Quaratiello_CH8.docx

Using the Sources You Have Found BY NOW, YOU PROBABLY HAVE A BUNCH OF ARTICLES, BOOK- marked websites, and maybe even a book or two on your topic. You’ve done everything that this book has told you to do, so you’ve found lots of information. These sources have survived your initial evaluation proce...

Using the Sources You Have Found BY NOW, YOU PROBABLY HAVE A BUNCH OF ARTICLES, BOOK- marked websites, and maybe even a book or two on your topic. You’ve done everything that this book has told you to do, so you’ve found lots of information. These sources have survived your initial evaluation process, so you have at least skimmed through them. Now what? How do you take the information in these sources and use it in your paper? There are three simple answers to this question: quote, paraphrase, and summarize. QUOTING “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The preceding quote is the familiar opening line of the Gettysburg Address delivered by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, at a ceremony dedicat- ing a cemetery for the soldiers who died in the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. If you were to quote this line in your paper, you would need to integrate it into your text, introducing it effectively and being careful to use the exact words and not change it in any way. You could write: In the first line of his most famous speech, Lincoln asserts, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this con- tinent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The phrase “Lincoln asserts” is called a signal phrase and indicates that someone else’s idea is about to be used. In its most basic form, a signal phrase includes the author’s name or a pronoun that clearly identifies the author followed by a verb that indicates expression. Some examples of signal verbs, which are usually written in the present tense, are “says,” “argues,” “con- cludes,” “declares,” “observes,” and so on. There are lots of others, so don’t get into the habit of using only the most common signal verbs—“says” and “writes”—because you could easily be so much more descriptive. A quotation that appears all by itself without a signal phrase is called a “dropped quote” and should not appear in a well-written essay. Whenever you use quotes in your paper, they should be well-integrated with your own words so that there is an effective flow to the ideas you are conveying. When quoting, brackets are used to clarify a quotation by identifying a word, often a pronoun, that may be ambiguous due to its context. For exam- ple, suppose you wanted to include the following quote that you found in one of your articles: “Many of us, young and nervous, recited it at patriotic ceremonies as our parents, proud and nervous, looked on.” Will it be clear to your reader what it refers to? If the meaning is not made clear by a signal phrase or other information in the paragraph, a word or phrase in brackets should be inserted to add clarity. The revised sentence, “Many of us, young and nervous, recited it [the Gettysburg Address] at patriotic ceremonies as our parents, proud and nervous, looked on,” leaves no doubt what it is. Sometimes you don’t want to use an entire quote. Maybe it just seems too long, and you can cut some words out without changing its essential meaning. In order to do this, you use ellipses, which consist of three periods with a space between each period. If you are cutting out the end of a sentence, add an additional period to the ellipses. Let’s say that you thought the idea contained in the previous sentence as well as the one after it was worth quoting, but you’d like to shorten it a bit: “Many of us, young and nervous, recited it at patriotic ceremonies as our parents, proud and nervous, looked on. But the venerated address was not universally admired at the time.” If you wanted to shorten this quote, you could do so by cutting out nonessential information without changing the author’s meaning: “Many of us . . . recited it at patriotic ceremonies as our parents . . . looked on. But the venerated address was not universally admired at the time.” You could not, however, use ellipses in this way: “Many of us, young and nervous, recited . . . the venerated address ” The omission of the phrase “was not universally admired at the time” changes the meaning because the author believes that the Gettysburg Address was not always appreciated, but your revision makes it sound like it was. If the material that you are quoting is four lines or fewer, it can just be incorporated into your essay enclosed in quotation marks and introduced by a signal phrase. But if it is more than four lines, you need to indent the entire quote, which is called a block quote. Block quotes do not require quotation marks because the indentation indicates that the lines are quoted. Avoid using block quotes excessively because this can show too much reliance on the original material and a lack of analysis on your part. This is where ellipses can come in handy by allowing you to use only the most significant material. A block quote should still be introduced by a signal phrase, but this should appear in the line before the quote and be followed by a colon. Here is an example using MLA format: In his critical essay, Nicholas Cole explains: The note on which he ends, that those fallen at Gettysburg had died in order to secure the future of popular government, not just in America, but for the whole world, was not a rhetorical flourish or exaggeration invented by Lincoln. Rather, it reflected a much longer tradition of Amer- ican rhetoric and political thought that considered America’s relationship to the ancient world. (3) Following this quote, a parenthetical citation indicating that the quote can be found on page 3 of the source written by Nicholas Cole is inserted after the final period. PARAPHRASING “Eighty-seven years ago, our founders created on this land a new country, conceived in freedom, and dedicated to the idea that everyone is born equal.” This sentence probably sounds familiar because it is a paraphrased version of the aforementioned first line of the Gettysburg Address. But you don’t want to paraphrase this way because the sentence above is unintentionally plagiaristic. Just plugging in synonymous terms like “Eighty-seven” for “Four score and seven” or “freedom” for “liberty” is just the start of the problem. The important thing to remember when paraphrasing is to use not only your own words but also your own structure. This paraphrased version is unacceptable because, in addition to not identifying the source of this idea, it retains too much of the original style, replacing a few words and phrases with synonyms but keeping the same rhythm and structure and too many of the same words. To avoid this problem, read the material you need to paraphrase; then set it aside and try to write down the same ideas. The ideas should remain the same, but the phrasing should be different. A paraphrased version of a quotation should be about the same length as the original. If the original source is written in the first person (using the pronouns I, me, my, we, us, and our), a paraphrased version needs to be put in the third person (using he/she, him/her, his/hers, they, them, and their) to reflect your perspective, not the author’s. Similarly, a source written in the present tense would have to be paraphrased in the past tense. You should also include a signal phrase as you would for a quote to clarify that this is not your own idea. There are various ways to paraphrase the same thing. For example, here are two ways of paraphrasing the first line of the Gettysburg Address: In the first line of his speech Lincoln asserts that the founders of the United States of America created a new kind of country based on the universal freedom derived from the inherent equality of all citizens. In the stirring opening of his speech, Lincoln explains that those who founded the United States of America implemented unique ideas about freedom based on the belief that all citizens were equal. How do you decide when to quote and when to paraphrase? After all, you can’t have an entire paper full of quotes. This is boring to read and doesn’t show much of your own analysis. Paraphrase when you can express the ideas in a quote effectively, and directly quote only the most eloquent ideas you have found in the course of your research. Sometimes an author writes something that is expressed so perfectly, as Lincoln does in the Gettysburg Address, that it is difficult to paraphrase, but if you can express the thoughts of an author in your own words while still conveying the information effec- tively, then try to paraphrase. For example, in a November 2011 article in the Atlantic, Gary Wills writes, “Lincoln seems—in familiar accounts—to have been rather cavalier about preparing what he would say in Gettysburg. The silly but persistent myth is that he jotted his brief remarks on the back of an envelope.” Instead of quoting these words, you could easily paraphrase: Gary Wills explains that people at the time thought that Lincoln didn’t put a lot of thought into what he would say at Gettysburg and that he hastily wrote his speech on the back of an envelope, but he acknowledges that this is a myth. SUMMARIZING Another way of dealing with information is to summarize it. This is different from paraphrasing because a summary is shorter than the original material and focuses on the main points in a general way. If you are writing a paper analyzing the Gettysburg Address, you might want to summarize Lincoln’s “call to action” at the end of his speech where he tells his audience what they should do. Here are Lincoln’s original words: It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain- ing before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Here is one way you could summarize this section of his speech: To truly honor the soldiers who sacrificed their lives, Lincoln urges those still living to continue the fight for democracy and achieve the goal that the deceased soldiers had fought for. Notice that this summary is shorter than the original material. Summaries can be of varying lengths and levels of detail, depending on your purpose in using them. You could summarize an entire article in a sentence, but if you wanted to provide a bit more detail, it could be longer. A summary, however, should never be longer than the original because that would defeat the pur- pose of summarizing. Summaries should also have signal phrases in your final paper to clarify that the ideas are not your own. In the example above, “Lincoln urges” is a signal phrase. AVOIDING PLAGIARISM Integrating your sources by quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing requires you to use ideas that are not your own. If you integrate these ideas ineffec- tively, you could, unknowingly or not, commit plagiarism. There are two kinds of plagiarism: intentional and unintentional. To understand the difference, consider a criminal who deliberately shoots and kills his victim as opposed to a driver who accidentally hits and fatally injures a pedestrian. While pre- meditated murder is the most serious crime that could ever be committed, vehicular homicide is also considered a criminal offense. In the same way, intentional plagiarism is considered more heinous than unintentional pla- giarism, but both types are wrong and need to be avoided. When you knowingly take the words or thoughts of another person and present them as your own, you are committing intentional plagiarism. Copy- ing and pasting information from a website or copying entire sentences or paragraphs word for word from an article or book without giving credit to the source is obviously plagiarism. Worse yet is buying a research paper on one of those notorious websites that sell such things. In these cases, you are deliberately passing off someone else’s ideas as your own. Intentional plagiarism is a serious offense because you are stealing some- thing; in the case of presenting an author’s work as your own, you are stealing someone’s intellectual property. But aside from the issue of morality, pla- giarism is simply a foolish thing to do. Teachers become familiar with your writing style and can easily tell when something you have written doesn’t sound like you wrote it. You are also more likely to be caught these days because, if you are suspected of plagiarizing, phrases from your paper can be searched online and easily found. Some schools require students to submit their assignments to online plagiarism-detection services such as Turnitin (turnitin.com). If you are caught intentionally plagiarizing, the ramifications are certainly serious, including a failing grade and, in some cases, getting kicked out of school, but unintentional plagiarism should also be avoided. Although you might not get kicked out of school for it, your paper may get a bad grade. This type of plagiarism often occurs because of messy and disorganized note-tak- ing. As you were reading your sources, you might have come across a good quote and just cut and pasted it into a Word document (in the olden days, you would have written the quote on an index card). Later, as you referred back to your notes, you might have thought that this quote was actually your own idea because you forgot to clearly identify the words from an outside source as a quote. To avoid this problem, clearly identify all quotations as such by enclosing them in quotation marks and identifying the author of the quote. Notes should clearly distinguish between quoted and paraphrased material, and paraphrasing should be done following the guidelines previously dis- cussed in this chapter. Perhaps you think your paraphrasing is just fine, but remember that if you make only minimal changes in word choices, or retain too much of the author’s original style, you are committing plagiarism even if you cite the source properly. DOCUMENTATION When to Cite The end product of your research is the paper that you write to fulfill a particular assignment. An important component of your paper is the doc- umentation that gives credit to the sources you used to write it. Without this documentation, you are essentially committing plagiarism. Citing your sources has three purposes: To give credit where credit is due, thus avoiding any allegations of plagiarism To enable any reader of your paper to hypothetically locate the sources used in the paper To give credibility to the facts that you state in your paper Unintentional plagiarism can sometimes result from confusion over what types of information need to be cited. Statements that reflect an opinion must always be cited unless the opinion is your own. When you state factual information, however, you do not always have to cite your source. If the fact could be easily found in any general reference source, it is considered common knowledge and does not need to be cited. It is not necessary for you to previously have known something in order for a piece of information to be common knowledge. Here are some examples of facts that would not have to be cited: There were more than 50,000 casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle took place over three days from July 1st to the 3rd in 1863. The opposing generals were Robert E. Lee and George Meade. You may not have known any of the facts above, but you would expect that they would all be contained in any general encyclopedia entry on the topic. Conversely, the following are examples of information that you should cite: There are no photos of Lincoln actually giving his very brief speech at Gettysburg because the photographer did not have time to set up his camera. The Battle of Gettysburg marked a turning point in the Civil War because the Northern victory reinvigorated the Union troops. George Meade, a brilliant general who was greatly respected by his troops, was given command of the Union army only a week before the battle. When in doubt, cite. There’s nothing wrong with citing the sources of infor- mation that is considered common knowledge, except perhaps a paper that is a bit cluttered with unnecessary notes. But failure to provide the necessary citation of a source is an act of plagiarism. Citation Styles There is no one standard way to cite a source. The variety of documentation styles reflects the diversity and sheer amount of information available today and the specific needs of researchers in different fields. Legal documents are much different from scientific articles, and the way they are documented reflects this. Because each style has its own official handbook and there are plenty of resources available online, including Purdue OWL and the EasyBib citation generator, my intention in this chapter is not to focus too specifically on the nuts and bolts of how to cite sources in every style but to provide a broader overview of documentation. The examples in this chapter, however, will highlight MLA documentation because that is most often used in required writing courses. Appendix D offers basic examples for other common styles, but if you have a very specific question about how to cite a source using a particular style, you can consult the following sources: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (9th ed., 2021). MLA style is most often used for English papers, in freshman composition, and in some humanities courses. The Modern Language Association publishes the MLA Handbook, and an abridged version can be found at style.mla.org/. The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed., 2017). There are two versions of Chicago style: the author-date system, which is used primarily in the sciences and social sciences, and the notes-bibliography system, which is used primarily in the arts and humanities. An abridged version of this guide is available at chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide .html. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate Turabian (9th ed., 2018) is also helpful if you need to use Chicago style. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed., 2020). This guide will familiarize you with APA style, which is primarily used in the social sciences. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (8th ed., 2014). The Council of Science Editors (CSE) pro- vides this guide, which explains how to document scientific sources. Purdue OWL (owl.purdue.edu/owl/avoiding_plagiarism/guide _overview%20.html) is one of the best online resources for information about documenting your sources in a variety of styles. Your library website probably provides links to other reputable guides for all the major documentation styles that offer examples of how to cite various sources. Your librarians may even have developed their own style guides for your use. There are many places where you can find examples of how to cite your sources. The important thing to consider in evaluating these sites is currency; check to see when the site was updated. MLA style changed sig- nificantly with the publication of the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook, so don’t use a style guide from before 2021 or one that follows the rules found in the MLA Handbook’s previous edition. You may already be familiar with websites and computer programs that generate citations for you based on information you enter about the source. EasyBib (easybib.com) is currently the most popular such site. Although it will follow the rules of whichever style you specify, keep in mind that it is only a tool. If you enter inaccurate information, the resulting citations will be incorrect. Academic libraries often provide citation aids that can help, like RefWorks and EndNote. These tools can also work with databases to import citations and are set to deal with all kinds of formats. The list of sources that you include at the end of your paper is generically referred to as a bibliography and, using the notes-bibliography version of Chicago style, that’s exactly what it is called: “Bibliography.” MLA style requires the heading “Works Cited” at the top of the page instead, while an APA paper requires “References” as the section header. Make sure that your bibliography, no matter what it is specifically called, is alphabetized according to the authors’ last names. This is one thing that all documentation styles have in common. In addition to providing a bibliography, you need to incorporate notes into your paper. Immediately after you use a direct quote or paraphrase the idea of someone else, you must give credit to the source. If your professor tells you to use MLA style, you will use parenthetical citations to provide notes. For example, if you quoted what Shelby Foote wrote on page 27 of his book The Civil War: A Narrative, you would insert (Foote 27) immediately after the closing quotation mark, followed by a period. If you introduce a quote with a signal phrase such as “Foote writes,” you don’t need to include the author’s last name in the citation, just the page number. For a website, which doesn’t have a page number, cite the author’s name; if that is not available, a shortened version of the title will suffice. You also need to use a shortened title to differentiate among multiple sources by the same author. For example, if you used two books by Shelby Foote in your paper, one of which was The Civil War: A Narrative, you could use the shortened title in a parenthetical citation: (Foote, Civil War 27). Unless you are in the less likely situation of using the author-date system of Chicago style, you will need to provide footnotes or endnotes rather than parenthetical citations. A superscript number is inserted at the end of the passage you want to cite. Then either include a citation as a footnote at the bottom of the page or collect all your citations together as endnotes, at the end of the paper. Unlike bibliography citations, these are more specific, citing the exact page numbers in the case of a print source. See appendix D for examples of footnotes, which have a slightly different format from endnotes. This appendix also provides examples of APA format, which is similar to MLA style in that parenthetical citations are used rather than footnotes. Citing Periodical Articles By now you should be familiar with the basic components of a periodical article citation because they are included in all periodical database citations: the author, the title of the article, the title of the periodical in which the article is published, the date of the issue, the page numbers, and, in the case of a journal, the volume and issue numbers. The format for your citations, however, is a bit different from what you’ve seen in periodical databases. Here is a sample MLA citation for an article in a popular magazine (appendix D offers examples of other styles): Brookhiser, Richard. “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Honored Ideals Far Older Than Four Score and Seven Years.” Time. 19 Nov. 2019, pp. 70-71. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=8gh&AN=152574263&site=ehost-live. Notice that the title of the article comes before the magazine title and is enclosed in quotation marks, while the title of the magazine is italicized. This is how MLA format distinguishes the source from what is called its container—the larger work that the source is a part of. You do the same thing if you are citing an article from a scholarly journal, a chapter from a book, or a web page from the website that it is a part of. Containers need to be identified in all the major styles and distinguished from the sources they provide. If you are citing an article from a scholarly journal, you must also include the volume and issue numbers before the date and page numbers, so the format for an MLA citation would follow this example: Zyskind, Harold. “A Rhetorical Analysis of the Gettysburg Address.” Journal of General Education. vol. 4, no. 3, 1950, pp. 202-212. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27795309. Also notice in the citations above that the names of the periodical databases used to access the articles are included. Just to point out one major difference between two of the major formats, this is required by MLA but not APA. In the previous examples, URLs are included at the end of the citations. If the database you are using, however, provides a DOI (digital object iden- tifier), use that instead of the URL. DOIs are like URLs but more effective in locating the article. If you can’t find a DOI, look for something else called a persistent link, and if that is not available, just use the URL in the location bar at the top of your web browser. A word of warning: Some periodical databases have Help screens that indicate how to cite the material contained in them. Be careful, however, because, for some reason, this information is often improperly formatted. Citing Books The basic components of a book citation are the author, the title, the pub- lisher, and the place and date of publication. For example, here is a typical MLA citation for a book: Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. Simon and Schuster: 1992. If this same book were accessed as an e-book, you would add the name of the e-book service (E-book Central, Google Books, etc.). There are many variations for citing books: Your book may have two, three, or more authors, or it may have no author but an editor instead, as in the case of many reference works. It could be a multivolume work or a specific edition. Maybe you’re using only one chapter. In each of these cases, the citation is a little different, so refer to appendix D for examples of the most common citations, or refer to the style manuals and websites listed in the beginning of this section for guidance on specific types of sources. Citing Websites The following information should be included in website citations if it is available: Author’s name—Basically, whoever is responsible for the content; this could be an individual or an organization. If no author is indicated, just leave it out and alphabetize the citation by title. Title of web page (the source). Title of website (the container). Date—when the page was created, last updated, or accessed. URL McNamara, Robert. “Significance of the Battle of Gettysburg.” ThoughtCo. September 12, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/significance-of-the -battle-of-gettysburg-1773738.