Summary of Allyn & Bacon Handbook, pp. 532-52 (Using Sources, Chap. 35)
 

• General Types of Sources:
  • Authoritative opinion. Be sure you BRIEFLY indicate the credentials of the expert.
  • Facts. Statistics and other facts which can be accurately and reliably confirmed by measurement, scientific method, or some other well-established procedure.
  • Examples. This includes case studies, anecdotes and ethnographic studies. 
    
    
• Two categories of information:
  • Primary: drawn from people who were directly involved in an event or phenomenon, a literary work being analyzed, a first-time study of some phenomenon (letters, diaries, autobiographies, historical records, works of literature).
  • Secondary: written by those who have only indirect knowledge of some phenomenon and who rely on primary sources for their information (biographies, textbooks, literary criticism, histories, etc.)
    
    
• Taking Notes
  • Record all the relevant bibliographic info: author, title, journal title if appropriate, date of publication, publisher, place of publication, volume number, inclusive page numbers.
  • Paraphrase, summarize or directly quote, depending on how relevant or persuasive you think the material is. Consider typing this directly into a computer, since you can cut and paste it in later and save yourself one transcription step.
  • Evaluate the material and/or note how you could use it in brackets, bold, italic, color, any way you can think of to distinguish your words from those of the author.
    
    
• Using Quotes
  • Avoid overquoting. Rule of thumb: two quotes max per page; no more than 200 words from long (block) quotes) in 10 page paper.
  • Block quotations are indented ten spaces from left, run more than 4 lines, and require no quotation marks.
  • SUMMARIZE to condense lengthy information essential to your argument
  • PARAPHRASE to quickly clarify complicated ideas or language
  • QUOTE when the quote is very persuasive or memorable, or when you want to convincingly buttress your claim.
    
    
• Integrating material smoothly into your own prose
  • Introduce the material with an attributive phrase that identifies the speaker and indicates his/her credentials. (According to Prof. Lynn Z. Bloom, a composition expert at the University of Connecticut, the average American sentence is 26 words.)
  • Split the quotation and use one of the common attibutive verbs listed at the bottom of this page. ("While conventional wisdom suggests that an average sentence is very short," claims University of Connecticut composition specialist Prof. Lynn Z. Bloom, "research indicates that the average American sentence is 26 words long" (23). )
  • Mix paraphrase and quotation. (The average American sentence, according to Bloom, is 26 words, contrary to "convention wisdom [which] suggests that an average sentence is very short" (23).)
  • Blend block quotes smoothly into your own prose, too. (But according to Prof. Lynn Z. Bloom of the University of Connecticut, common perception
    
    
    suggests that an average sentence is very short, [but] research indicates that the average American sentence is 26 words long. A study of 56 professional American writers, including novelists, journalists, academicians, screenwriters, and others, discovered that sentence length could easily vary from a single word to over a hundred and twenty words, that sentence types and syntax also varied widely in any given passage, and that writers felt such variety in length and structure contributed to the flow and readibility of their prose (23-24).
    You can also use colons to introduce quotations or block quotes.
• Avoiding plagiarism
  • Plagiarism means you pass off others' thoughts, information, and words as your own, without proper credit.
  • Blatant plagiarism means you've taken another's words word-for-word (verbatim) without an in-text citation AND without quotation marks.
  • Unintentional plagiarism means that you are paraphrasing or copying too closely from someone else's material, even if you do provide in-text credit to that other source. The words, sentence structure, and order of ideas/facts should be your own.
  • Patchwriting means that you're cutting and pasting material, usually gleaned from the Internet, into your paper without reconceiving it in your own words and within the context of your own argument. It's not only wrong, it will also result in a very uneven, haphazard, and inferior paper. 
    
    
• Verbs you can use to attribute sources:
  
  
  

  adds	agrees	argues	asks
  asserts	believes	claims	comments
  compares	concedes	concludes	condemns
  considers	contends	declares	defends
  denies	derides	disagrees	disputes
  emphasizes	explains	finds	holds
  illustrates	implies	insists	maintains
  notes	observes	points out	rejects
  relates	reports	responds	reveals
  says	sees	shows	speculates
  states	stresses	suggests	thinks
  warns	writes