How to incorporate other writers’ work into your own writing by Nancy McEnery Librarian-Instructor In this brief power point presentation, you will learn how to incorporate other writers’ works into your own writing.

Three approaches Quotations Paraphrasing Summarizing There are three ways to incorporate other writer’s work into your own writing. Each differs according to the closeness of your writing to the source writing.

Quotations Identical to the original source Match the source document word for word Must be attributed to the original author Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.

Exact Quotation “In the near future, economic crisis will bring democracy to Asia” (Bell 59). or According to Daniel Bell, “In the near future, economic crisis will bring democracy to Asia” (59). Let’s say that you read an article in the New Republic Magazine entitled “After the Tsunami” by Daniel Bell. You found the perfect quote for your paper on page 59. You can give credit to the author in one of two ways: You can put his/her name at the end of the sentence in parenthesis with page number. Or, you can include the author’s name in the sentence and then just put the page number at the end of the sentence.

Paraphrasing Put passage from source into your own words. Attribute to original source. Usually shorter than the original passage. Emily Dickenson Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from the source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly.

Paraphrasing not Plagiarizing Original Source: Some of Dickinson’s most powerful poems express her firmly held conviction that life cannot be fully comprehended without an understanding of death. Martin, Wendy. “Emily Dickinson.” Columbia Literary History of the United States. Emory Elliott, gen. ed. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. 609-26. Plagiarism: Emily Dickinson strongly believes that we cannot understand life fully unless we also comprehend death. Paraphrase: As Wendy Martin has suggested, Emily Dickinson held that we must understand death to be able to comprehend life more fully (625). In our example, we take the original source and we condense it slightly. We also attribute the source to it’s author, Wendy Martin. Note that the page number is indicated at the end of our sentence (page 625). If you write the following sentence without any documentation, you will have committed plagiarism

Summarizing Put the main idea(s) into your own words Include only the main points Attribute to original source Take broad overview Summarizing involves putting the main ideas(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.

Summarizing Original Source: A decline in standardized test scores is but the most recent indicator that American education is in trouble. One reason for the crisis is that mandatory-attendance laws require many to attend school who have no wish to be there. Sipher, Roger. “So That Nobody Has to Go to School If They Don’t Want To. New York Times Magazine. August 24, 2009. 22-24. Summarize: One reason that American education is in trouble is because students don’t want to be at school but must attend due to mandatory attendance laws (Sipher 22). Here you can see that the summary is significantly shorter than the original source, but we do give credit to the author, Roger Sipher.

Putting it all together Vary your writing style by using a mixture of summaries, paraphrases, and quotations. Writers frequently intertwine summaries, paraphrases, and quotations. As part of a summary of an article, a chapter, or a book, a writer might include paraphrases of various key points blended with quotations of important phrases as in the following example:

An Example In his famous and influential work On the Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud argues that dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious” (53), expressing in coded images the dreamer’s unfulfilled wishes through a process known as “the dream work” (54). According to Freud, our dreams are censored and coded through layers of condensation and displacement before emerging in a kind of rebus puzzle in the dream itself (59). Following upon the work of Freud, Carl Jung believed that our real, but unacceptable desires are censored internally (Jones 127). In this example, we can see how the writer has varied their style, using direct quotations, paraphrasing and summarizing.

Conclusion Avoid the use of other people's words, sentence structure, and ideas in work that will be turned in as your own. The three ways to do this are: quotations paraphrasing summarizing