plagiarism 5.1.4

5.1.4 Distinguishing When to Use Direct Quotations


Avoiding unintentional plagiarism can result in considerable stress as you try to determine how to manage your sources and still make everything flow together smoothly.

Distinguishing between when to use a direct

quotation and when to use a paraphrase, summary, or indirect quotation is not an exact science.


As with other strategies for avoiding unintentional plagiarism, the best way to develop this skill is to read extensively in your discourse community.

There are also some general principles that can help you make decisions about how to integrate your sources.


The key is to consider your rhetorical purpose.

What are you trying to accomplish by including information from another source?


The basic principles for using paraphrases, summaries, and indirect quotations are fairly simple.


Use a paraphrase if the details are so important that you want something about the same length as the original so that you don’t omit an important point.

Use a summary if you just want to include an idea you found in one of your sources, but you don’t need all the detail.

Use an indirect quotation if you just want to refer briefly to a specific idea in your source.


The guidelines for choosing a direct quotation are a little more complicated, and they’re not absolute rules.

They should give you something to look for in scholarly articles as you try to learn to write like the experts in your academic community.


Use a direct quotation when:

You are responding to (agreeing or disagreeing or qualifying) an idea in a source, and you need to clearly convey the original author’s ideas.

Note: If you are NOT agreeing or disagreeing or qualifying ideas in your sources, you may be writing something closer to a middle school book report than a college-level academic paper, and this is NOT a good thing. You will probably get a low grade even if you don’t get in trouble for unintentional plagiarism.



You like the way your source said something, and you can’t create the same impact with your own words.

You need particular factual details that it’s hard to convey – and senseless – to try to reword.



You haven’t used many quotations, and your text feels dull and monotonous.

Note: If you are writing in the social sciences, use very few, if any, direct quotations. If your text is still dull and monotonous, find another way to spruce it up.


REMINDER:

YOU SHOULD USE QUOTATION MARKS TO INDICATE A DIRECT QUOTATION ANY TIME YOU USE AN AUTHOR’S EXACT WORDS – EVEN IF IT’S JUST TWO. . . .


CHOOSE WISELY.

Although quotation marks help you avoid unintentional plagiarism, they can get distracting and make it look like you didn’t have any part in the composition of your paper – other than possibly the role of a scribe.


In some discourse communities, paraphrase and summary are favored over direct quotes.

If you’re writing a paper for a literature class, lots of direct quotations are common, and you’re probably citing them with MLA format.


If you’re writing a paper for a class in the social sciences like psychology or sociology or education, direct quotations are much less common, and there’s a good chance your instructor is requiring you to use APA format.

In fact, in the social sciences, writers often summarize ideas from three or four research studies and then list all the authors in one incredibly long parenthetical citation.


Sometimes your sources may be charts, tables, graphs, or other images. Most often you will want to summarize their findings in prose in your paper.

If you think the visual image will explain a point best, be sure to get permission to use it if needed, and always cite your source.


Do NOT use visuals to pad your paper.

Many instructors judge length by word count.

Those who give suggested page lengths are not confused when your paper consists of three pages of writing and two pages of pictures.

The images risk distracting from your argument, so ONLY use them when they STRENGTHEN your paper – not as filler or decoration.


Place a visual (chart, table, graph, or other image) as close to the text where you are discussing it as possible. Avoid distracting breaks in your text.

Place a label for a table, an Arabic numeral, and a title ABOVE the table.


Scoring on Holistic Quality Assessment

Total Claims

Supported Claims (Percent of Total Claims)

Total Data Data Supporting a Claim (Percent of Total Data)

Backing

Low-scoring essays (n=9)

6.33 1.78 (28%)

5.45 2.89 (53%)

0.33

Middle-scoring essays (n=9)

11 4.11 (37%)

8.00 6.22 (78%)

0.67

High-scoring essays (n=9)

10 5.56 (59%)

11.11 10.33 (93%)

4.22

Table 1. Mean Numbers of Claims, Data, And Backing


Place a label for other visual images with Fig. (for Figure), an Arabic numeral, and a caption BELOW the image, using the same margins as the rest of the paper.

Quantitative Results


If the image contains source information, you don’t need an entry in the Works Cited page. See the MLA Handbook, Section 4.5 for more information.

Table 1: Paired Comparison of Pretest-Posttest Scores

Ability level

N Pretest Mean (SD)

Posttest Mean (SD)

Gain score (SD)

tPaired

Samples Test

p

AP 26 3.65 (1.26)

4.48 (1.35)

0.83 (1.10)

3.82 .001

Honors 16 3.13 (1.06)

3.94 (0.89)

0.81 (1.49)

2.18 0.46

CP 24 2.44 (0.99)

2.98 (0.92)

0.54 (1.08)

2.45 0.22

AP, H, CP

66 3.08 (1.23)

3.80 (1.27)

0.72 (0.00)

4.91 0.00

Table 2. Paired Comparison of Pretest-Posttest Scores

Source: Massengill, Sonya. “Preparing Students for College-Level Writing: An Application of the Toulmin Model to Arguments about Literature.” MA thesis. NC State University, 2010. Print.


SURVIVAL TIPS:

There are many ways to take notes, as an earlier lesson in this tutorial explained. Some of that comes down to personal preference.

If you are not sure about whether you want to use information as a paraphrase, summary, or quotation, it might be wise to record your note as a quotation.

You can make up your mind later, but you’ll have the original to work with, which saves a lot of frustration when you decide you want a quote but are running out of time to go back and look at the source again.


Let’s practice.

Locate a scholarly, peer-reviewed article in your field of interest.

Skim through the article to determine whether the author uses more direct quotations or paraphrases, summaries, and indirect quotations.

Explain why you think authors in this discourse community might use this style of source management.

plagiarism 5.1.4

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