Yuma, Information Literacy Tutorial

There are four ways to incorporate outside sources into your writing but note that each has a specific justification. So, don't use them randomly, use them with your readers' needs in mind. Also, recall from the first page of this lesson, when you incorporate outside sources into your writing, you'll need to use an abbreviated citation, called an in-text citation. Your in-text citations will lead readers to a corresponding full citation that you'll provide at the end of your paper in your References Cited section, or in Footnotes at the bottom of the page where your in-text citation appears. Again, recall from the first page of this lesson that the way your in-text citations should look will depend on the style guide you are using. 

Now let's look at four different ways you can incorporate outside sources into your writing.

You can directly quote a source by putting quotation marks around any sentences, parts of sentences, or phrases that you've taken from the source. If you are quoting quite a lot of text, then you'd use a block quote. You can see examples of both in the excerpt shown on the right. Then, you'd add an in-text citation to show where the quoted material came from. 

You should use direct quotes when it's important to show your reader what someone else said in their own words. Below is an excerpt from this journal article:

Bruley, S. (2017). 'It didn't just come out of nowhere did it?' The origins of the women's liberation movement in 1960s Britain. Oral History, 45(1), 67-78. 

Notice that the author uses direct quotes from women who were part of the 1960's feminist movement. Can you see how it is both informative and interesting to read what those early feminists had to say in their own words? This is exactly what direct quotes are for.

Note that in science-writing, direct quotes are almost never used; it tends to be in humanities disciplines like literature, art, history, etc. where your reader might benefit from seeing how someone else said or wrote something, in their own words.

Another way to incorporate outside sources into your writing is to paraphrase information from a source, using your own words to express the same meaning as the content in the source. 

You should paraphrase when you need to convey content from an outside source, but you can do it more clearly and smoothly for your reader by using your own words. 

In this excerpt the author paraphrases from a work by Anna Karenina, rather than using a direct quote. 

In this particular example it was probably essential to paraphrase from this source because, judging from the citation, it looks like it was written in Russian, not English. 

A third way to incorporate sources into your writing is to summarize information from a source. You'd do this when you need to give your reader an overview of information you took from a source, but not all the nitty-gritty details. You'd then include an in-text citation showing what source you used. 

Below is an excerpt taken from this book:

• Ursula Smartt. (2006). Criminal Justice. SAGE Publications Ltd.

When you were reading the excerpts below, did you notice that paraphrasing and summarizing were often used in combination?

Something else worth mentioning is that paraphrasing and summarizing are harder skills to master compared to slotting in a direct quote in your writing. 

Nevertheless, it's really useful to get practice reading and comprehending content, then summarizing and/or paraphrasing it in your own words. 

But, if you are finding it difficult to do, try these tips:

First, read the source, then set it aside and don't look at it while you write down the most important things you remember from the source.

Then, look over what you wrote, polish it up, and look at your source again to make sure you didn't borrow phrases and/or parts of sentences (or whole sentences).

Lastly, you'll then need to insert one or more in-text citations to give credit to the source you used.