English 31 Ms Brown CITING SOURCES Summarizing When

English 31 Ms. Brown CITING SOURCES

Summarizing When you summarize material from one of your sources, you capture in condensed form the essential idea of a passage, article, or an entire chapter. Summaries are useful when you are working with lengthy arguments or long passages.

Summarizing Summaries are ALWAYS shorter than the original text. Often, a chapter or more can be reduced to a paragraph, or several paragraphs to a sentence or two.

Summary Example Consider the following paragraphs where Richard Lederer compares big words with small words in some detail:

Full Text “When you speak and write, there is no law that says you have to use big words. Short words are as good as long ones, and short, old words—like sun and grass and home—are best of all. A lot of small words, more than you might think, can meet your needs with a strength, grace, and charm that large words do not have. Big words can make the way dark for those who read what you write and hear what you say. Small words cast their clear light on big things—night and day, love and hate, war and peace, and life and death. Big words at times seem strange to the eye and ear and the mind and the heart. Small words are the ones we seem to have known from the time we were born, like the hearth fire that warms the home. ” --Richard Lederer, “The Case for Short Words”

Full Text vs. Summary Full-text “When you speak and write, there is no law that says you have to use big words. Short words are as good as long ones, and short, old words—like sun and grass and home—are best of all. A lot of small words, more than you might think, can meet your needs with a strength, grace, and charm that large words do not have. Big words can make the way dark for those who read what you write and hear what you say. Small words cast their clear light on big things—night and day, love and hate, war and peace, and life and death. Big words at times seem strange to the eye and ear and the mind and the heart. Small words are the ones we seem to have known from the time we were born, like the hearth fire that warms the home. ” Summary Lederer favors short words for their clarity, familiarity, durability, and overall usefulness (284 -85).

Paraphrasing When you paraphrase, you restate the information in your own words instead of quoting directly. Unlike a summary, which gives a brief overview of the origination information, a paraphrase seeks to maintain the same level of detail as the original text.

Full Text Example “If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence is not the way. ” Martin Luther King Jr. , “The Ways of Meeting Oppression”

Full Text vs. Paraphrase Example Full-text “If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence is not the way. ” Paraphrase African Americans and other oppressed peoples must not resort to taking up arms against their oppressors because to do so would lead the country into an era of turmoil and confusion. Armed confrontation will not yield the desired results (King Jr. 134).

Quoting When you quote a source directly, you copy the words of your source exactly as they appear, putting all quoted material in quotation marks. Be sure to include punctuation and capitalization as they appear! Be selective about what you choose to quote. Reserve direct quotations for important ideas stated memorably by authorities.

Full Text Example “Though native Appalachians like me are gradually being out-numbered by newcomers, we remain tied to the land in a way outsiders will never understand. It provides for us physically, socially, spiritually, and emotionally. Without it, we lose our cultural identity and, ultimately, ourselves. This is not a new fight; it has raged in these mountains for generations as our land has been exploited again and again. For too long, we have suffered the effects of clear-cutting, strip mining, and unscrupulous land grabs by timber companies, coal comp anies, and even the federal government. Developers are simply the latest to try their hand at making a buck. ” Abe Whaley, “Once Unique, Soon a Place Like Any Other, ” page 182

Direct Quote Example Full-text “Though native Appalachians like me are gradually being out-numbered by newcomers, we remain tied to the land in a way outsiders will never understand. It provides for us physically, socially, spiritually, and emotionally. Without it, we lose our cultural identity and, ultimately, ourselves. This is not a new fight; it has raged in these mountains for generations as our land has been exploited again and again. For too long, we have suffered the effects of clear-cutting, strip mining, and unscrupulous land grabs by timber companies, coal companies, and even the federal government. Developers are simply the latest to try their hand at making a buck. ” Direct Quote Even though outsiders have flooded in, “we remain tied to the land in a way outsiders will never understand. It provides for us physically, socially, spiritually, and emotionally. Without it, we lose our cultural identity and, ultimately, ourselves” (Whaley 182).

Summary, Paraphrase, Quote Summary (short length in your own words) Paraphrase (medium length in your own words without losing any meaning or emphasis) Quote (exact wording) It doesn’t matter if you summarize, paraphrase, or quote—all forms MUST give credit to the author(s).