Your sources can help you introduce ideas, contrast the ideas of other authors with your own, provide evidence for your points, align yourself with an authority, define concepts, illustrate processes, clarify statements, set a mood, provide examples, and qualify or amplify a point. You can present information from sources in several ways:

As you draft your document, consider how your use of sources might lead your readers to view your issue in terms that are most favorable to your purposes. By selecting source information carefully, you can make your points more directly than you might want to make them in your own words. Calling opponents of a proposal “inflexible” and “pig-headed,” for example, might signal your biases too strongly. Quoting someone who uses those terms, however, allows you to get the point across without undermining an otherwise even and balanced tone.

The following are some of the most effective ways to use information, ideas, and arguments from sources as you contribute to a written conversation about a subject.