Ch. 23 Integrating Sources

MLA

(Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities.

2. Adding to or Changing Part of a Direct Quote

Another situation you may encounter is one in which you must "adapt" the syntax of the quoted material so that it blends with the syntax of your own sentence. In this case, you will use brackets [ ] to indicate that you have added or changed material: Example "This revenge constitutes the main action of the play . . . [and it] must be the cause of the catastrophe" (Bowers 63).

As illustrated above, documenting in your paper requires a specific format. Here are a few other concepts to remember:

Go back to A. Integrating Quotations to find concepts #1-4

C. Two Other Options: Paraphrasing and Summarizing

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Integrating Sources Exercise 23A Find creative ways to integrate each quote in your sentences. Be sure to follow the guidelines in the brackets.

Example: "Fourscore and seven years ago." [Integrate this phrase into a sentence about Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address] In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln began with what would become one of the most famous phrases in American history: "Fourscore and seven years ago." see pg. 1/3 for more examples

A. Integrating Quotations

In MLA, periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks unless you have documentation behind your quotation. Let's take, for example, the following sentence concerning a literary analysis of a Hemingway short story: Jig mentions that all they "ever do is drink and travel."

2. Summarizing

In summarizing, you are condensing the information contained in the passage, omitting the detail, but keeping the main idea. For a full length article, your summary may be a full paragraph. However, if you are working with a paragraph, your summary of it may only be a sentence or two. see pg. 5/6 and 6/6 for example

3. Errors within the Direct Quote [sic]

Including [sic] after a quotation shows that an error appearing inside the quotation is the original source's mistake, not yours: Example George Bernard Shaw is famous for writing, "Nothing can extinguish my interest in Shakespear [sic]."

1. Paraphrasing

Instead of using a direct quotation, you may want to just paraphrase, which is restating a passage in approximately the same number of words. You generally want to employ this technique if you need either to make complex language simpler or to make a passage more professional. Also, you can use this technique to maintain a consistent tone in your writing. see pg. 5/6 for example

B. Modifying a Quoted Passage

Most often, you will not just drop an entire passage into your discussion. Instead you will want to take portions out or adapt the syntax to fit your own more effectively.

Integrating Sources Exercise 23D

Now find an article on a topic that interests you. Write a paragraph and integrate two quotes and one paraphrase from the article to support your points.

Integrating Sources info.

Proper documentation is essential to scholarly research. As you go about writing a scholarly paper and as you go about using the ideas of others, it is important that you attribute the ideas that you've used in your paper to its corresponding author. If you don't do that, you are guilty of plagiarism, a serious ethical violation. Please remember that you document because you want to give credit to your sources, but you also want to provide a trail for other scholars regarding where you have been. This way, if your audience finds your ideas interesting, they have a way to pursue their interests and build on your ideas. Any idea taken from someone else must be documented. It does not matter whether the idea is a verbatim speech or whether it's a paraphrased idea; in either case, the words or the ideas must be documented. There are multiple ways to document research depending on the field of study, but this chapter uses MLA format in the examples. (The wonderful thing about knowing one documentation format is that it makes it very easy to apply other documentation formats. You simply go to that documentation source and apply the guidelines just as you would with an MLA format.)

Integrating Sources Exercise 23B

Read the following sentences and arrange them in a clear and meaningful discussion. Please use your own transitional phrases and/or whole sentences to create a fluid and coherent paragraph. see pg. 2/3 for exercise

side note

When integrating quotations into your own argument, you will generally do three things: introduce the material, provide the quotation, and comment on it. You never want to drop a quotation into the paper as its own sentence or paragraph. Here's an example of a quotation that is properly integrated into an essay. Please keep in mind, this quote is a long quote (a full paragraph); therefore, it is formatted according to MLA long quote standards. see pg 3/6 for example

Note overview

When you document, you will be using the author's last name and page number. You will document immediately behind your quote or at the close of the idea taken from your source. see pg 2/6 for example

1. Removing Part of a Direct Quote

When you want to leave out a part of the quotation to make the passage more direct, you will use ellipses ( . . . ) to account for the missing material: see pg. for example

Integrating Sources Exercise 23C

Write two brief paragraphs on the topics provided; select and incorporate a brief quote from a different source into each paragraph to support your topic. Be sure to include the in-text citation. see page 3/3 for activity