In order use other sources in your own essay, you’ll need to use a combination of summary, paraphrasing and quotation….

Definition: Quoting shows that you are taking the exact words from someone else. What is inside the quotations should be word-for-word what appears in the original source.

Remember to use a signal phrase – don’t just drop a quote into your essay with no context.

Remember to cite the page number and indicate the source using APA style.

Try to quote key phrases and ideas, instead of entire sentences. Make sure you set up these key phrases so that they fit into a grammatically correct sentence. Use the signal phrase and paraphrasing to help you set up the key phrase you are quoting.

Don’t quote giant blocks of text. Use summary instead to condense the meaning in your own words.

Don’t overquote. In other words, don’t use a quote in every other sentence of your essay. Use paraphrase instead to show that you understand key points.

 

 

 

Definition: Putting someone else’s specific point or idea into your own words. (This is an alternative to quoting.)

Tips on Paraphrasing:

To paraphrase a point from another writer, you need to understand the idea. If you don’t understand the idea, ask your instructor or talk it out with another student. Then try to put the concept in your own words.

When you want to paraphrase something, read it several times, put the article away, and write down what you think the idea is from memory in your own words. It is very difficult to paraphrase something when you are looking right at it; your paraphrase might turn out too close to the original, which is plagiarism…

 

Definition: Summary allows you to condense the meaning of a written text in order to highlight the key points for a reader. Summaries usually indicate the main point (thesis) of the reading and the key points (claims) that support it and sometimes briefly describe a key example that supports the points (depending on the length of the summary).

In order to summarize something, you need to prioritize. In other words, you need to sift through the reading and understand what the most important points are. If you highlight almost every single sentence on a page you’ve read, you aren’t focusing on key points and you’ll have a hard time summarizing.

Try explaining the main point(s) of a reading out loud to a classmate or friend. This will show that you understand the main point and force you to try to say it in your own words.

Don’t start summary sentences with "This essay is about mean dogs" or "This paragraph is about bad cats." With these kinds of sentences, you don’t get to the topic until the end. Begin the sentence with the topic and indicate what the writer’s point is about that topic. For example, "In her essay, Caster (1999) argues that mean dogs should be punished by locking them in rooms with bad cats." In this sentence I give you both the topic and the point Caster makes about that topic.