The ideas, explanations, and details from your sources need to be integrated—combined and mixed—with your own thoughts and conclusions about the question you have investigated. Together these components form a unified whole that conveys your perspective and the evidence that logically supports it.
For more about how to quote, paraphrase, and summarize, see Learning by Writing in Ch. 12 and Capturing Information in Your Notes in Ch. 33.
As explained in Chapter 33, there are three primary ways of taking notes on a source. Quoting reproduces an author’s exact words. Paraphrasing restates an author’s ideas in your own words and sentences. Summarizing extracts the essence of an author’s meaning. As you move from note taking to integrating source material into your own work, you’ll want to work carefully with the evidence you have gathered.
Quoting and Paraphrasing Accurately
To illustrate the art of capturing source material, let’s look at a passage from historian Barbara W. Tuchman. In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (Knopf, 1978), Tuchman sets forth the effects of the famous plague known as the Black Death. In her foreword, she admits that any historian dealing with the Middle Ages faces difficulties. For one, large gaps exist in the records. Here is her original wording:
ORIGINAL
A greater hazard, built into the very nature of recorded history, is overload of the negative: the disproportionate survival of the bad side—of evil, misery, contention, and harm. In history this is exactly the same as in the daily newspaper. The normal does not make news. History is made by the documents that survive, and these lean heavily on crisis and calamity, crime and misbehavior, because such things are the subject matter of the documentary process—of lawsuits, treaties, moralists’ denunciations, literary satire, papal Bulls. No Pope ever issued a Bull to approve of something. Negative overload can be seen at work in the religious reformer Nicolas de Clamanges, who, in denouncing unfit and worldly prelates in 1401, said that in his anxiety for reform he would not discuss the good clerics because “they do not count beside the perverse men.”
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena.
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Take Action Avoiding Plagiarism
Ask each question listed in the left-hand column to consider whether you are in danger of plagiarizing. If so, follow the ASK—LOCATE SPECIFICS—TAKE ACTION sequence to correct the situation.
| 1 ASK | 2 LOCATE SPECIFICS | 3 TAKE ACTION |
| Am I prepared to do research effectively? |
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| Am I recording information accurately and fairly? |
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| Am I aware of other ethical issues that may arise in a research project? |
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Although you might highlight this passage as you read it, it is too long to include in your paper. Quoting it directly would let your source overshadow your own voice. Instead, you might quote a striking line or so and paraphrase the rest by restating the details in your own words. Here, the writer puts Tuchman’s ideas into other words but retains the source author’s major points and credits her ideas.
PARAPHRASE WITH QUOTATION
Tuchman points out that historians find some distortion of the truth hard to avoid for more documentation exists for crimes, suffering, and calamities than for the events of ordinary life. As a result, history may overemphasize the negative. The author reminds us that we are familiar with this process in our news coverage, which treats bad news as more interesting than good news. If we believed that news stories told all the truth, we would feel threatened at all times by technical failures, crime, and violence—but we are threatened only some of the time, and normal life goes on. The good, dull, ordinary parts of our lives do not make the front page, and the praiseworthy tend to be ignored.“No Pope,” says Tuchman, “ever issued a Bull to approve of something.” But in truth, social upheaval did not prevail as widely as we might think from the surviving documents of medieval life (xviii).
In this reasonably complete paraphrase, about half as long as the original, most of Tuchman’s points are spelled out. The writer doesn’t interpret or evaluate Tuchman’s ideas—she only passes them on. Paraphrasing helps her emphasize ideas important to her research. It also makes readers more aware of how they support her thesis than a quoted passage would. The writer has directly quoted Tuchman’s remark about papal Bulls because it would be hard to improve on that short, memorable statement.
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Often you paraphrase to emphasize one point. This passage comes from Evelyn Underhill’s classic study Mysticism (Doubleday, 1990):
ORIGINAL
In the evidence given during the process for St. Teresa’s beatification, Maria de San Francisco of Medina, one of her early nuns, stated that on entering the saint’s cell whilst she was writing this same “Interior Castle” she found her [St. Teresa] so absorbed in contemplation as to be unaware of the external world.“If we made a noise close to her,” said another, Maria del Nacimiento, “she neither ceased to write nor complained of being disturbed.” Both these nuns, and also Ana de la Encarnacion, prioress of Granada, affirmed that she wrote with immense speed, never stopping to erase or to correct: being anxious, as she said, to “write what the Lord had given her, before she forgot it.”
Suppose that the names of the witnesses do not matter to a researcher who wishes to emphasize, in fewer words, the renowned mystic’s writing habits. That writer might paraphrase the passage (and quote it in part) like this:
PARAPHRASE WITH QUOTATION
Underhill has recalled the testimony of those who saw St. Teresa at work on The Interior Castle. Oblivious to noise, the celebrated mystic appeared to write in a state of complete absorption, driving her pen “with immense speed, never stopping to erase or to correct: being anxious, as she said, to ‘write what the Lord had given her, before she forgot it’” (242).
Summarizing Concisely
See Tuchman’s original passage.
To illustrate how summarizing can serve you, this example sums up the passage from Tuchman:
SUMMARY
Tuchman reminds us that history lays stress on misery and misdeeds because these negative events attracted notice in their time and so were reported in writing; just as in news stories today, bad news predominates. But we should remember that suffering and social upheaval didn’t prevail everywhere all the time (xviii).
This summary merely abstracts from the original. Not everything is preserved—not Tuchman’s thought about papal Bulls, not examples such as neo-Nazis. But the gist—the summary of the main idea—echoes Tuchman faithfully.
Before you write a summary, an effective way to sense the gist of a passage is to pare away examples, details, modifiers, and nonessentials. Here is the quotation from Tuchman as one student marked it up on a copy, crossing out elements she decided to omit from her summary.
A greater hazard, built into the very nature of recorded history, is overload of the negative: the disproportionate survival of the bad side—of evil, misery, contention, and harm. In history this is exactly the same as in the daily newspaper. The normal does not make news. History is made by the documents that survive, and these lean heavily on crisis and calamity, crime and misbehavior, because such things are the subject matter of the documentary process—of lawsuits, treaties, moralists’ denunciations, literary satire, papal Bulls. No Pope ever issued a Bull to approve of something. Negative overload can be seen at work in the religious reformer Nicolas de Clamanges, who, in denouncing unfit and worldly prelates in 1401, said that in his anxiety for reform he would not discuss the good clerics because “they do not count beside the perverse men.”
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Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena.
Rewording what was left, she wrote the following condensed version:
SUMMARY
History, like a morning newspaper, reports more bad than good. Why? Because the documents that have come down to us tend to deal with upheavals and disturbances, which are seldom as extensive and long-lasting as history books might lead us to believe (Tuchman xviii).
In writing her summary, the student could not simply omit the words she had deleted. The result would have been less readable and still long. She knew she couldn’t use Tuchman’s very words: that would be plagiarism. To make a compact, honest summary that would fit smoothly into her paper, she had to condense the passage into her own words.
Avoiding Plagiarism
For more on avoiding plagiarism and using accepted methods of adding source material, see Ch. 12 and section D in the Quick Research Guide.
Never use another writer’s words or ideas without giving that writer due credit and transforming them into words of your own. If you do use words or ideas without giving credit, you are plagiarizing. When you honestly summarize and paraphrase, clearly show that the ideas are the originator’s; here Tuchman’s or Underhill’s. In contrast, the next examples are unacceptable paraphrases of Tuchman’s passage that use, without acknowledgment, her ideas and even her words. The first example lifts both thoughts and words, underlined and with the lines in the original noted in the margin.
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PLAGIARIZED THOUGHTS AND WORDS
Sometimes it’s difficult for historians to learn the truth about the everyday lives of people from past societies because of Quoted from line 2the disproportionate survival of the bad side of things. Historical documentsClose to lines 5–6, like today’s newspapers, tend to lean rather heavily on crisis, crime, and misbehavior. Reading the newspaper could lead Close to line 19one to expect a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, muggers, Lists from lines 19–21drug addicts, and rapists. In fact, though, disaster is rarely so pervasive as recorded Close to ¶2 openingaccounts can make it seem.
For more on planning a research project, see Ch. 30.
This writer didn’t understand the passage well enough to put Tuchman’s ideas in his or her own words. If you allow yourself enough time to read, think, and write, you’re likely to handle sources more effectively than if you procrastinate or rush your research. The next example is a more subtle theft, lifting thoughts but not words.
PLAGIARIZED THOUGHTS
It’s not always easy to determine the truth about the everyday lives of people from past societies because bad news gets recorded a lot more frequently than good news does. Historical documents, like today’s news channels, tend to pick up on malice and disaster and ignore flat normality. If I were to base my opinion of the world on what is on the news, I would expect death and destruction around me all the time. Actually, I rarely come up against true disaster.
By using the first-person pronoun I, this student suggests that Tuchman’s ideas are his own. That is just as dishonest as quoting without using quotation marks, as reprehensible as not citing the source of ideas.
The next example fails to make clear which ideas belong to the writer and which to Tuchman.
PLAGIARIZED WITH FAULTY CREDIT
Barbara Tuchman explains that it can be difficult for historians to learn about the everyday lives of people who lived long ago because historical documents tend to record only bad news. Today’s news is like that, too: disaster, malice, and confusion take up a lot more room than happiness and serenity. Just as the ins and outs of our everyday lives go unreported, we can suspect that upheavals do not play as important a part in the making of history as they seem to.
For more on working with sources, see Chs. 12 and 33 as well as section D in the Quick Research Guide. For more on quotation marks, ellipses, and brackets, see section 33 in Ch. 42 and section C in the Quick Editing Guide.
After rightly attributing ideas in the first sentence to Tuchman, the writer makes a comparison to today’s world in sentence 2. In sentence 3, she returns to Tuchman’s ideas without giving Tuchman credit. The placement of sentence 3 suggests that this last idea is the student’s, not Tuchman’s.
As you write, use ideas and words from your sources carefully, and credit those sources. Supply introductory and transitional comments to launch and attribute quotations, paraphrases, and summaries to the original source (for example, “As Tuchman observes . . .”). Rely on quotation marks and other punctuation to show exactly which words come from your sources.
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Avoiding Plagiarism
Have you identified the author of material you quote, paraphrase, or summarize? Have you credited the originator of facts and ideas you use?
Have you clearly shown where another writer’s ideas stop and yours begin?
Have you checked each paraphrase or summary against the original for accuracy? Do you use your own words? Do you avoid words and sentences close to those in the original? Do you avoid distorting the original meaning?
Have you checked each quotation against the original for accuracy? Have you used quotation marks for both passages and significant words taken directly from your source? Have you noted the page in the original?
Have you used an ellipsis mark ( . . .) to show your omissions from the original? Have you used brackets ([]) to indicate your changes or additions in a quotation? Have you avoided distorting the original meaning?