QUOTING AND PARAPHRASING
A RULE OF THUMB
Never use a quotation as a way to avoid writing! In a paragraph, aim for no more than 1/4
quotation and 3/4 your explanation of the quote.
Quotes don't explain anything by themselves. They have to be interpreted. They must demonstrate
support for some aspect of your own argument.
Quotes can really disrupt the flow of your own prose. This paper is you're argument. Don't let somebody
else's words come in and get your reader off the track unless those words are really useful. In other
words, don’t forget the power of paraphrasing: putting informative material into your own words rather
than relying on the writing of others.
Quotations duplicate the source you're using exactly:
According to the Houston Chronicle, "HISD will lay off 100 teachers."
Here an author is using the Chronicle to strengthen some point she is making. By directly quoting you
give yourself credibility, no matter what you're arguing. For instance, this author might be quoting the
paper to show that the rumors of layoffs are false, despite being in the paper. Instead of a direct
quotation, though, you also have the choice of paraphrasing the source, restating the quote in your own
words, as follows:
The Chronicle reported that 100 teachers would be laid off by HISD.
In this instance, there's nothing especially brilliant about the way the newspaper presented this material;
it's the information itself which is important. Keeping things in your own "voice" helps with the flow
of the paper. When you paraphrase 1)don’t rely too heavily on the sentence structure or wording of the
original. 2) On the other hand, make sure you haven’t altered the meaning or taken an idea out of context.
"Hey!" you say, "Now that it's in my words, I don't have to cite the source any more, right? After all, it's
not their words--it's my words."
THIS IS WRONG!
For direct quotations OR paraphrases you still need to cite the source. If you use information or ideas
without citing the source, you're stealing, which in writing is called plagiarism: trying to pass off
somebody else's work as your own. In fact, you want to include the source, as this helps your authority
and credibility.
Never be afraid that having too many sources are going to weaken the paper. Sources are your authority.
They're the fruits of your research. Use them liberally.
NOTE: Don't rely too heavily on just one source when you're arguing, nor quote too profusely from a
single text. Your reader may loose patience and say something like, "Heck, wouldn't it be better just to go
and check out I Love Drugs and eliminate the need for this hack to copy it out for me?" Your reader may
also begin to wonder why you love this one source so much. Is it because the others don’t support your
position?
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INTEGRATING QUOTATIONS
Tell where the quote is coming from, and do it with style.
Sometimes an author expresses an idea in an especially memorable fashion, and you want to quote it
directly, or otherwise work it into your own paragraphs. There are effective and stylish ways to do this,
however.
Often writers simply begin a quotation without introducing it because they don't sense the need to
distinguish their own voice (which should be dominant) from supporting voices.
This is what I call the "dumped quote."
For the Amish, the public school system represents a problem. "A serious problem
confronting Amish society from the viewpoint of the Amish themselves is the threat of
absorption into mass society through the values promoted in the public school system"
(Hostetler 193).
Who exactly is speaking when those quotation marks begin? Who is this person who's come along and
interrupted the author when she was writing about the Amish? Well, we know from that information in
the parenthesis. MLA citation indicates the author of a quote by including his or her last name inside of
parentheses after the excerpt, along with a page number. By checking the Works Cited at the end of a
research paper, any reader can then find the exact source where the quote came from, and they can go and
find the page and further investigate this text themselves.
But look how awkward it is. For one thing, the readers have to wait until the end of the quote before they
know the source. Who the heck is Hostetler?
Compare with:
As John A Hostetler points out, the Amish feel the public school system threatens them with
"absorption into mass society through the values promoted in the public school system"
(193).
The reader's clued in right from the start where the quote comes from. This also eliminates the need to
include the author's name in the parenthesis: we know from the context it's John A. Hostetler. This is a
simple maneuver, and solves a lot of stylistic problems at once; except of course for that nagging question
which remains: Okay, his name's John but I still don't know who he is!! Yes, the readers can go back to
the Works Cited and find out more about Mr. H . . . but why put them through so much pain, heartbreak,
and the possibility of a serious paper cut? So much better to just do a little something like:
According to Harvard Anthropology professor John A. Hostetler, one of the most serious
problems that the Amish face is a "threat of absorption" into the dominant culture
represented by public schools (193).
This is more compact because the author's now paraphrased some of the material--keeping only those
parts of Hostetler's text that are really interesting and vital to the topic--and included in a few brushstokes
a bit about his authority. Just telling that someone is a professor, a columnist, a judge, or a doctor, can
make a world of difference in the credibility of the quote.
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Always introduce your source, giving it its authoritative due. Don’t “dump.”
Everything which applies to "introducing" quotations works for paraphrased material as well. If
you're going to list out a string of statistics, tell the reader ahead of time that they come from the
American Medical Association, and aren't just something you heard Dr. Nick say on a Simpson's episode.
A simple "introduction" as above will only be necessary once in most papers unless those papers are of
very great length. If you return to the source used in the example above, you could just call him
"Hostetler" and move on, as the reader should be able to remember that this is that Harvard
Anthropologist you mentioned earlier.
"CAN I CHANGE A QUOTATION?"
A quotation is an exact copy of the words of the source you're using. However, quotes can be changed for
purposes of clarification if you are fair about it. That's the important thing to keep in mind. If you've
changed something about somebody else's words, you've got to indicate to the reader that you've done so.
You may change a quotation to:
1. Emphasize particular words by italicizing them. You would then add the phrase
(emphasis added) in parentheses at the end.
Johnson claimed that the battle began "in the hours before dawn" (193 emphasis added).
2. Make the quote conform grammatically or to insert information by using brackets.
If Thoreau thought that in his day, "The mass of men [led] lives of quiet desperation"
(Walden 5), what would he say of the masses today?
Any unfaithfulness is, as the candidate phrased it, "between me and Lee [his wife] and
me and God" (34).
3. Omit irrelevant information by using an ellipsis--perhaps the most useful change you can
make to a quote.
Here's an original quotation directly from the book The Unembarrassed Muse, by Russel Nye:
Mickey's is a child's world, safe (though occasionally scary), nonviolent,
nonideological, where all the stories have happy endings. Characterization is strong
and simple--Mickey is bright and friendly, Minnie eternally feminine, Goofy happily
stupid, Donald of the terrible temper a raffish, likable rascal. No Disney strip ever
gave a child bad dreams or an adult anything to ponder.
Here's that material used in a research paper with some of the irrelevant information eliminated so
that what remains is only that which is important to the author's particular argument.
Mickey's is a child's world, safe . . . nonviolent, nonideological, where all the stories
have happy endings. . . . No Disney strip ever gave a child bad dreams. . . .
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The ellipses above signal to the reader that something's been removed. Yes, the author's
changed the original, but he admits it right there on the page. Note that when a large
amount of material is taken out--more than just taking something out of the middle of a
sentence--four dots are used to indicate this. (Basically, it indicates that the removed
portion "crosses" a period.) Likewise, the four dots at the end demonstrate that the author
hasn't reproduced the entire sentence all the way to the period, but has stopped
somewhere before the end.
Be very careful when changing quotations. It's quite possible to completely change the
sense of a quote by unfairly omitting one part or another. This is wrong and if a reader
ever catches you at it, your credibility is blown.
Here's an example of the unfair use of ellipses.
Jeff Milar is the film reviewer for the Houston Chronicle. A few years back he reviewed
Black Sunday, a film in which terrorists hijack the Goodyear Blimp, put an atomic bomb
in it, and fly it to the Super Bowl, intending to detonate this bomb right there in the
middle of America's most important media spectacle.
Jeff thought the movie had an unbelievable plot and ridiculous characters without
motivation.
In the midst of his scathing review, he rather ironically included this sentence:
If you like movies about blimps, you'll love this.
The very next Sunday, Jeff turned to the Zest Magazine and saw a large ad for Black
Sunday in the entertainment section, only to find that the advertisers had included a quote
from him!.
"If you like movies . . . you'll like this."
Jeff Milar
"Well heck," them advertisers might say, "we indicated that we'd changed the quote right there
with them ellipses, right? What more do you want?"
They'd used that ellipsis to change the whole sense of Jeff's original words. Make sure you
haven't changed what the quote means when you perform these operations, else you'll be doing
your reader an injustice and setting yourself up for charges of trickery.
MAKE SURE THE SOURCE MATERIAL IS
GRAMMATICALLY COMPATIBLE
In other words, be sure that when you take something out of quoted material, or added someone
else's words to your own, what you're left with is still a sentence.
This is crucial! You're words plus the quote, must be a grammatical sentence.
NOT -- The narrator suggests his bitter disappointment when "I saw myself as a creature
driven and derided by vanity."
BUT -- The narrator suggests his bitter disappointment when he describes seeing himself
"as a creature driven and derided by vanity."
Take a look at the way the authors in our book do this, and always strive for clarity and fairness.
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