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Heenan
English 102
Sp 07

Dr. Katherine Heenan

English 102
Spring 2007

Integrating Sources into Your Writing

Why is using sources in college writing important?Much of the writing you do in college is

based on what you read, that is, the work and ideas of other people. So it is crucial to learn how

to present those idea through quotes, paraphrases, and summaries, and to learn how to integrate

them into your own writing.

Using other sources, including quotes, paraphrases, and summaries:

  • Establishes your credibility as a careful, thoughtful writer who considers different viewpoints;
  • Helps support your arguments;
  • Illustrates points you are trying to make.

Things to consider:

  • 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.
  • Summarize (condense a text by stating the main ideas in your own words) and paraphrase (say the same thing in a different way) much more often than you use direct quotes (same words as the original, in quotation marks).
  • Don't use direct quotes as fillers but because the author says something so aptly or dramatically that a paraphrase would lose that power. Or, if you're analyzing the language of a passage.
  • If do you use a direct quote, the explanation should be twice as long as the quote. Even summaries and paraphrases don't become your own thoughts just because they're in your own words. You have to explain them too. Readers have to know why you include source material where you do.
  • If multiple sources say the same thing, summarize what they say and put a few key names in brackets at the end of the sentence. This can add to your credibility.

In general, you should strive to make your presence known in your writing and not let your sources of information dominate the content. To do this, you need to pointedly introduce the quotations, paraphrases, and summaries, selecting relevant evidence and creating context or interpreting importance for the reader.

The following suggestions may help you avoid overusing your sources when you write:

  • Always introduce a paragraph with a sentence that you believe is your own thought on the subject matter.
  • Avoid long quotations that are not surrounded by your own interpretation or assertions. You should examine the number and nature of quotations after writing the paper to detect overuse or inappropriate use.
  • Avoid using sources you don’t understand because you will have to use someone else’s words to integrate the source into your paper.
  • Do not allow your readers to interpret too much on their own. Avoid the temptation to include uncommented-on quotations simply for effect.
  • Never include quotations that do not add to your paper’s argument, even though they may prove that you have done research. Even when your teacher requires you to refer to a specified number of outside resources, always include only those references that add value to your paper.

What are signal verbs and phrases? Signal verbs and phrases help integrate quotes and

paraphrases into your text. They connect your idea to a supporting quote or paraphrase.

Use your research to back up or support your own ideas. The paper should not be all quotes

or even mostly quotations or paraphrasing of the ideas of others. The paper should be your

ideas and observations, illustrated and strengthened by the research, thoughts and writings of

others.

The more you read and write in college, the easier incorporating sources will become. Also, you will become familiar with the more common signal verbs listed below. Use them to strengthen the points you make in your papers:

acknowledges / confirms / interprets / reveals
advises / criticizes / objects / says
agrees / declares / observes / states
allows / describes / offers / suggests
asserts / disagrees / proclaims / thinks
believes / discusses / proposes / writes
charges / disputes / remarks
claims / emphasizes / replies
concludes / exclaims / reports
concurs / expresses / responds

To synthesize evidence, you need to smooth the transitions between your ideas, words and

sentences and those of your sources.

Give your reader a context for interpreting the borrowed material:

EX. Awkward Construction Many professional athletes are clean, and the “drug using players should be punished” (Jones 34).

Smoother Construction: While some professional athletes may be clean, “drug using players should be punished” (Jones 34).

Play close attention to verb tenses, capitalization and pronoun use when inserting quotes into

your own sentences.

EX. Verb Tense Change: “Drug using players,” Jones asserts is the ones who “should be punished” (34).

Capitalization Rule violation: “drug using players should be punished” (Jones 34).

Pronoun use leads to confusion: The worth of an athlete “depends on their trustworthiness,” notes Jones (34).

If you need to add words, or change the tense of form of a verb to make the quote fit into

your own sentence, place the added or changed words in brackets:

EX. “Players who use [steroids] are guilty of bad judgment and are not proper role models for children,” says Jones (34).

The reliability drug tests “depend upon the [lab’s] trustworthiness,” Jones notes

(34).

“[P]layers should be punished if they are found to have used drugs” (Jones 34).

Remember, don’t just toss the quotation into your paper and leave the reader to draw his/her own conclusions, contextualize the quote. You should be make clear to the reader why you are including that quote. Does it offer an opposing point of view? Support your own point of view? How did the author of the quote arrive at that point?

Some final thoughts:

Avoid falling into a pattern of spending a paragraph on each outside source, and then starting a new paragraph to introduce a new source. Refer only to those components of the outside author's text that help you to construct your own argument.

Back up your claims by quoting reputable sources. If you write, "Recent research shows that..." or "Many authors believe that...", you are making a claim. You will have to back it up with authoritative evidence. This means that your paper must include references to the specific page numbers where you got your outside information

Avoid using words like "always" or "never," since all it takes is a single example to the contrary to disprove your claim.

A good practice is to acknowledge all sources from which you borrow. However, you don’t need to cite sources for familiar proverbs or aphorisms, such as A stitch in time saves nine, Art imitates life, or Feed a cold; starve a fever. Nor do you need to cite sources for common knowledge, such as Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while attending a performance at Ford’s Theater or The sum of the angles of any right triangle equals 180 degrees. An effective rule to follow is that if you are in doubt about whether to cite your source, you should cite it. This is a case when it is better to err on the side of caution than to leave out the appropriate documentation and possibly commit plagiarism.