19 Integrating Material from Sources

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

As you write, you’ll want to provide specifics from your sources. You may, for example, want to refer to findings from a study that support your claim, refer to an expert who agrees with you, or even quote someone whose ideas you plan to critique. To do this well, you must integrate source material into your own work.

You have three main options when you’re thinking about how to integrate material from your sources. You can summarize the material, you can paraphrase the material, or you can quote the material.

For all three, no matter what, you still have to document your sources. One area where students sometimes are confused is they believe if they’re summarizing or paraphrasing, they don’t need to document the source. They feel like they should only document if they’re using the source’s exact words. That is not in the case. And that is dangerous because that can lead you into academic misconduct or accidental plagiarism.

Even though you always have to document your sources when you use them, you’ll need to make thoughtful choices about when it’s best to quote, paraphrase, or summarize.

When to Quote

When you quote, you use the author’s exact words in your essay. Perhaps because it’s so easy to just copy and paste, most student writers quote too often and use quotes that are too long; you really want to quote sparingly. A rule of thumb I was taught is to aim for no more than 10% of your essay to consist of quoted material. Are there exceptions to that rule? Absolutely. But keeping that in the back of your mind should help you remember that quotes need to earn their place in your essay.

You should only quote material in these specific circumstances:

• If you need the voice of the author to add credibility to the testimony
• If the language or the word choices are particularly striking or important
• If you’re planning to actually discuss or analyze the language that they used

When you do quote, be sure to quote only the relevant portions. You can integrate quoted phrases or clauses into your own sentences to improve the flow and avoid having to quote extraneous words or phrases from the original. You can also use an ellipsis (the three dots in a row) to omit words or phrases from the sentence, as long as doing so doesn’t change the meaning.

When to Paraphrase

Most of the time, you should be paraphrasing. When you paraphrase, you identify a specific passage from the source, and you relate it in your own words. A good paraphrase is different from the original in both word choice and in sentence structure; don’t fall into the trap of using a thesaurus just to replace a few key words.

You should paraphrase:

• If you want to use some information from the source, but the exact wording is not particularly important.
• If the language of the original source is too complicated, and you need to clarify it so that your audience will understand.
• If you want to incorporate a source’s specific argument without disrupting the flow of your own language.

These three occasions represent the vast majority of circumstances in which you will integrate material from a source, so naturally, paraphrasing will be the most commonly used of your three options.

When to Summarize

Sometimes the entire main idea of the source is relevant to your discussion, and you can’t point to a single specific passage in the source that you’re referring to. Instead, you need to present a short version of the source’s entire main argument or point.

You would also summarize when you need to introduce a text before getting into a more detailed analysis of it, like when writing a Response Essay, a Rhetorical Analysis, or some kind of interpretive argument (see the chapter on Writing Arguments of Fact).

The chapter on Reading Well provides additional information about writing summaries.

Source Integration

In addition to choosing appropriately whether to quote, paraphrase, or summarize, you’ll need to integrate your source material effectively.

When integrating sources, follow the sandwich rule. Your own material should be on either side of anything from a source. The source material is the filling; your voice, interpretation, and commentary are the bread.

Specifically, do not open a paragraph with source material. First, introduce the topic or point in a way that transitions from the previous content. Then, use an attributive tag (also known as a signal phrase) to present the summary, paraphrase, or quote. Afterward, explain how the source material relates to your paragraph’s point and/or overall thesis using at least one or two sentences.

Attributive tags/signal phrases are ways to introduce source material, so it doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Most commonly, the consist of the author’s last name plus a verb, like “Hawkins argues,” but another common version is the phrase “According to.” In academic writing, these almost always appear before the source material, unlike journalistic and fiction writing, which sometimes place them after a quote.

Note: You should always use an attributive tag when quoting a source. For paraphrases or summaries, a parenthetical citation alone may suffice, but quotes appearing without introduction are likely to confuse readers.

Attributive tags serve multiple purposes. First and foremost, they prepare the reader for what they are about to encounter; remember, academic writing doesn’t like surprises! Additionally, they can smooth the transition between your language and the source material, especially for quotes, where the author’s style of writing may be very different from your own. Finally, they offer you a chance to frame the source material to support your rhetorical purpose. You can include details about the author or publication as a way of illustrating (or diminishing) the source’s credibility, or use the attributive tag to indicate the source’s relationship to your argument or to other sources. You can see examples of all of these at the end of this chapter.

Source Documentation

Finally, you’ll want to be sure that you’re documenting your source material correctly. Proper documentation is a tool to help you avoid plagiarism. A lot of plagiarism is accidental because students don’t understand how to document sources appropriately. Accidental plagiarism is called academic misconduct, and you can still get in trouble for it, even though you didn’t mean to do it!

To avoid plagiarism, you’ll need to ensure that these items are addressed:

1. Make it clear to readers when you’ve obtained ideas or words from someone else.
2. Distinguish your words from those written by others (using quotation marks or block formatting for long quotes).
3. Allow readers to identify whose ideas or words you’re using.
4. Provide enough information for readers to easily locate the original source.

As long as you meet those four requirements, you’ll be safe from accidental plagiarism. However, you’ll still want to refer to an appropriate style guide to understand exactly how to meet those requirements in accordance with academic conventions.

The two most commonly used academic style guides are probably The MLA Handbook and The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. You may recognize these by the shorthand teachers often use to refer to them: MLA and APA. If you’ve ever had a teacher say something like, “Use MLA,” that means “Follow the rules in The MLA Handbook.”

MLA stands for Modern Language Association, and, as you’ve probably guessed from the title of the book, APA stands for American Psychological Association. Both of these groups are “professional organizations” with members who work in those fields, and they publish style guides on writing, formatting essays, and documenting sources. The idea is for everyone in a particular field to use the same formatting style for consistency. MLA is commonly used in the humanities like English, languages, art, and philosophy. APA is commonly used in the social sciences such as psychology, sociology, and political science. Depending on your intended field, you may ultimately use a different style guide in the classes related to your major, but most classes on this campus allow you to follow MLA, APA, or both. However, APA is the most popular system here, and if you’re going into a health-related field, it’s the one you’ll be expected to use.

These style guides are updated occasionally, typically around every 5-7 years, so it’s also important to be sure you’re using the most current edition of the style guide. The following section provides an overview of the basics, but you’ll want to ensure you know how to access more detailed guidance. You can usually buy used copies of the actual handbooks pretty cheaply online, but if that doesn’t work for you, most libraries (including our college library) will have copies on hand, either in the Reference section or on reserve at the circulation desk. You can also find good help online, although you need to make sure the resources are accurate and up-to-date.

Whatever system you use, it’s important to be consistent with it; don’t mix and match rules from different systems in the same paper!

Documentation Basics

Both MLA and APA require two parts:

1. A list of complete citations for all sources used. This list appears on the final page(s) of the essay. It’s called the Works Cited in MLA, and it’s called the References in APA. (Both MLA and APA have you list your sources in alphabetical order by author’s last name, use a hanging indent, and double-space.)
2. In-text citations wherever sources are referenced. In-text citations can be in the form of attributive tags/signal phrases (APA calls these “narrative citations”), parenthetical citations, or combinations of both.

You will find many online resources to help you create the complete citations for your Works Cited or References page, including tools built in to the OSU-OKC library catalog and databases. Although these tools are not 100% reliable, they are generally pretty accurate, especially if you are citing a common type of a source like a scholarly journal article or a book. That said, it’s always up to you to double-check that these citations are correct before you use them; what you put in your own work is always your responsibility. Both the MLA and APA handbooks offer explicit guidance and lots of examples, and you can find plenty of information online as well. The examples later in the chapter illustrate three of the most common types of citations: a scholarly journal article, an article from a website, and a book.

The in-text citations are a little trickier, and we don’t yet have any reliable way for computers to create them for you. (Microsoft Word has a built-in system for creating citations, but it’s pretty inaccurate!) Here are the basics:

• MLA in-text citations require:
  • Author’s last name (if no author, use title of source)
  • Page number of passage being quoted or paraphrased (if no page numbers, omit)
• APA in-text citations require:
  • Author’s last name (if no author, use title of source)
  • Year of publication (if no year is available, use n.d.)
  • Page number of passage being quoted (if no page number, use paragraph number and/or section title)

As long as you include the basic information as described above, you should be safe from accidental plagiarism. However, in-text citations do have certain expectations for how to present this information in your essay, and following those conventions is an important way to show you should be taken seriously. It’s also helpful for readers when citation information is consistently formatted across various sources; there’s no guessing about what the author meant or why they did something a particular way. The sections below provide examples illustrating how to format this information in the most common variations you’re likely to encounter. However, everyone runs into something unusual eventually; that’s when you should refer to the relevant handbook, if possible, or check reliable online resources like Purdue OWL.

One Final Note: Et Al. 

Technically, this isn’t really a documentation basic, but you will see the abbreviation et al. ALL THE TIME in citations. It is short for the Latin phrase et alii, which means “and others.” Both MLA and APA use it frequently when there are multiple authors, although their exact rules vary. It can be helpful to mentally substitute the English version “and others” whenever you use it to help you remember that 1) it’s plural and 2) it’s a necessary part of acknowledging that the first author listed didn’t do all the work.

When you use it, remember:

• et is a whole word, so there’s no period after it
• al. is an abbreviation, so there is a period after it
• you don’t need any punctuation before it
• punctuate after it like you normally would, even if it looks weird

Putting It All Together

As examples, the following sections use these entirely fabricated sources and quotes:

“Margolin’s latest poetry collection is a true tour de force; the combined use of vivid imagery and evocative language stirs the senses and transports readers into a world of startling beauty. Seldom do words on a page conjure such sublime experience.” -Found in paragraph 1 of an undated online review by critic Sophia Hawkins

“For centuries, the Earth’s ecosystems maintained an intricate equilibrium. The delicate balance of nature has been disrupted, potentially with catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. If current trends continue unabated, scientists warn, we are on a path towards mass extinction events.” -Found on p. 128 of a 2016 scholarly article by Drs. Jane Dorey, Daniel Beaumont, and Isabella Prentice

“With the benefit of hindsight, all the warning signs were there. The localized conflicts following the drought created a perfect storm of circumstances, each more volatile than the last. Tensions mounted with every provocation until the powder keg inevitably ignited.” -Found on p. 12 of a 2018 book by Henry Winslow and Charlotte Bellamy

I used AI to fabricate the topics and publication details of these texts, as well as the quotes and paraphrases, though I did edit them in various ways. (I’m trying not to be too concerned that one of these imaginary texts is about World War III!)

MLA Full Citations

Below are the full MLA 9th edition citations for the above (again, completely fake) sources. Take a moment to skim through them. What information can you identify about these sources from the citations?

Dorey, Jane, et al. “Correlation Between Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Rising Global Temperatures: A Statistical Analysis.” Journal of Climate Science, vol. 42, no. 3, 2016, pp. 127-156. ProQuest, http://doi.org/10.5555/12345678.

Hawkins, Sophia. “Poetry to Stir the Soul: A Review of Vivid Imagery by Julia Margolin.” LitReviews.com, 22 Sept. 2021, www.litreviews.com/margolin-vivid-imagery.

Winslow, Henry, and Charlotte Bellamy. The Calamity Years: How Famine Sparked the Third World War. Penguin Books, 2018.

A few features to note:

• When a source has more than two authors, a full MLA citation lists the first author, followed by the abbreviation et al.
• Titles are presented in “title case” – proper nouns, the first word, last word, and “main” words in the title are all capitalized.
• Titles of short works, like articles, are in quotation marks.
• Titles of long works, like books, and works that contain other works, like websites or journals, are in italics.

MLA In-Text Citations

Quotes

When discussing the impact of climate change, climate researchers Jane Dorey et al. note that “the delicate balance of nature has been disrupted, potentially with catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth” (128).

In her review, Sophia Hawkins argues that Margolin’s use of “vivid imagery and evocative language . . . transports readers into a world of startling beauty.”

Winslow and Bellamy describe the events leading up to the war as “a perfect storm of circumstances, each more volatile than the last” (12).

Paraphrases

When examining the effects of climate change, the researchers Jane Dorey et al. assert that human activities have thrown the natural world out of equilibrium, possibly leading to disastrous ramifications across all ecosystems (128).

Human activities have thrown the natural world out of equilibrium, possibly leading to disastrous ramifications across all ecosystems (Dorey et al. 128).

In her critique, reviewer Sophia Hawkins contends that Margolin effectively uses description and emotionally charged words.

Margolin has been recognized for effectively using description and emotionally charged words (Hawkins).

The historians Henry Winslow and Charlotte Bellamy characterize the series of events preceding the war as an escalating cascade of incidents (12).

The series of events preceding the war as an escalating cascade of incidents (Winslow and Bellamy 12).

Summaries

In her review of Julia Margolin’s latest poetry collection, critic Sophia Hawkins praises the poet’s masterful use of descriptive language to transport readers into lushly rendered sensory worlds. Hawkins also highlights how Margolin connects these sensory and embodied encounters to more abstract experiences like grief and disappointment, stirring the emotions and imaginations of readers in profound ways. Overall, Hawkins deems the collection a stunning achievement that cements Margolin’s reputation as one of the foremost poets of her generation.

Jane Dorey et al.’s research paper presents a rigorous statistical analysis examining the correlation between human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and increases in global temperatures. Analyzing decades of data, their study finds greater than 99% confidence that rising emissions have directly contributed to the steady climb in average temperatures worldwide. The authors assert that these findings provide irrefutable evidence of the deleterious impact of human activity on the planet’s delicate ecology and climate systems. They conclude by underscoring the urgency of enacting policies to rapidly reduce emissions to mitigate potential catastrophic consequences.

In their historical account The Calamity Years, Henry Winslow and Charlotte Bellamy chronicle how a series of environmental disasters and ensuing famines in the early 21st century ultimately sparked an escalating chain of conflicts that erupted into World War III. They depict how severe droughts, unprecedented wildfires, and crop failures triggered mass starvation, societal unrest, and a collapse of global food supply chains. According to Winslow and Bellamy, as nations grew desperate, tensions flared and volatile incidents set off retaliatory acts of violence between major powers, unraveling longstanding treaties and peace accords and finally igniting the most devastating global conflict in human history.

A few features to note:

• With MLA, it’s typical to use the author’s full name the first time you include them in an attributive tag, and only after that to use their last name. It’s also acceptable to just use the last name the whole time. Never include a first name in a parenthetical citation, though!
• When two authors are listed, they are both included in every attributive tag or parenthetical citation, and their names are given in the same order every time.
• The abbreviation et al. is considered part of the author credit for sources with 3+ authors, so it’s always included in attributive tags and parenthetical citations. Note that it means “and others,” so it changes the verb you should use in an attributive tag. It can help to remember that “Name et al.” = “they.”
• Page numbers are not labeled (for example, with a p.). With MLA, if you have a number, it’s a page number unless otherwise noted, so a label is unnecessary.
• Pay close attention to where and how punctuation is and isn’t used in and around the parenthetical citations. Those details are part of the “rules”!

APA Full Citations

Below are the full APA 7th edition citations for the above (again, completely fake) sources. Take a moment to skim through them. What information can you identify about these sources from the citations?

Dorey, J., Beaumont, D., & Prentice, I. (2016). Correlation between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures: A statistical analysis.” Journal of Climate Science, 42(3), 127-156. http://doi.org/10.5555/12345678

Hawkins, S. (2021, Sept. 22). Poetry to stir the soul: A review of Vivid Imagery by Julia Margolin. LitReviews.com, https://www.litreviews.com/margolin-vivid-imagery.

Winslow, H., & Bellamy, C. (2018). The calamity years: How famine sparked the Third World War. Penguin Books.

A few features to note:

• When a source has multiple authors, a full APA citation lists them all (up to 20 of them, anyway – if you have more than 20, that’s something for you to look up yourself!).
• Titles are presented in “sentence case” – only proper nouns and the first word of title and subtitle are capitalized.
• Quotation marks are not used around titles of any kind.
• Except when citing a website, short works are plain (no italics or special formatting) and long works/containers are in italics.

APA In-Text Citations

Quotes

When discussing the impact of climate change, climate researchers Dorey et al. (2016) note that “the delicate balance of nature has been disrupted, potentially with catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth” (p. 128).

In her review, Hawkins (n.d.) argues that Margolin’s use of “vivid imagery and evocative language . . . transports readers into a world of startling beauty” (para. 1).

Winslow and Bellamy (2018) describe the events leading up to the war as “a perfect storm of circumstances, each more volatile than the last” (p. 12).

Paraphrases

When examining the effects of climate change, the researchers Dorey et al. (2016) assert that human activities have thrown the natural world out of equilibrium, possibly leading to disastrous ramifications across all ecosystems.

Human activities have thrown the natural world out of equilibrium, possibly leading to disastrous ramifications across all ecosystems (Dorey et al., 2016).

In her critique, reviewer Sophia Hawkins (n.d.) contends that Margolin effectively uses description and emotionally charged words.

Margolin has been recognized for effectively using description and emotionally charged words (Hawkins, n.d.).

The historians Henry Winslow and Charlotte Bellamy (2018) characterize the series of events preceding the war as an escalating cascade of incidents.

The series of events preceding the war as an escalating cascade of incidents (Winslow & Bellamy, 2018).

Summaries

In her review of Julia Margolin’s latest poetry collection, critic Sophia Hawkins (n.d.) praises the poet’s masterful use of descriptive language to transport readers into lushly rendered sensory worlds. Hawkins also highlights how Margolin connects these sensory and embodied encounters to more abstract experiences like grief and disappointment, stirring the emotions and imaginations of readers in profound ways. Overall, Hawkins deems the collection a stunning achievement that cements Margolin’s reputation as one of the foremost poets of her generation.

Dorey et al.’s (2016) research paper presents a rigorous statistical analysis examining the correlation between human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and increases in global temperatures. Analyzing decades of data, their study finds greater than 99% confidence that rising emissions have directly contributed to the steady climb in average temperatures worldwide. The authors assert that these findings provide irrefutable evidence of the deleterious impact of human activity on the planet’s delicate ecology and climate systems. They conclude by underscoring the urgency of enacting policies to rapidly reduce emissions to mitigate potential catastrophic consequences.

In their historical account The Calamity Years, Henry Winslow and Charlotte Bellamy (2018) chronicle how a series of environmental disasters and ensuing famines in the early 21st century ultimately sparked an escalating chain of conflicts that erupted into World War III. They depict how severe droughts, unprecedented wildfires, and crop failures triggered mass starvation, societal unrest, and a collapse of global food supply chains. According to Winslow and Bellamy, as nations grew desperate, tensions flared and volatile incidents set off retaliatory acts of violence between major powers, unraveling longstanding treaties and peace accords and finally igniting the most devastating global conflict in human history.

A few features to note:

• Most of the time, APA does not include source’s first names, unless for some reason it would be awkward not to use them.
• The year of publication is given alongside the author’s name. When the author’s name is in an attributive tag, the year is in parentheses right after it. When the author’s name is in a parenthetical citation, there’s a comma after it and the year is given inside the same parentheses.
• If there are more than two authors, you use the first author followed by et al. wherever the author’s name should appear.
• Page numbers are labeled with a p., and paragraph numbers with a para.
• Pay close attention to where and how punctuation is and isn’t used in and around the parenthetical citations. Those details are part of the “rules”!