From Reading Rhetorically by John C. Bean, Virginia A. Chappell, and Alice Gillam

“Making Knowledge: Incorporating Reading into Writing”  Guidelines for three methods of incorporating source material into your own writing:  Summarizing  Paraphrasing  Using Direct Quotations

SUMMARY:  Effective in the following situations:  Source directly supports your thesis or presents idea you will challenge or analyze.  Source offers important background for your ideas.  When you need to provide readers with an overview of a source’s whole argument before analyzing particular ideas from it.  When you want to condense and clarify ideas from a source.

CAUTION…  Only summarize points that are essential to your argument.  Make sure your summary accurately represents the original text’s meaning.

Practice with Summary  Using today’s reading, select an appropriate part of the text to summarize into your own sentence.  Be sure to use parenthetical citation. If you use the author’s name in your sentence, then only include page number in parenthesis.  Share with a partner.

PARAPHRASE: Restates all of the original passage’s points in your own words.  Effective in the following situations:  When you want to emphasize especially significant ideas by retaining all of the points or details from the original.  When you want to clarify ideas that are complex or language that is dense, technical, or hard to understand

CAUTION…  If your wording is too close to the original wording you may be guilty of plagiarism. Because you have not used quotation marks, the reader will assume these are your words, not the author’s words that you have recast.  Be sure you fully understand any passage you are paraphrasing, if you struggle to put the ideas into your own words, you will give the impression you don’t fully understand the ideas you are trying to paraphrase.  Long paraphrases draw too much attention to themselves and can be a distraction to the point you are trying to make by using the idea in the first place.  Do not distort the original text’s meaning or point.

GUIDELINES FOR EFFECTIVE PARAPHRASE:  Avoid mirroring the sentence structure or organization of the original.  Simplify complex ideas by pulling them apart and explaining each smaller component of the larger idea.  Use synonyms for key words in the original and replace unfamiliar or technical vocabulary with more familiar terms.  As a check, try paraphrasing the passage twice, the second time paraphrasing your own paraphrase; then compare your second paraphrase with the original to make sure you have sufficiently recast it into your own language.

Practice with Paraphrase  Using today’s reading, select an appropriate part of the text to paraphrase into your own sentence.  Be sure to use parenthetical citation. If you use the author’s name in sentence, then only include page number in parenthesis.  Share with a partner.

DIRECT QUOTATION: When you use an author’s exact wording, you must use quotation marks to signal the beginning and ending of the author’s ideas and cite this correctly.  Effective in the following situations:  When the language you are citing is vivid, or distinctive or memorable.  When the quotation supports a key point in your paper.  When the person is a well-known authority on the matter and their ideas will carry weight.

Practice with using Direct Quotation  Using today’s reading, select an appropriate part of the text to incorporate a direct quote into your own sentence.  Be sure to use parenthetical citation. If you use the author’s name in your sentence, then only include page number in parenthesis.  Share with a partner.

Sample Direct Quotation 1:  She says that romance writers are “producing mass-market entertainment that appeals to it’s consumers for much the same reason as McDonald’s and Burger King appeal to theirs: It’s easy, it makes you feel good, and it’s the same every time. The point of a romance novel is not to dazzle its reader with originality, but to stimulate predictable emotions by means of familiar cultural symbols.”

Sample Direct Quotation 2:  She describes romance fiction as “mass- market entertainment” that appeals to people because “it’s easy, it makes, you feel food, and it’s the same every time.” Its purpose, she says, is not to stimulate thinking and the imagination, “but to stimulate predictable emotions by means of familiar cultural symbols.”

CAUTION…  Too many direct quotes or quotes that are too long undermine your credibility.  Be sure that you do not quote someone out of context or misconstrue or misinterpret the original meaning of the text.  Do not use quotes as a short cut around difficult ideas.

GUIDELINES FOR USING DIRECT QUOTATIONS EFFECTIVELY:  Prefer short quotations, as longer quotations will distract from the focus of your discussion.  Whenever possible instead of quoting whole sentences, work quotations of key phrases into your own sentences.  Be absolutely accurate in the wording and punctuation of direct quotations.  You must fairly and accurately represent the original.

Attributive Tags  All three strategies work best with attributive tags such as “Ariel Jones says” or “According to Ariel Jones”.  These attributive tags connect or attribute material to its source.

Attributive tags:  Help readers distinguish your sentences and ideas from those in your sources.  Enhance your credibility by showing readers that you are careful with your sources and remain in charge of paper.  Enhance your text’s credibility by indicating the credentials or reputation of an expert you are using as a source.  Provide a quick method of showing readers the published context of your source material.  Give you the opportunity to shape the reader’s responses to the material you are presenting.  Can offer a variety of information in accordance with the writer’s purpose and the intended audience’s background knowledge (publisher, date, credentials, etc.).

Attributive Tags Sample 1: What’s the difference?  Romance readers insist on formulaic plots of “childlike restrictions and simplicity,” and as a result, these books lack “moral ambiguity” (Gray and Sachs 76).  The Time article mentioned earlier claims that romance readers insist on formulaic plots of “childlike restrictions and simplicity,” and says that as a result these books lack “moral ambiguity” (Gray and Sachs 76)

Enhance your text’s credibility by indicating the credentials or reputation of an expert you are using as a source.  “high school teacher Sam Delaney,”  “Molly Smith, an avid fan of romance literature”  “Josephine DeLoria, a controversial defense lawyer,”

Practice enhancing your text’s credibility by indicating the credentials or reputation of an expert you are using as a source.  Using today’s reading, write an attributive tag that demonstrates this technique.

Shape the reader’s responses to the material you are presenting by using attributive tags.  What kind of attitude do the following tags convey:  A July 2000 Time magazine article verifies this claim.  Research by Carskadon and her colleagues documents the scope of the problem.  Predictable plots, so the argument goes, offer escape.  Some literary critics claim that the books depend too much on magic.

Practice shaping the reader’s responses to the material you are presenting.  Using today’s reading, write an attributive tag that demonstrates this technique.

Remember…  Attributive tags work best near the beginning of the sentence, but can be placed after other introductory phrases.  In some cases, the author’s name is not as interesting as where the article appeared.  A July 2000 Time magazine article verifies this claim… (Gray and Sachs 76).

Parenthetical Citations  Basic MLA:  Author’s last name plus, for a quote or paraphrase, the page number): (Name 00)  Note how there is no comma or abbreviation for page.

Citation on Cupcake Day  You may use author’s last name or Source and letter of source:  (Smith)  (Source B)  Note how neither indicates a page reference. Since you will only have excerpts of texts, page numbers may not be available.