As you know, it is important to include others’ ideas and words in your writing, particularly when writing research papers; however, you must do so in particular ways so that it is clear when you are using someone else’s thoughts or words. Think about how we commonly say things like, “John says that he thinks….” We do this to let the person we are talking to know who said what. It wouldn’t make sense to say, “I think X,Y,Z” if you are really conveying the ideas that someone else has. The same goes for using others’ words and ideas in your papers – it doesn’t make sense to not state who said what – it misleads your reader into thinking the thoughts and words are your own.
Now, to properly include others’ ideas and words, you have two options:
1) Quote. Quoting is when you take the exact wording from your source, whether it’s a sentence or a whole paragraph. To quote someone, you must use quotation marks (“”).
2) Paraphrase. Paraphrasing is when you use your own wording to state the ideas of someone else.
In both of these cases, you must give credit to the person whose words or ideas you are using. In order to give proper credit, you must include an in-text citation. An in-text citationincludes the author’s name, the date of publication, and, if quoting, the page number where the quote can be located.
To practice these skills and demonstrate your knowledge of them, you need to do the following:
Review how to quote, paraphrase, and summarize at the following link: http://writingcenter.ashford.edu/quoting-paraphrasing-summarizing
Review how to create in-text citations at the following link: http://writingcenter.ashford.edu/citing-within-your-paper
Once you have reviewed the above materials and links, you will need to complete the following activity and return it to me* as soon as possible:
Read the following article: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/carol-vogel-plagiarism-investigation/?_r=1
Write a paragraph of your own discussing the ideas presented in the above article. In order to do this, you must clearly introduce the article and its author. In this paragraph, you want to summarize the points made by the author of the article and respond to them with your own thoughts.
Quote one sentence from the article in your paragraph. Don’t forget to give credit to the author.
Paraphrase one idea from the article in your paragraph. Don’t forget to give credit to the author.