writing essays. This guide contains resources that explain the benefits of annotating texts, provide annotation tools, and suggest approaches for diverse kinds of texts; the last section includes lesson plans and exercises for teachers.

Why annotate? As the resources below explain, annotation allows students to emphasize connections to material covered elsewhere in the text (or in other texts), material covered previously in the course, or material covered in lectures and discussion. In other words, proper annotation is an organizing tool and a time saver. The links in this section will introduce you to the theory, practice, and purpose of annotation. 

How to Mark a Book, by Mortimer Adler

This famous, charming essay lays out the case for marking up books, and provides practical suggestions at the end including underlining, highlighting, circling key words, using vertical lines to mark shifts in tone/subject, numbering points in an argument, and keeping track of questions that occur to you as you read. 

How Annotation Reshapes Student Thinking (TeacherHUB)

In this article, a high school teacher discusses the importance of annotation and how annotation encourages more effective critical thinking.

The Future of Annotation (Journal of Business and Technical Communication)

This scholarly article summarizes research on the benefits of annotation in the classroom and in business. It also discusses how technology and digital texts might affect the future of annotation. 

Annotating to Deepen Understanding (Texas Education Agency)

This website provides another introduction to annotation (designed for 11th graders). It includes a helpful section that teaches students how to annotate reading comprehension passages on tests.

Once you understand what annotation is, you're ready to begin. But what tools do you need? How do you prepare? The resources linked in this section list strategies and techniques you can use to start annotating. 

What is Annotating? (Charleston County School District)

This resource gives an overview of annotation styles, including useful shorthands and symbols. This is a good place for a student who has never annotated before to begin.

How to Annotate Text While Reading (YouTube)

This video tutorial (appropriate for grades 6–10) explains the basic ins and outs of annotation and gives examples of the type of information students should be looking for.

Annotation Practices: Reading a Play-text vs. Watching Film (U Calgary)

This blog post, written by a student, talks about how the goals and approaches of annotation might change depending on the type of text or performance being observed. 

Annotating Texts with Sticky Notes (Lyndhurst Schools)

Sometimes students are asked to annotate books they don't own or can't write in for other reasons. This resource provides some strategies for using sticky notes instead.

Teaching Students to Close Read...When You Can't Mark the Text (Performing in Education)

Here, a sixth grade teacher demonstrates the strategies she uses for getting her students to annotate with sticky notes. This resource includes a link to the teacher's free Annotation Bookmark (via Teachers Pay Teachers).

Digital texts can present a special challenge when it comes to annotation; emerging research suggests that many students struggle to critically read and retain information from digital texts. However, proper annotation can solve the problem. This section contains links to the most highly-utilized platforms for electronic annotation.

Evernote is one of the two big players in the "digital annotation apps" game. In addition to allowing users to annotate digital documents, the service (for a fee) allows users to group multiple formats (PDF, webpages, scanned hand-written notes) into separate notebooks, create voice recordings, and sync across all sorts of devices. 

OneNote is Evernote's main competitor. Reviews suggest that OneNote allows for more freedom for digital note-taking than Evernote, but that it is slightly more awkward to import and annotate a PDF, especially on certain platforms. However, OneNote's free version is slightly more feature-filled, and OneNote allows you to link your notes to time stamps on an audio recording.

Diigo is a basic browser extension that allows a user to annotate webpages. Diigo also offers a Screenshot app that allows for direct saving to Google Drive.

While the creators of Hypothesis like to focus on their app's social dimension, students are more likely to be interested in the private highlighting and annotating functions of this program.

Foxit PDF Reader

Foxit is one of the leading PDF readers. Though the full suite must be purchased, Foxit offers a number of annotation and highlighting tools for free.

Nitro PDF Reader

This is another well-reviewed, free PDF reader that includes annotation and highlighting. Annotation, text editing, and other tools are included in the free version.

Goodreader is a very popular Mac-only app that includes annotation and editing tools for PDFs, Word documents, Powerpoint, and other formats.

Although textbooks have vocabulary lists, summaries, and other features to emphasize important material, annotation can allow students to process information and discover their own connections. This section links to guides and video tutorials that introduce you to textbook annotation. 

Annotating Textbooks (Niagara University)

This PDF provides a basic introduction as well as strategies including focusing on main ideas, working by section or chapter, annotating in your own words, and turning section headings into questions.

A Simple Guide to Text Annotation (Catawba College)

The simple, practical strategies laid out in this step-by-step guide will help students learn how to break down chapters in their textbooks using main ideas, definitions, lists, summaries, and potential test questions.

Annotating (Mercer Community College)

This packet, an excerpt from a literature textbook, provides a short exercise and some examples of how to do textbook annotation, including using shorthand and symbols.

Reading Your Healthcare Textbook: Annotation (Saddleback College)

This powerpoint contains a number of helpful suggestions, especially for students who are new to annotation. It emphasizes limited highlighting, lots of student writing, and using key words to find the most important information in a textbook. Despite the title, it is useful to a student in any discipline.

Annotating a Textbook (Excelsior College OWL)

This video (with included transcript) discusses how to use textbook features like boxes and sidebars to help guide annotation. It's an extremely helpful, detailed discussion of how textbooks are organized.

Because scholarly articles and books have complex arguments and often depend on technical vocabulary, they present particular challenges for an annotating student. The resources in this section help students get to the heart of scholarly texts in order to annotate and, by extension, understand the reading.

Annotating a Text (Hunter College)

This resource is designed for college students and shows how to annotate a scholarly article using highlighting, paraphrase, a descriptive outline, and a two-margin approach. It ends with a sample passage marked up using the strategies provided. 

Guide to Annotating the Scholarly Article (ReadWriteThink.org)

This is an effective introduction to annotating scholarly articles across all disciplines. This resource encourages students to break down how the article uses primary and secondary sources and to annotate the types of arguments and persuasive strategies (synthesis, analysis, compare/contrast).

How to Highlight and Annotate Your Research Articles (CHHS Media Center)

This video, developed by a high school media specialist, provides an effective beginner-level introduction to annotating research articles. 

How to Read a Scholarly Book (AndrewJacobs.org)

In this essay, a college professor lets readers in on the secrets of scholarly monographs. Though he does not discuss annotation, he explains how to find a scholarly book's thesis, methodology, and often even a brief literature review in the introduction. This is a key place for students to focus when creating annotations. 

A 5-step Approach to Reading Scholarly Literature and Taking Notes (Heather Young Leslie)

This resource, written by a professor of anthropology, is an even more comprehensive and detailed guide to reading scholarly literature. Combining the annotation techniques above with the reading strategy here allows students to process scholarly book efficiently. 

Annotation is also an important part of close reading works of literature. Annotating helps students recognize symbolism, double meanings, and other literary devices. These resources provide additional guidelines on annotating literature.

AP English Language Annotation Guide (YouTube)

In this ~10 minute video, an AP Language teacher provides tips and suggestions for using annotations to point out rhetorical strategies and other important information.

Annotating Text Lesson (YouTube)

In this video tutorial, an English teacher shows how she uses the white board to guide students through annotation and close reading. This resource uses an in-depth example to model annotation step-by-step.

Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls (Purdue OWL)

This resources demonstrates how annotation is a central part of a solid close reading strategy; it also lists common mistakes to avoid in the annotation process.

AP Literature Assignment: Annotating Literature (Mount Notre Dame H.S.)

This brief assignment sheet contains suggestions for what to annotate in a novel, including building connections between parts of the book, among multiple books you are reading/have read, and between the book and your own experience. It also includes samples of quality annotations.

AP Handout: Annotation Guide (Covington Catholic H.S.)

This annotation guide shows how to keep track of symbolism, figurative language, and other devices in a novel using a highlighter, a pencil, and every part of a book (including the front and back covers).

In addition to written resources, it's possible to annotate visual "texts" like theatrical performances, movies, sculptures, and paintings. Taking notes on visual texts allows students to recall details after viewing a resource which, unlike a book, can't be re-read or re-visited ( for example, a play that has finished its run, or an art exhibition that is far away). These resources draw attention to the special questions and techniques that students should use when dealing with visual texts.

How to Take Notes on Videos (U of Southern California)

This resource is a good place to start for a student who has never had to take notes on film before. It briefly outlines three general approaches to note-taking on a film. 

How to Analyze a Movie, Step-by-Step (San Diego Film Festival)

This detailed guide provides lots of tips for film criticism and analysis. It contains a list of specific questions to ask with respect to plot, character development, direction, musical score, cinematography, special effects, and more. 

How to "Read" a Film (UPenn)

This resource provides an academic perspective on the art of annotating and analyzing a film. Like other resources, it provides students a checklist of things to watch out for as they watch the film.

Art Annotation Guide (Gosford Hill School)

This resource focuses on how to annotate a piece of art with respect to its formal elements like line, tone, mood, and composition. It contains a number of helpful questions and relevant examples. 

Photography Annotation (Arts at Trinity)

This resource is designed specifically for photography students. Like some of the other resources on this list, it primarily focuses on formal elements, but also shows students how to integrate the specific technical vocabulary of modern photography. This resource also contains a number of helpful sample annotations.

How to Review a Play (U of Wisconsin)

This resource from the University of Wisconsin Writing Center is designed to help students write a review of a play. It contains suggested questions for students to keep in mind as they watch a given production. This resource helps students think about staging, props, script alterations, and many other key elements of a performance.

This section contains links to lessons plans and exercises suitable for high school and college instructors.

Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension (English Journal)

In this journal article, a high school teacher talks about her approach to teaching annotation. This article makes a clear distinction between annotation and mere highlighting.

Lesson Plan for Teaching Annotation, Grades 9–12 (readwritethink.org)

This lesson plan, published by the National Council of Teachers of English, contains four complete lessons that help introduce high school students to annotation.

Teaching Theme Using Close Reading (Performing in Education)

This lesson plan was developed by a middle school teacher, and is aligned to Common Core. The teacher presents her strategies and resources in comprehensive fashion.

Analyzing a Speech Using Annotation (UNC-TV/PBS Learning Media)

This complete lesson plan, which includes a guide for the teacher and relevant handouts for students, will prepare students to analyze both the written and presentation components of a speech. This lesson plan is best for students in 6th–10th grade.

Writing to Learn History: Annotation and Mini-Writes (teachinghistory.org)

This teaching guide, developed for high school History classes, provides handouts and suggested exercises that can help students become more comfortable with annotating historical sources.

Writing About Art (The College Board)

This Prezi presentation is useful to any teacher introducing students to the basics of annotating art. The presentation covers annotating for both formal elements and historical/cultural significance.

Film Study Worksheets (TeachWithMovies.org)

This resource contains links to a general film study worksheet, as well as specific worksheets for novel adaptations, historical films, documentaries, and more. These resources are appropriate for advanced middle school students and some high school students. 

Annotation Practice Worksheet (La Guardia Community College)

This worksheet has a sample text and instructions for students to annotate it. It is a useful resource for teachers who want to give their students a chance to practice, but don't have the time to select an appropriate piece of text. 

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Magazine Article References

This page contains reference examples for magazine articles.

Lyons, D. (2009, June 15). Don’t ‘iTune’ us: It’s geeks versus writers. Guess who’s winning. Newsweek , 153 (24), 27.

Schaefer, N. K., & Shapiro, B. (2019, September 6). New middle chapter in the story of human evolution. Science , 365 (6457), 981–982. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay3550

Schulman, M. (2019, September 9). Superfans: A love story. The New Yorker . https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/superfans-a-love-story

• Parenthetical citations : (Lyons, 2009; Schaefer & Shapiro, 2019; Schulman, 2019)
• Narrative citations : Lyons (2009), Schaefer and Shapiro (2019), and Schulman (2019)
• If a magazine article has a DOI, include the DOI in the reference (as in the Schaefer and Shapiro example).
• If the magazine article does not have a DOI and is from an academic research database, end the reference after the page range (as in the Lyons example). Do not include database information in the reference. The reference in this case is the same as for a print magazine article.
• If the magazine article does not have a DOI but does have a URL that will resolve for readers (e.g., it is from an online magazine that is not part of a database), include the URL of the article at the end of the reference (as in the Schulman example).
• If the magazine article does not have volume, issue, and/or page numbers (e.g., because it is from an online magazine), omit the missing elements from the reference (as in the Schulman example).

Magazine articles references are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Section 10.1 and the Concise Guide Section 10.1

• Artificial Intelligence

Side Hustle or Scam? What to Know About Data Annotation Work

O n TikTok , Reddit , and elsewhere, posts are popping up from users claiming they’re making $20 per hour—or more—completing small tasks in their spare time on sites such as DataAnnotation.tech, Taskup.ai, Remotasks, and Amazon Mechanical Turk.

As companies have rushed to build AI models, the demand for “data annotation” and “data labeling” work has increased. Workers complete tasks such as writing and coding, which tech companies then use to develop artificial intelligence systems, which are trained using large numbers of example data points. Some models require all of their input data to be labeled by humans, a technique referred to as “supervised learning.” And while “unsupervised learning,” in which AI models are fed unlabeled data, is becoming increasingly popular, AI systems trained using unsupervised learning still often require a final step involving data labeled by humans.

There are no precise estimates of how many people engage in data annotation work. A 2022 Google Research paper approximates the number to be in the millions, and that in future that could grow to be billions. A 2021 study estimated that 163 million people have made profiles on online labor platforms, 14 million of whom have obtained work through the platform at least once, and 3.3 million of whom have completed at least 10 projects or earned at least $1,000. (Though this number is likely to be an overestimate for data annotation, because not all work carried out on online labor platforms is data annotation work.)

Data annotation sites, often subsidiaries of larger companies, can offer legitimate avenues for earning money. As the AI industry continues to grow, demand for human labellers has grown with it. But potential users should be aware that the data labeling industry is poorly regulated, and because the industry is opaque, it can be difficult to navigate. Here’s what to know.

How does someone get started in data annotation?

To qualify for the programs, workers must begin by completing an assessment. The duration of the initial assessment can vary, but users commonly report times as short as an hour and as long as three hours. If a user passes the assessment, they should start to receive invitations for paid work through the site. If the user isn’t accepted into the program, they typically don’t hear anything after completion of the assessment. 

Tasks on the assessment can vary in nature. There is a trend towards more highly-skilled data annotation work, says Sonam Jindal, who leads the AI, Labor and the Economy program at the Partnership on AI, a nonprofit. “We're going to start seeing that as you have a need to have higher quality AI models, you also need higher quality data,” she says. “We can figure out if something is a cat or a dog, that's great. Moving on to more advanced tasks—to have more advanced AI that is useful in more specialized real world scenarios—you will need more specialized skill sets for that.”

How much money does the work pay? 

In the U.S., sites often offer around $20 per hour for tasks such as labeling photos and completing writing exercises. More specialized data annotation work can provide higher pay. For example, DataAnnotation.tech offers $40 for coding tasks, and Outlier.ai offers $60 per hour for chemistry tasks.

Outside of the U.S., data labellers are typically paid a lot less, says Jindal. But despite the higher price tag, there are reasons companies may prefer U.S.-based workers, such as tasks that require specific cultural knowledge or skills that are prevalent in the U.S. 

What have people’s experiences been like? 

On online discussion boards , users report a wide range of experiences with data annotation work. Many describe positive experiences—straightforward onboarding processes, an ample supply of tasks, and good pay.

“I have been working at [DataAnnotation.Tech] for almost 2 years,” one user writes . “You make money by the task or by the hour, depending on the project. They pay via PayPal. I have only worked very part-time in the past couple of years and am nearing the $3k mark. In all honesty, I quit for quite a while during my full-time job, but am back at it. I am currently working on two projects, one for $20 per hour and one for $25 per hour. I am making about $400-$500 a week. This is not permanent, as tasks come and go, but it is a great side income to work on if you needed extra work from a laptop or computer.”

Read More: The Workers Behind AI Rarely See Its Rewards. This Indian Startup Wants to Fix That

But some report less positive experiences, such as being told they had passed the assessment, but then never being offered any tasks. More worryingly, some users report their accounts being deactivated with large amounts of earnings yet to be paid out. One user writes that their account was deactivated with $2,869 worth of work unpaid, and that they emailed the companies' support contacts, but did not hear back.

Data annotation sites often use algorithmic management to keep their costs low, which can result in the poor treatment that many workers experience, says Milagros Miceli, who leads the Data, Algorithmic Systems, and Ethics research group at Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin. And because the data annotation industry is poorly regulated, companies rarely face consequences for substandard treatment of workers, she says.

What is the data used for?

Some companies, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and Upwork, operate in a relatively transparent manner, with the same brand for both purchasers of data labeling labor and for workers. But others don’t. Remotasks is the worker-facing subsidiary of data labeling provider Scale AI, a multi-billion dollar San Francisco-based business with clients including OpenAI, Meta, and the U.S. military. Similarly, Taskup.ai, DataAnnotation.tech, and Gethybrid.io are reportedly subsidiaries of Surge AI, another data labeling provider that serves clients including Anthropic and Microsoft.

Companies say that this secrecy is required to protect sensitive commercial information, such as new product development plans, from leaking, says Miceli. But they also prefer secrecy because it reduces the chances that they will be linked to potentially exploitative conditions, such as low wages and exposure to traumatic content .

A Scale AI spokesperson directed TIME to a blog post that says that Remotasks was established as separate to Scale AI to protect customer confidentiality and cites examples of steps Scale AI has taken to ensure workers are treated fairly. The spokesperson also said that “Remotasks does not engage in projects that require exposure to sensitive images / videos, and in the event such content appears in a dataset it can be reported and removed from the workstream.”

Surge AI, Taskup.ai, DataAnnotation.tech, and Gethybrid.io did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Data work is fundamentally undervalued, argues Jindal, suggesting that data workers could be paid royalties on the products that they help create. 

“Their knowledge and information is being captured in data and used to train these AI models that are called artificial intelligence,” she says. “It's actually their human intelligence—our collective human intelligence—that's being embedded in these models.”

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Write to Will Henshall at [email protected]

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• Knowledge Base
• Citing sources
• What Is an Annotated Bibliography? | Examples & Format

What Is an Annotated Bibliography? | Examples & Format

Published on March 9, 2021 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 23, 2022.

An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that includes a short descriptive text (an annotation) for each source. It may be assigned as part of the research process for a paper , or as an individual assignment to gather and read relevant sources on a topic.

Scribbr’s free Citation Generator allows you to easily create and manage your annotated bibliography in APA or MLA style. To generate a perfectly formatted annotated bibliography, select the source type, fill out the relevant fields, and add your annotation.

An example of an annotated source is shown below:

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Table of contents

Annotated bibliography format: apa, mla, chicago, how to write an annotated bibliography, descriptive annotation example, evaluative annotation example, reflective annotation example, finding sources for your annotated bibliography, frequently asked questions about annotated bibliographies.

Make sure your annotated bibliography is formatted according to the guidelines of the style guide you’re working with. Three common styles are covered below:

In APA Style , both the reference entry and the annotation should be double-spaced and left-aligned.

The reference entry itself should have a hanging indent . The annotation follows on the next line, and the whole annotation should be indented to match the hanging indent. The first line of any additional paragraphs should be indented an additional time.

In an MLA style annotated bibliography , the Works Cited entry and the annotation are both double-spaced and left-aligned.

The Works Cited entry has a hanging indent. The annotation itself is indented 1 inch (twice as far as the hanging indent). If there are two or more paragraphs in the annotation, the first line of each paragraph is indented an additional half-inch, but not if there is only one paragraph.

Chicago style

In a  Chicago style annotated bibliography , the bibliography entry itself should be single-spaced and feature a hanging indent.

The annotation should be indented, double-spaced, and left-aligned. The first line of any additional paragraphs should be indented an additional time.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

For each source, start by writing (or generating ) a full reference entry that gives the author, title, date, and other information. The annotated bibliography format varies based on the citation style you’re using.

The annotations themselves are usually between 50 and 200 words in length, typically formatted as a single paragraph. This can vary depending on the word count of the assignment, the relative length and importance of different sources, and the number of sources you include.

Consider the instructions you’ve been given or consult your instructor to determine what kind of annotations they’re looking for:

• Descriptive annotations : When the assignment is just about gathering and summarizing information, focus on the key arguments and methods of each source.
• Evaluative annotations : When the assignment is about evaluating the sources , you should also assess the validity and effectiveness of these arguments and methods.
• Reflective annotations : When the assignment is part of a larger research process, you need to consider the relevance and usefulness of the sources to your own research.

These specific terms won’t necessarily be used. The important thing is to understand the purpose of your assignment and pick the approach that matches it best. Interactive examples of the different styles of annotation are shown below.

A descriptive annotation summarizes the approach and arguments of a source in an objective way, without attempting to assess their validity.

In this way, it resembles an abstract , but you should never just copy text from a source’s abstract, as this would be considered plagiarism . You’ll naturally cover similar ground, but you should also consider whether the abstract omits any important points from the full text.

The interactive example shown below describes an article about the relationship between business regulations and CO 2 emissions.

Rieger, A. (2019). Doing business and increasing emissions? An exploratory analysis of the impact of business regulation on CO 2 emissions. Human Ecology Review , 25 (1), 69–86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26964340

An evaluative annotation also describes the content of a source, but it goes on to evaluate elements like the validity of the source’s arguments and the appropriateness of its methods .

For example, the following annotation describes, and evaluates the effectiveness of, a book about the history of Western philosophy.

Kenny, A. (2010). A new history of Western philosophy: In four parts . Oxford University Press.

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A reflective annotation is similar to an evaluative one, but it focuses on the source’s usefulness or relevance to your own research.

Reflective annotations are often required when the point is to gather sources for a future research project, or to assess how they were used in a project you already completed.

The annotation below assesses the usefulness of a particular article for the author’s own research in the field of media studies.

Manovich, Lev. (2009). The practice of everyday (media) life: From mass consumption to mass cultural production? Critical Inquiry , 35 (2), 319–331. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596645

Manovich’s article assesses the shift from a consumption-based media culture (in which media content is produced by a small number of professionals and consumed by a mass audience) to a production-based media culture (in which this mass audience is just as active in producing content as in consuming it). He is skeptical of some of the claims made about this cultural shift; specifically, he argues that the shift towards user-made content must be regarded as more reliant upon commercial media production than it is typically acknowledged to be. However, he regards web 2.0 as an exciting ongoing development for art and media production, citing its innovation and unpredictability.

The article is outdated in certain ways (it dates from 2009, before the launch of Instagram, to give just one example). Nevertheless, its critical engagement with the possibilities opened up for media production by the growth of social media is valuable in a general sense, and its conceptualization of these changes frequently applies just as well to more current social media platforms as it does to Myspace. Conceptually, I intend to draw on this article in my own analysis of the social dynamics of Twitter and Instagram.

Before you can write your annotations, you’ll need to find sources . If the annotated bibliography is part of the research process for a paper, your sources will be those you consult and cite as you prepare the paper. Otherwise, your assignment and your choice of topic will guide you in what kind of sources to look for.

Make sure that you’ve clearly defined your topic , and then consider what keywords are relevant to it, including variants of the terms. Use these keywords to search databases (e.g., Google Scholar ), using Boolean operators to refine your search.

Sources can include journal articles, books, and other source types , depending on the scope of the assignment. Read the abstracts or blurbs of the sources you find to see whether they’re relevant, and try exploring their bibliographies to discover more. If a particular source keeps showing up, it’s probably important.

Once you’ve selected an appropriate range of sources, read through them, taking notes that you can use to build up your annotations. You may even prefer to write your annotations as you go, while each source is fresh in your mind.

An annotated bibliography is an assignment where you collect sources on a specific topic and write an annotation for each source. An annotation is a short text that describes and sometimes evaluates the source.

Any credible sources on your topic can be included in an annotated bibliography . The exact sources you cover will vary depending on the assignment, but you should usually focus on collecting journal articles and scholarly books . When in doubt, utilize the CRAAP test !

Each annotation in an annotated bibliography is usually between 50 and 200 words long. Longer annotations may be divided into paragraphs .

The content of the annotation varies according to your assignment. An annotation can be descriptive, meaning it just describes the source objectively; evaluative, meaning it assesses its usefulness; or reflective, meaning it explains how the source will be used in your own research .

A source annotation in an annotated bibliography fulfills a similar purpose to an abstract : they’re both intended to summarize the approach and key points of a source.

However, an annotation may also evaluate the source , discussing the validity and effectiveness of its arguments. Even if your annotation is purely descriptive , you may have a different perspective on the source from the author and highlight different key points.

You should never just copy text from the abstract for your annotation, as doing so constitutes plagiarism .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, August 23). What Is an Annotated Bibliography? | Examples & Format. Scribbr. Retrieved June 11, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/annotated-bibliography/

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / MLA Format / How to Cite a Magazine Article in MLA

How to Cite a Magazine Article in MLA

Magazine: A publication that is issued periodically and contains items such as articles, essays, poems, or pictures.

Note that magazines are different from journals in that journals only contain scholarly articles that are peer-reviewed and relate to a specific academic field. If you are looking for the format for citing a journal article, this guide on citing a journal in MLA can help.

How to cite magazine articles published and found in print

Cite your source

How to cite magazine articles found on a website

Note:  When citing sources reproduced online from their in-print version, it is not necessary to include online information such as the website publisher or the date of electronic publication.

Published October 31, 2011. Updated May 18, 2021.

MLA Formatting Guide

MLA Formatting

• Annotated Bibliography
• Bibliography
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• et al Usage
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• View all MLA Examples

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To create an in-text citation for a magazine found in print:

Place the author’s last name and the page number of the quote in parenthesis after the borrowed quote or information. Example: “Time spent with family or friends is more important now than ever” (Garcia 120).

To create an in-text citation for a magazine found on a website:

Place the author’s last name in parenthesis after the borrowed quote or information. No page number is needed. Example: “Every day I was excited to see my dad, the way you’re excited to be around a new friend” (Rothbart).

MLA is the style most often used in literature, language, history, art, and theater subjects.

No matter what citation style you’re using (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) the EasyBib Citation Generator can help you create the right bibliography quickly.

To cite a magazine with multiple authors and no page numbers in MLA style, you need to have basic information including the authors, publication date, title of the article, magazine name, and the URL. The templates for in-text citations and works cited list entries of a magazine article written by multiple authors along with examples are given below:

In-text citation template and example:

For citations in prose, use the first name and surname of the first author followed by “and others” or “and colleagues.” In subsequent citations, use only the surname of the first author followed by “and others” or “and colleagues.” In parenthetical citations, always use only the surname of the first author followed by “et al.”

Citation in prose:

First mention: Katherine Zoepf and colleagues . . . or Katherine Zoepf and others . . .

Subsequent occurrences: Zoepf and colleagues . . . or Zoepf and others . . .

Parenthetical:

. . . ( Zoepf et al.)

Works cited list entry template and example:

The title of the article is in plain text and title case; it is placed inside quotation marks. The title of the magazine is set in italics. Follow the format given in the template and example for setting the date, month, and year.

Surname, F., et al. “Title of the Article.” Magazine Name , Publication Date, URL.

Zoepf, Katherine, et al. “Shopgirls: The Art of Selling Lingerie.” The New Yorker , 15 Aug. 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/shopgirls .

Use only the first author’s name in surname–first name order in the entry, followed by “et al.”

To cite an online journal or magazine article in MLA style, you need to have basic information including the author, publication date, title of the article, journal or magazine title, volume and issue numbers, and the URL. The templates and examples for in-text citations and works cited list entries for an online journal article (with one author) are given below:

For citations in prose, use the first name and surname of the author in the first occurrence. In subsequent citations, use only the surname. In parenthetical citations, always use only the surname of the author.

First mention: Roger Dawkins . . .

Subsequent occurrences: Dawkins . . .

. . . (Dawkins)

The title of the journal or magazine article is in plain text and title case; it is placed inside quotation marks. The title of the journal or magazine is set in italics.

Surname, F. “Title of the Article.” Journal or Magazine Title , vol. #, no. #, Publication Date, URL.

Dawkins, Roger. “How We Speak When We Say Things About Ourselves in Social Media: A Semiotic Analysis of Content Curation.” M/C Journal , vol. 18, no. 4, 2015, www.journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/999 .

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The case for showing up to church—even if you don’t believe in God

Do you have to believe in God to go to church? I used to think so.

Americans are less likely than ever to attend religious services. According to one recent Gallup poll , just 30 percent of U.S. adults attend religious services weekly or nearly weekly—down from 42 percent in the early 2000s.

This rapid secularization has resulted in serious consequences for American community-building. As it turns out, when Americans left their churches, synagogues and mosques, they didn’t replace time spent in religious observance by joining a secular community organization. Instead, we’re spending more time alone than ever.

Young people in particular seem to be driving this trend. Thirty-four percent of Generation Z (born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s) are religious “ nones ,” the most of any generational cohort.

“Young people, who are fleeing religion faster than older Americans, have also seen the largest decline in socializing,” Derek Thompson recently wrote in The Atlantic. “There is no statistical record of any period in U.S. history where young people were less likely to attend religious services, and also no period when young people have spent more time on their own.”

For a long time, this described me.

While I grew up regularly attending religious services—ranging from my grandparents’ Southern Baptist church to the progressive home church my parents attended to the occasional Catholic Mass with my mother—I stopped attending by the time I was in high school.

I simply lost—or rather, never developed—the strong spiritual faith I thought was necessary to participate in a religious community. For much of my young adulthood, I was a strident atheist.

I appreciated the Christian ethical values I was raised with, but I couldn’t believe that any God, let alone an omnipotent, all-loving one, was real. I wanted to have faith, but I simply couldn’t find it. While I could entertain agnosticism, a full-blown spiritual certainty seemed impossible, and so did the idea that I belonged in a Christian community.

Over my senior year of college, that began to change. Not surprisingly for an English major, it started with a class on medieval mysticism that exposed me to works by Augustine and Aquinas and—my favorite— Julian of Norwich ’s stirring, beautiful Revelations of Divine Love . It ended with an internet pile-on.

In the spring of my senior year at the University of Virginia, I published a controversial guest es say in The New York Times about college students’ experiences of self-censorship in the classroom. The piece went viral, and in the course of a few short hours, my life was turned upside down. I went from an unknown college student to the subject of a multi-day Twitter meltdown. At one point my first name was trending, and I had racked up condemnations from a bevy of well-known journalists.

While I had the support of loving family and friends—not to mention plenty of spirited online defenders—for even the most well-supported person, an experience like that is bound to be destabilizing. As the days wore on, I found myself spending more time than I’d care to admit alone in my tiny dorm room, scrolling on my phone and reading cruel, personal comments I knew I should ignore.

I could feel myself being sucked into self-obsessed despair, and I wanted out. Impulsively, I tried praying, using the simple, conversational style I had learned in my childhood churchgoing.

Forcing myself to pray—especially for the people saying the most uncharitable things about me—turned out to be extraordinarily grounding. At a moment of psychological vulnerability, it provided a crucial internal peace. Despite a relatively brief low, I managed to escape my time as the internet’s “main character” relatively unscathed. What’s more, the experience helped me realize that I no longer cared whether God was real or not. That question had ceased to be interesting. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that being lambasted on the internet helped me find religion, but, well, stranger things have happened.

When I moved to Washington, D.C., after graduation, I started attending an Anglo-Catholic parish. I was first drawn to it out of a desire for ritual—especially the traditions and “smells and bells” of Anglo-Catholicism. But I was hooked by a totally unexpected reason: the community.

Within hours of my first Sunday Mass, I was added to two different group chats, had agreed to attend an upcoming happy hour and had swapped numbers with a young woman who would soon become one of my best friends. It was almost an instant gang of friends—one formed around shared values (and a shared interest in Gregorian chants).

At a time when Americans—especially young Americans—are more atomized than ever, having not just individual friends but a real community is increasingly difficult. As the Gen-Z writer Rona Wang humorously put it , “[S]ocial life after college is just texting people to ‘get coffee’ a few times a month & then spending $600 to attend someone’s wedding.”

This kind of individual social interaction can be worthwhile, but it can’t replicate the interconnectedness provided by formalized community groups. If there are dozens of parishioners counting on seeing you on Sunday, it’s harder to fall into isolation during a rough patch. And it’s a lot harder to ghost your girlfriend if you know you’re guaranteed to see her again on Sunday.

Becoming part of a religious institution also allows members to get outside of their own age-segregated bubbles. After Mass, I can count on talking to elderly parishioners and hearing the babbles of babies and toddlers—something that would be unlikely to happen at a bar or concert.

A religious community forces you to become the kind of person who shows up . Your life gains a new rhythm, with new obligations. For example, I don’t think it’s a fluke that for weddings at my church, all members are invited to the ceremony.

And while there are plenty of secular alternatives to religious community—the classic D.C. example is joining an amateur softball or soccer league—nonreligious groups cannot provide the sense of shared moral priorities and explicit moral instruction that religious communities impart.

For me, this moral element is one of the biggest reasons I joined a church instead of a soccer club. I want to feel accountable to something other than my own conscience, and the hour and a half of weekly contemplation provided in church is difficult to replicate anywhere else.

But despite my regular church attendance for almost two years now, I still haven’t developed a rock-solid faith. I’ve joked—and said as much on Twitter —that I only believe in God about 30 percent of the time on a good day. My ambivalence does set me apart from most of my friends from church, a group that includes a few seminarians. But it doesn’t keep me from coming back.

How common is the path I’ve taken? It’s unclear, but it seems fairly rare. While a growing number of Americans identify as “spiritual but not religious,” being religious but not spiritual is far more unusual. According to one Gallup poll, just 3 percent of Americans who identify as atheists or agnostics attend church weekly or nearly weekly. However, this is probably an undercount, excluding agnostics and atheists who nonetheless identify with a religious label.

As church attendance has declined, so has our connectedness to one another. But for the increasing numbers of spiritually ambivalent Americans, there may be an unusual solution to the loss of community. As counterintuitive as it might seem, more agnostics should give religion a try.

Emma Camp is an assistant editor at Reason magazine. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Free Press and Persuasion.

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GPSolo May/June 2024: The Changing Face of Evidence

Using an iPad to Present Electronic Evidence in the Courtroom

Brett burney.

Jun 04, 2024

• Thanks to the iPad and associated apps, presenting evidence in the courtroom requires a smaller team and much less upheaval than was necessary in the past.
• There are two basic methods for presenting from an iPad: wired and wireless.
• You don’t need a presentation-specific app to show documents on the iPad. Adobe Acrobat Reader or PDF Expert will suffice in certain scenarios.
• For more dynamic needs, consider dedicated presentation apps such as TrialPad, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Keynote.

Just a few years ago, setting up to present in a courtroom required a small flotilla of equipment and resources, not to mention a measured dose of technical acumen. But fortunately, thanks to the Apple iPad and associated presentation apps, everything can now be accomplished with a much smaller team and much less upheaval.

The goal is to successfully get your message across to the judge or jury audience in the most effective manner. This requires you to be comfortable with the relevant tools and technology. Gone are the days when lawyers could laugh off their lack of tech-savviness as an excuse for not taking full advantage of the latest technology that’s literally right at their fingertips. Today’s tools are accessible and approachable, and many times it’s the simplest technologies that can make a tremendous difference.

In this article, we’ll first briefly explore the modern-day file types and documents that need to be presented, and then we’ll walk through the technologies that can be effortlessly and effectively deployed in conjunction with an iPad in today’s courtroom (and other) environments.

The Adapting Definition of a “Document”

It’s a safe assumption today that every printed document we encounter comes from a digital file unless we’re talking microfiche, a handwritten note, or a land deed from the 1800s. If you’re holding a piece of paper in your hand, it was probably printed from a Microsoft Word document or a PDF file. We live and work in a digital world, but we often insist on forcing digital files into an 8 1/2” x 11” physical dimension (or 8 1/2” x 14” in the legal world).

But working with digital files means they’re more approachable, and they can be searched and organized for quick retrieval whenever you need them. For example, when a trial team needs to pull up a document, there’s no reason they should have to flip through three-ring binders or dig through a stack of bankers boxes—it should simply be an exercise of accessing a file listing or filtering a database on their laptop or iPad.

Another point of discomfort is how to define the “original” file in today’s digital world when the “original” document or file is a set of ones and zeroes that have been programmatically composed to appear as an email. Then, add on the layer of social communication media, and it quickly gets overwhelming. For example, one person may send an initial email, but the recipient may instead reply via text message. Next, one might share a link to a cloud-based Google Doc, where the other person adds comments, and then the two collaborate on Slack. Which of these communications are considered an “original” under the traditional concept of a “document”? Today, we’re not so much creating documents as information and collaboration artifacts that don’t easily lend themselves to old definitions and old presentation technology.

Understanding How the iPad Becomes a Viable Presentation Tool

Historically, trial presentation setups required high-end Windows laptops to host databases and show documents and video clips. Sophisticated software and trained individuals (known as hotseaters) were necessary to create callouts, highlight text, annotate documents, and generally ensure all the equipment worked properly. But today, the iPad has enough storage space and computing horsepower to accomplish all the necessary tasks without the troublesome overhead. Trial litigators using an iPad are simply more efficient, organized, and streamlined. Most attorneys can control the presentations themselves right from their iPad, and the wireless presentation option means less mess without all the wire and cable spaghetti.

Presenting information from an iPad doesn’t require a lot of equipment. There are two basic methods for presenting from an iPad: wired and wireless. The “wired” method is similar to presenting from a laptop, in which there is a VGA or HDMI cable between the laptop and the projector or widescreen TV. Many laptops today are so thin they don’t have a built-in VGA or HDMI port, so you need to use a USB-C adapter. A similar adapter can be used with an iPad to mirror its screen to a projector or widescreen TV. You can purchase such adapters directly from Apple or from other vendors. It is imperative to have these wired adapters as a backup even if you plan to present wirelessly.

The wireless method of presenting from an iPad requires the use of an Apple TV, a small black box sold by Apple that connects via an HDMI cable to a TV. Most people use it to watch YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and other streaming services. But because the Apple TV is also an AirPlay receiver, you can use it via WiFi to mirror your iPad’s screen onto the TV. You simply access the Control Center on the iPad, tap Screen Mirroring, and select the Apple TV. By default, the Apple TV will mirror the iPad screen, but special presentation modes are initiated when you use presentation apps such as Microsoft PowerPoint and TrialPad (more on these presentation apps below).

A laptop can act as an AirPlay receiver as well with the use of Reflector software (it works on both Mac and Windows laptops). Once you connect the laptop to a VGA or HDMI cable, it can sit on a table or podium and run Reflector, which acts as a pass-through for your iPad screen. So long as the laptop and iPad are connected to the same wireless network, such as a local network or phone hot spot, the iPad can wirelessly present through the laptop to the projector or widescreen TV. Some may ask why you should use an iPad in this situation if you have a laptop connected, but using the iPad lets you move around the room and more compellingly control what is being presented. This setup also works great for using an iPad in virtual/remote presentations over Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Zoom itself has some built-in modes to share your iPad screen, but Reflector allows you to better see the Zoom controls while you’re giving a presentation. Microsoft Teams also has some additional options for showing your shared screen behind you while your image is in front.

The App-solutely Best Apps for Presenting from an iPad

You don’t need a presentation-specific app to show documents on the iPad, although it certainly helps. For example, if you only need to show a PDF file and do some basic highlights, you could simply open the file in apps such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or PDF Expert . These free apps are limited in that you can’t do callouts or certain other annotations, but they work well in certain scenarios.

Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote work wonderfully on the iPad. These apps are designed for “linear” presentations, in which you place your slides in a specific order to show your first slide, then advance to the next slide, then the next slide, and so on. You can do some “live” annotations on the slides as you tap through, but it’s not as easy as in other apps. The best feature of using an iPad to control a PowerPoint presentation is that the current slide can show on the projector while the iPad shows the current and next slide along with any speaker notes that you included for the slide. This allows you to be much more prepared for slide transitions without missing a beat.

For more dynamic needs, the TrialPad app is specifically designed for pulling up a PDF document or image file and seamlessly creating callouts, highlights, annotations, redactions, and more. On the iPad, attorneys have a digital palette of presentation tools at their fingertips, while the audience sees only a simplified view of the document with no distracting tools or functions. Attorneys can use their fingers or an Apple Pencil to create a rectangular callout on a paragraph in the document and then highlight a word or sentence. Attorneys can do this in real time, or they can pre-annotate documents (TrialPad calls these annotated versions “Key Docs”). There’s also a virtual laser pointer built into the TrialPad app.

The TrialPad app is easy to learn and control. If there is an objection about a document, you can tap the “Blank” button to immediately show a blank screen to the audience. And when you’re ready to show another document, tapping the “Present” button presents it on the screen. TrialPad also allows you to play audio and video clips, although, depending on the courtroom infrastructure, you might need to bring and set up additional equipment or speakers.

Other apps on the iPad can be used to create images or visuals that can be pulled into PowerPoint or TrialPad. For example, you can take screenshots of Google Maps or Street View to pinpoint locations, or you can use the iPad’s built-in Screen Recording function to record your interactions with a human anatomy app (such as the amazing Essential Anatomy 5 ). By default, these files will be saved to your Photos app, where they can be imported and inserted into a PowerPoint slide or as an exhibit in TrialPad. You can also use the Keynote app on the iPad to create a family tree visual or a helpful timeline that can be exported as an image and then pulled into TrialPad.

The Future in Floating Clouds

All these apps offer deeper layers of features, but even just understanding the basics can make a huge difference in streamlining the time, equipment, and resources needed for effective presentations. The iPad has truly become a game-changer in this arena, although it’s not the only game in town. There are certainly some cases that are so complex and demanding that it still makes sense to lug in the equipment and have a professional trial presentation consultant manage the logistical undertaking. Don’t take on more stress than you need to for a high-profile trial.

While there are still the traditional Windows-based software programs for trial presentations, including Trial Director , Sanction , and OnCue , there is also a cloud-based option called Nextpoint , which can run on almost any computer or device that has a web browser. (In full transparency, I work closely with Nextpoint as their eLaw Evangelist.)

Nextpoint offers both a Discovery Suite for e-discovery document review as well as a Litigation Suite for hosting transcripts and exhibits. From any database in Nextpoint, you will find a tiny projector screen icon next to a document that allows you to immediately show that file in “Theater Mode,” which will open a blank browser tab with the document front and center. You can then create a callout on a paragraph and highlight pertinent text. Because Nextpoint is cloud-based, you do need a reliable connection to the Internet to use it.

You Are the Presentation, Not the Slides

Lastly, it should go without saying that none of this technology matters if the presenter isn’t confident in what he or she is trying to present. The best tools in the world can’t make up for a lack of planning or strategy. While today’s tools may not require the same time and technical intensity as those from a few years ago, it is still absolutely critical to make sure the trial team is comfortable with the technology so they don’t waste time figuring things out in court. That also goes for making sure you know how to recover when screens go blank or the sound cuts out—because that will happen at some point, and you must be ready to reboot or reset and keep going.

Just remember that you are the presentation, not the slides—no amount of technology or tools can make up for poor storytelling. The slides are there to supplement and support your points. For example, keep text minimal on your slides, just enough to support whatever point you’re discussing at the time. And make sure that the text is large and easy to read. And when it comes to TrialPad, don’t try to use every tool at your disposal—keep it simple with a single callout or two and a basic highlight. When preparing for trial, it’s also a good practice as you go through the day to use the screenshot button in TrialPad (bottom center of the screen) to capture your annotations for each document. That way, at the end of the day, you can go through and see what you covered and maybe what you need to revisit.

We will continue to enjoy improvements in the area of electronic evidence presentation. For example, there are hardly any good timeline creators on the market today, but there are people working to remedy that. The Nextpoint platform now offers a basic timeline tool. Other tools, including the TranscriptPad app (from the makers of TrialPad), are using artificial intelligence to synchronize the video and text of a deposition transcript, which is a process that used to take hours. This makes it easy to export deposition video clips to be shown in TrialPad or other tools. It’s an exciting time in the trial presentation technology industry, and hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of what is now possible.

Burney Consultants LLC

Brett Burney is Principal of Burney Consultants LLC, and focuses the bulk of his time on bridging the chasm between the legal and technology frontiers of electronic discovery. Brett is also very active in the Mac-using lawyer...

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Every US Founding Father Was a Felon?

You have to be convicted of a crime to be called a felon., published june 6, 2024.

In the wake of former U.S. President Donald Trump's landmark felony convictions  in a hush-money case involving a porn star, many of his supporters took to social media to support him.

Conservative commentator Benny Johnson posted a short video to TikTok and YouTube comparing Donald Trump's status to the country's Founding Fathers, telling viewers in the caption that "EVERY founding father was a FELON."

This claim spread across social media (with conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza — convicted of a campaign-finance felony in 2014 and later pardoned by Trump — mistakenly claiming the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1776).

Johnson gave us a lot of information to unpack in just a few short words.

Who Were the Founding Fathers?

This question might sound a bit silly, but the term "Founding Fathers" doesn't have a strict definition.

There's a rather large pool of names we could choose from, in fact. The National Archives stores documents from a "Big Seven" list, consisting of the first four presidents (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. The Encyclopedia Britannica leaves off Jay in place of Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Marshall and George Mason. Some lists simply combine the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, but this leaves out some military figures and others who never served at a national level.

In this case, Johnson specifically called attention to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence , claiming that their signatures "guaranteed that the Founding Fathers would be treated as felons." Among those 56 signers, the most famous names are John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Franklin and Jefferson. 

In order to figure out whether the Founding Fathers were actually felons, however, we first need to know what a felony is.

What Is a Felony and What Is a Felon?

In the United States , a felony is a serious crime generally punishable by more than one year in prison — it's as simple as that. Because the United Kingdom does not consistently differentiate between felonies and misdemeanors, we'll use the American definition (it won't end up mattering, for reasons we'll explain later). Therefore, one might assume every person who has committed a crime classified as a felony is a felon.

However, this approach is wrong — a felon is someone who  has been convicted  of a felony. As an example: You couldn't accurately call  O.J. Simpson  a murderer for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman because he was not convicted on (felony) murder charges. Therefore, he was not a felon until 2008, when he was convicted of the felony of robbery. 

A common critique of this approach is that the meaning and sentiment of the statement is understandable whether the word "felon" is technically the correct term. However, this is a slippery slope — when sharing information online, it's best to be as precise as possible.

Did the Founding Fathers Commit Felonies? 

In his video, Johnson never explicitly stated what crime the Founding Fathers supposedly committed, but based on his argument it's clear that the crime in question was signing the Declaration of Independence — ergo, treason. 

Logically, this makes sense: Signing a document that declared an open revolt against the British Empire seems like the textbook definition of treason. Furthermore, treason is so special that it's the only crime defined directly in the U.S. Constitution :

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

A treason charge doesn't always lead to a conviction — after the American Civil War, many Confederate leaders were charged with treason, but the charges were later dropped. Even earlier, former Vice President Aaron Burr — who was indicted on a murder charge  ( later dropped ) for shooting and killing Hamilton in a 1804 duel — was acquitted on a treason charge in 1807 for allegedly attempting to found his own independent country. But these examples bring up another, even more important point: Treason is a crime defined by the victors. In the words of the author John Harington :

Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

In other words, determining whether the Founding Fathers committed treason is a moot point because the American Revolution succeeded. The Founding Fathers certainly understood when they signed the Declaration of Independence that doing so would risk charges of treason. However, that was also part of why they signed the Declaration — they believed the British were restricting the individual liberties of the colonies.

In fact, according to the annotated version of the U.S. Constitution  on congress.gov, the reason the definition of treason is so strict in the United States is because of how often it was misused in England, with authorities essentially leveling charges of treason against people who had simply criticized the government.

From the British perspective, yes, the Founding Fathers had committed a felony (indeed, a few Founding Fathers were jailed  during the course of the American Revolution). But from the American perspective, the Founding Fathers were not felons: They were rebels who felt that British rule was unjust.

Additionally, not all of the Founding Fathers faced repercussions for their "seditious" activities: As an example, Franklin and John Adams spent a large part of the American Revolution in France petitioning for military aid and international recognition, outside of British jurisdiction and influence. By the time they returned, the United States was an independent nation, nullifying any possible repercussions. 

"Aaron Burr's Trial and the Constitution's Treason Clause | Constitution Center."  National Constitution Center – Constitutioncenter.Org , https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-great-trial-that-tested-the-constitutions-treason-clause. Accessed 6 June 2024.

"Article III."  LII / Legal Information Institute , https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Benjamin Franklin - Public Service, London Years, Stamp Act, France | Britannica . https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Franklin/Public-service. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Felony and Misdemeanor | Definition, Examples, & Facts | Britannica . 12 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/felony.

Founders Online: About Founders Online . http://founders.archives.gov/documents//lib/about/home.xml. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Founders Online: Home . http://founders.archives.gov/documents//lib/home/home.xml. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Founders Online: The State of New Jersey v Aaron Burr: Indictment for Murder, [ … . http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-26-02-0001-0281. Accessed 6 June 2024.

"How Founding Fathers Defined 'Traitors' And 'Treason.'"  NPR , 9 July 2013, http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/09/traitors-treason-snowden.

John Adams - Continental Congress & Constitution | Britannica . https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Adams-president-of-United-States/Continental-Congress. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Magazine, Smithsonian, and REPRINT AUTHOR PLACEHOLDER. "What the Nation's Founders Said About the Indictment of a Former President."  Smithsonian Magazine , https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-nations-founders-said-about-the-indictment-of-a-former-president-180981946/. Accessed 6 June 2024.

N, et al. "How Legitimate Forms Of Protest Are Distinguished From Treason."  NPR , 11 Jan. 2021.  NPR , https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955719981/how-legitimate-forms-of-protest-are-distinguished-from-treason.

"O.J. Simpson Was Found Guilty of Robbery and Kidnapping Charges Exactly 13 Years After Being Acquitted of Murder."  Peoplemag , https://people.com/o-j-simpson-was-found-guilty-of-robbery-and-kidnapping-charges-exactly-13-years-after-being-acquitted-of-murder-8630105. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Signers of the Declaration of Independence . https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/index.html. Accessed 6 June 2024.

"The Founding Fathers Online."  National Archives , 15 Aug. 2016, https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/founders.html.

Treason Quotes (95 Quotes) . https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/treason. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Waxman, Olivia B. "What the Founding Fathers Would Think of the Trump Indictment."  TIME , 31 Mar. 2023, https://time.com/6267585/presidential-historians-trump-indictment-reactions/.

"What Happened to Aaron Burr After He Killed Alexander Hamilton in a Duel?"  HISTORY , 7 July 2023, https://www.history.com/news/burr-hamilton-duel-political-legacy-died.

"What Happened to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence?"  PBS NewsHour , 4 July 2012, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-this-age-of-texting.

By Jack Izzo

Jack Izzo is a Chicago-based journalist and two-time "Jeopardy!" alumnus.

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At Trump Trial’s Closings, Lawyers Weave Facts Into Clashing Accounts

A defense lawyer painted Donald J. Trump as the victim of unscrupulous people, but a prosecutor said Mr. Trump had directed a scheme to conceal a hush-money payment.

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By Ben Protess ,  Jonah E. Bromwich and Maggie Haberman

For nearly three hours on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump’s lawyer did his level best to persuade the jury to acquit his client, wielding a scalpel to attack nearly every strand of the criminal case against the former president.

Then it was a prosecutor’s turn. Rather than using a fine blade, he swung a sledgehammer.

Throughout a marathon closing argument that nearly outlasted daylight, the prosecutor delivered a sweeping rebuke of the former president, seeking to persuade the jury of 12 New Yorkers that Mr. Trump had falsified records to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn star. The prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, wove together witness testimony and documents to drive home the key points of the weekslong case, the first criminal trial of an American president.

Facing the judge’s 8 p.m. deadline, Mr. Steinglass raced to the wire, stopping only to take a gulp of water as the sky darkened outside the towering courtroom windows.

“Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case was cloaked in lies,” Mr. Steinglass said as the jurors, who had been glued to most of his presentation, began to fidget in their seats.

By the time the prosecutor finished, the courthouse had closed to other business and the traffic on Lower Manhattan streets had slowed. More than 10 hours after Mr. Trump’s lawyer began the day by calling the case “absurd” and “preposterous,” Mr. Steinglass finally had the final word.

The disparate strategies — Mr. Steinglass’s closing was more than twice as long as the defense’s — reflected their separate tasks. The defense needed only to establish reasonable doubt, while the prosecution needed to persuade the jury to accept a narrative that, Mr. Steinglass argued, could lead to only one ending: guilty on all counts.

The Donald Trump Indictment, Annotated

The indictment unveiled in April 2023 centers on a hush-money deal with a porn star, but a related document alleges a broader scheme to protect Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The Links Between Trump and 3 Hush-Money Deals

Here’s how key figures involved in making hush-money payoffs on behalf of Donald J. Trump are connected.

Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?

The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump ended in the Manhattan jury convicting him on 34 felony counts. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.

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