Once you have found a number of credible sources that have expanded your understanding of your topic, have provided evidence that you find convincing, and which have prepared you to offer your own ideas as you join the conversation–what next? You get started writing!

Before you jump right in, think back to how you assessed the quality of the sources you found. What made you feel confident in the credibility of these sources? Hopefully, one criteria that stands out is in the frequency and accuracy of evidence the author quoted, cited, or otherwise integrated into the text. How can you shape your research paper in a similarly credible way?

There are multiple ways to incorporate the research you have done as you write your argumentative essay. The first two, summary and paraphrase, should be familiar from your annotated bibliographies. The third, direct quotation, is the practice of using another author’s words exactly as they wrote them to help make a point. This chapter will go over the process of deciding which is the most useful method for integrating your sources, as well as the basics of how to incorporate quotations into the grammar of your essay.

If you have three tools to integrate research into your writing, how do you choose which to use in any given circumstance? Here are some guidelines to help you decide.

Are you planning to bring in a broad idea, a particular example, or a specific line or phrase from one of your authors? Thinking about the scope or size of what you want to borrow can help determine if you should summarize, paraphrase, or quote.

Summary

For example, if you are planning to discuss the main idea of an author’s article, you may be best served by summary. Introduce the author, explain their main idea in your own words, and explain why this helps you make your point. Summary is a clean and simple way to accomplish two main goals 1) to show that this idea belongs to someone else, and 2) that you have done your research into what other people are saying about the topic. In other words, you are giving credit while boosting your own credibility!

Paraphrase

If, rather than the main argument, you want instead to talk about a more specific point an author makes in their writing, paraphrase might be the most effective tool to use. While summary is best used to explain the overall claim being made, paraphrase is great for isolating a particular idea from the author’s paper without claiming that it is their whole argument. For example, if the author Daryl Jonson’s main claim is that physical therapy can have benefits even in patients without injury, but you’re most interested in the two-page explanation of what a typical physical therapy appointment looks like, you can borrow this information in paraphrase:

Notice that because the author is referring to a specific moment in the article, they’ve offered the page range where this moment occurs in their citation for the paraphrase. That’s especially important for attributing ideas that are not yours and for making it easier for your readers to track down the example themselves.

Quote

Finally, if you have found 1-2 sentences from an article that you want to use word-for-word, you can use quotations to do so. While you likely have seen examples in the articles you read for this project where authors use long, extended quotations in their writing, for a short argumentative essay like Project 3 a quotation longer than 1-2 sentences is inappropriate. It gives too much space to someone else’s ideas, and doesn’t leave enough room for you to develop your breakdown of the quotation and explanation of why this quotation is important (i.e., your analysis of the quotation). Stick to quotations of a shorter length to better prioritize your own ideas.

For the remainder of this chapter, we’ll focus on these smaller quotations, with a note that longer quotations do have specific formatting requirements that you should look up elsewhere if you choose to ignore this advice. As for smaller quotations, there are a few rules that may help you integrate quotations effectively into your writing:

Rule 1: Once you’ve quoted an author, explain what the quotation adds to your argument.

Bringing in a quotation and then leaving it alone without commentary or analysis is a common mistake in early-career writing. If you ask your readers to take the time to read a quotation, make sure to also tell your reader why this quotation matters to your work. Does it show another person agreeing with you? In what way? Does it provide evidence for your own claims? What, specifically, is the connection between the two? If it’s worth quoting, it’s also worth explaining!

Rule 2: Never let a quotation be its own sentence.

Another common early-career writing habit is to integrate a quotation into the body of your own paragraph, but to leave it as a stand-alone sentence. This is a particular hallmark of high-school level writing. In college, we are looking to level up our skillset by making sure to integrate the quotation more effectively into our own writing. Yes, a quotation is made up of other people’s words, but it is being brought into your writing and therefore needs either a colon, an introductory phrase or clause, or a closing phrase or clause. Let’s look at an example of each to demonstrate how powerful this seemingly simple change is in our writing.

For these examples, let’s say Georgio is making an argument against the use of single-use plastics, and is trying to integrate a quotation that contains evidence to support his claims.

In this example, the quotation is placed in the middle of the author’s main ideathat we need to reduce our reliance on plastics that only get used once before being thrown out. While Georgio appropriately credits his quotation with an in-text citation in MLA formatting, right now the quotation is not doing as much for his argument as it could be. It is simply sitting there, interrupting his own point and remaining unexplained. Let’s look at another example to see how Georgio might use this quotation more effectively.

In this example, Georgio introduces the author of the article as introductory context before including the quotation in the same sentence. This makes the quotation seem more relevant and also contributes to the credibility of the evidence. Georgio also takes the time to address the information provided in the quotation and explain how it relates to his own argument. Overall, this is a much more effective use of a quotation, aided by the inclusion of an introductory clause to the quotation itself.

Hopefully, these examples have demonstrated how 1) explaining a quotation and 2) not leaving it as a stand-alone sentence improves the overall effectiveness of the use of the quotation overall. They also lead into the next major rule for integrating quotations:

Rule 3: Always include citations.

While we’ll go into more detail about citation styles later in this chapter, just note that it is vitally important to always include the correct citation for every quotation and paraphrase. Doing so improves the credibility of your writing by fairly attributing ideas that are not your own to their original sources. Failure to do so can result in serious consequences, from decreasing the credibility of your writing to resulting in accusations of plagiarism.

Rule 4: Never begin or end a paragraph with a quotation.

It may seem like a great idea to start or end a paragraph with a catchy quotation, but there are several reasons why this practice actually weakens your writing overall. As we’ll explain in more detail in Chapter 6, the first sentence of a paragraph should be a topic sentence. These sentences introduce the main idea of the paragraph and are vital structural components of an argument. Starting with a quotation effectively blocks the topic sentence and reduces organizational clarity.

In a similar vein, the last sentence of a paragraph is necessary for emphasizing your own ideas and preparing to transition to the next topic. Not only does using a quotation for your last sentence therefore affect the structural clarity of your writing, but it also leaves no room for you to explain the importance of that quotation. All around, using a quotation as the final sentence of a paragraph weakens your writing. In either case, readers should always hear your voice first and last in each paragraph, as this is ultimately your project!

Citation Styles

When you integrate research into your writing in the form of summary, paraphrase, or quotations, you elevate the credibility and persuasiveness of your argument. You are effectively showing your reader that 1) you have done the research necessary to form an educated opinion about this topic and 2) that other people’s argument and research support your ideas. This added credibility is one of the main reasons we use citations when we bring in information from outside sources–we actually make our argument stronger by showing that other people agree with us. The second major reason we cite is to ensure that we are being fair with how we present information. Ideas, evidence, and turns of phrase that did not originate in our heads cannot ethically be presented as our own; therefore, we must be vigilant with keeping track of who said what through the use of citations to avoid both the negative moral/ethical implications and plagiarism.

Sometimes the citation style you use is your choice, but most often, your instructor will give you a style he or she would like you to use. The two most common are MLA and APA. MLA, or Modern Language Association, is used most often in the humanities: English, history, the languages, etc. It is focused on the names of authors; this authorial expertise is highly valued in the humanities. APA, or the American Psychological Association, is used most often in the sciences: biology, chemistry, sociology, and, as the name suggests, psychology, among others. It is most focused on dates; this is why you see the copyright date noted after the last name when it’s used in a signal phrase in the text. Citations in both styles have two parts: source information in the actual essay (called an in-text citation) and source information on a separate page that becomes an alphabetical list of all your sources.

MLA Citations

Let’s say we’re looking at a (fictional) website. When creating an in-text citation, you can use a signal phrase or a parenthetical citation. In MLA citation, a signal phrase will mention, at the very least, the author(s) OR, if there’s no author, the title of the work. For example:

• According to Fred Rogers…
• As noted in the article, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,”…

A parenthetical citation is placed after the source material (remember, you cite even if you put the source information in your own words!), and it looks like this: (Rogers). Or, if there is no author, then (“It’s a Beautiful Day”).

 

Creating a works cited

Now, you’ve got half the job done. It’s no good having an in-text citation if it doesn’t refer to a source, so on a separate sheet of paper titled “Work Cited,” you’ll list what’s called the full citation for each source. It might look something like this:

APA Citation

 

Let’s continue with the same fictional website. When creating an in-text citation for APA, a signal phrase will mention the author (but only the first initial of the first name as APA maintains gender neutrality) AND the copyright date: According to F. Rogers (2015)… As noted in the article, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (2015)… An APA parenthetical citation would look something like this: (F. Rogers, 2015). (“It’s a Beautiful Day,” 2015). As with MLA citation, you’ll also need a separate list of sources for APA citation. It should be titled “References,” and just like in MLA citation, your sources should be alphabetized. A citation might look something like this:

What can be most frustrating about citation is that there are as many ways to cite sources as there are sources. First, know that the basic citation formatting is similar, so when you get the basics down, it makes it easier. Second, there are lots of sources out there to help you make your citations. Here are some of the best: