5 parts

PARAPHRASING

1. Reread the original passage until you understand its full meaning.

2. Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card.

3. Jot down a few words below your paraphrase to remind you later how you envision using this material. At the top of the note card, write a key word or phrase to indicate the subject of your paraphrase.

4. Check your rendition with the original to make sure that your version accurately expresses all the essential information in a new form.

5. Use quotation marks to identify any unique term or phraseology you have borrowed exactly from the source.

6. Record the source (including the page) on your note card so that you can credit it easily if you decide to incorporate the material into your paper.

Use your sources as support for your insights, not as the backbone of your paper. A patchwork of sources stuck in a paper like random letters in a ransom note does not a research paper make.

If do you use a direct quote, the explanation should be twice as long as the quote. Readers have to know why you include source material where you do.

Here are some possible signal phrases:

* According to Jane Doe, "..."

* As Jane Doe goes on to explain, "..."

* Characterized by John Doe, the society is "..."

* As one critic points out, "..."

* John Doe believes that "..."

* Jane Doe claims that "..."

* In the words of John Doe, "..."

acknowledges, adds, admits, affirms, agrees, argues, asserts, believes, claims, comments, compares, confirms, contends, declares, demonstrates, denies, disputes, emphasizes, endorses, grants, illustrates, implies, insists, notes, observes, points out, reasons, refutes, rejects, reports, responds, states, suggests, thinks, underlines, writes

1. Do not overuse quotations. Follow this pattern:

a. Assertion. Make some argument or sub-argument about the text(s).

b. Quotation. Quote, with context, a word, phrase, line or passage that supports

that (sub)argument.

c. Commentary. Comment on the quotation, directly engaging with the

language within the quotation and explaining how it supports your assertion.

2. Avoid “floating quotes.” The style of your writing will be better if you incorporate quoted phrases into your own structure rather than writing a sentence and then quoting a sentence or a poetic line.

3. Always work your quotation comfortably into your own sentence structure.

4. Longer quotations (more than four lines of prose) should be set off from your paragraph's usual display form: single-spaced and centered without quotation marks. This longer form is called a block quote.

7. If, for clarity or sentence structure, you must alter a quotation, use brackets to indicate the change(s).

8. If you omit material in order to be succinct, mark the omission by three periods (ellipsis) with a space between each (. . .).

NOTE: There is no need to use these routinely at the beginning and end or your quotations; it is understood that you are lifting passages from a longer work.