How you represent your sources can quickly establish your credibility (ethos)—or the reverse. For example, by briefly describing the author’s credentials the first time you summarize,paraphrase, or quote from a source, you establish the source’s authority and demonstrate that you have selected sources appropriately:
Martin Rablovsky, a former sports editor for the New York Times, says that in all his years of watching young children play organized sports, he has noticed very few of them smiling. “ I’ve seen children enjoying a spontaneous pre-practice scrimmage become somber and serious when the coach’s whistle blows, ” Rablovsky says...(qtd. in Coakley 94).
Signal phrase & author’s credentials
Source summary
In-text citation follows quotation
Quotations can also reinforce the accuracy of your summary or paraphrase and establish your fairness to opposing points of view. In the following sentence, Jessica Statsky demonstrates her fairness by quoting from the Web site of the Little League, a well-known organization, and she establishes her credibility by demonstrating that even those who disagree with her recognize that injuries occur:
Although the official Little League Web site acknowledges that children do risk injury playing baseball, it insists that “ severe injuries... are infrequent, ” the risk “ far less than the risk of riding a skateboard, a bicycle, or even the school bus ” (“What about My Child?”).
Statsky’s introduction: Summarizes source
In-text citation follows quotation
In both of these examples from “Children Need to Play, Not Compete” (pars. 5 and 3, respectively), Statsky introduces the source to her readers, explaining the relevance of the source material, including the author’s credentials, for readers rather than leaving them to figure out its relevance for themselves.
Whenever you borrow information from sources, be sure to double check that you are summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting accurately and fairly. Compare Statsky’s sentence with the source passage (that follows). (The portions she uses are highlighted.) Notice that she has inserted ellipsis (... ) to indicate that she has left out words from her source’s second sentence.
Source
Injuries seem to be inevitable in any rigorous activity, especially if players are new to the sport and unfamiliar with its demands. But because of the safety precautions taken in Little League, severe injuries such as bone fractures are infrequent. Most injuries are sprains and strains, abrasions and cuts and bruises. The risk of serious injury in Little League Baseball is far less than the risk of riding a skateboard, a bicycle, or even the school bus.
In both of the preceding examples, Statsky uses quotation marks to indicate that she is borrowing the words of a source and provides an in-text citation so that readers can locate the sources in her list of works cited. Doing both is essential to avoiding plagiarism; one or the other is not enough.