Quoting and Paraphrasing Techniquesi

1. Quoting
As a general rule, you should avoid quotation in essays. Remember that one of the
main purposes of essays is to show that you can read the work of other writers and
understand it. It is usually more appropriate, therefore, to present ideas and
information in your own words (i.e. paraphrase) than quote another writer.

However, there will be times when you have a good reason for quoting rather than
paraphrasing. These might include:

i because you want to emphasise the specific content of the author's words
rather than the idea or information; for example, to give an author's exact
definition of something, or to draw the reader's attention to a difference
between the comments of two or more authors
ii when the author is saying something particularly contentious; for example,
when they are critical of another writer
iii when you think that the author has made a point particularly succinctly.

As a 'rule of thumb' quotation shouldn't take more than 10% of an essay.

Task 1
Try to remember the 3 reasons for quoting. Then, with a neighbour, choose one
or two of the examples below, and (without looking back) decide why the writer
has decided to directly quote another source and not to paraphrase.

1. A quotation from Glastonbury's study of homelessness in South Wales and the

West of England is illustrative. He reports a Children's Officer as saying:
I wouldn't expect the housing manager to find houses for unsatisfactory
tenants just because they had been requested by the Welfare or Children's
Department. It all depends on the causes of homelessness and who is to blame.
You can't let these people jump the queue ahead of deserving tenants. ...
(Cullingworth, 72: 51)

2. An experimental Community Development Project is under way aimed at finding

‘ways of meeting more effectively the needs of individuals, families and
communities, whether native or immigrant, suffering from many forms of social
deprivation’ (Cullingworth, 72: 141)

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3. Linsky devoted a paper to testing a set of hypotheses concerning primate cities but
apart from a negative relation with a real extent of dense population, the degree of
association with the other variables ‘was disappointingly small’.

4. At the beginning of his study Pred set out to answer two questions: ‘What kinds of
industry remain in or near the core of the metropolis? What patterns, if any, are to be
distinguished among the decentralized industries?’ He answers the first question with
some success but makes little headway with the second and indeed admits, ‘a
considerable amount of evidence remains to be culled before any real understanding
of intra-metropolitan locational preference of industries oriented towards non-local
markets is attained’. (Carter, 72: 306)

5. Quality circles like the other methods discussed are not a panacea for improving
management-worker relations. They are one possible method, amongst others, of
trying to reduce the level of distrust between labour and management. As the authors
conclude:
If they are going to be effective and have a long-term future, then the most
senior levels of management must be actively involved and demonstrate a
continuing commitment to provide the conditions necessary for their success.
(Stewart 1963: 51)

6. In the study conducted by Steward (1963) a quality circle is seen as being ‘a group
of workers who meet together to discuss workplace improvements’ (Steward 1963:
12). No mention is made in the study of reporting mechanisms and the need to
establish formal channels for communicating the results of these discussions to higher
management.

7. An example of one occupational group being viewed with suspicion by another is

provided by a study of management accountants. In this study one manager said:

The accounting system is geared to meet the needs of the board. It's a control
instrument ... my needs are different ... I need the information for management
... but it's too imperfect ... but we get it so we must be ready with answers to
questions on variances. (Soars and Whitt 1992: 165)

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Quoting techniques

It is considered bad practice to misquote, so check the quotations very carefully.

Read the following guidelines and then do task 2.

1 When we quote the actual words of an author or authors, we need to give their
name/names, the year of publication and the page number from which the quotation
comes.

2 A quote should relate to what comes before and after and is often used to
support a point that you have already made in your own words.

3 All punctuation relating to the quoted words should be inside the quotation
marks.

4 If the quotation is short, continue writing on the same line, enclosing the
quoted words in quotation marks. For example:

 A 1967 house condition survey in England and Wales showed that a

total of 1.8 million dwellings (12 percent of the total) were statutorily
‘unfit for human habitation’. (Smith, 2002:1)
 Smith (2004:12) argues that the public funding of political parties is
‘extremely controversial’.

5 If the quotation is long, start a new line and indent the whole extract slightly.
It is not necessary to use quotation marks for long quotations. For example:

Smith (2004:12) states that:

The question of public funding for political parties is extremely controversial,

but will need to be addressed if we are to control expenditure during General
Elections.

This belief is controversial...

6 If you find it necessary to leave out part of a sentence because it is irrelevant

and would make the quotation unnecessarily long, then three dots (...) are used
to indicate this. For example:
Original
The most useful way of making a world survey is to identify families
of languages, preferably using criteria such as those worked out by
myself in 1933, showing relationships by origin and development
(Brook, 1998: 98).
Quotation

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 The most useful way of making a world survey is to identify families
of languages ... showing relationships by origin and development
(Brook, 1998: 98).
7 If there is a mistake in the original text, you cannot correct it, but you can
indicate that the mistake is not your own by using [sic] or (sic). For example:
 The student newsletter is a good example of the use this type of rhetorical
question: ‘Why should we waste taxpayer’s [sic] money and reward
people for behaviour that some do voluntarily?’.

8 If you add something to a quotation to explain an abbreviation or a reference

in the text, or for some other reason to make the quotation more intelligible,
this addition should be enclosed in square brackets [ ]. For example:
All the languages of the south-west coast [of New Britain] are Non-
Austronesian, overlaid with a veneer of Austronesian (Jones, 1991: 71).

9 In America, double quotation marks are popular. In the UK, you can use single or
double quotation marks, but single quotation marks are becoming increasingly
common, and it is important to be consistent.

10 Whenever you put a quotation - direct or indirect - into a paragraph, the

sentence in which it occurs must still remain grammatical.

The following example is wrong:

 Brown has defined the critical period for language learning as: ‘The
critical period for language learning is a biologically determined
period of life when ...’

It should be:
 Brown has defined the critical period for language learning as ‘a
biologically determined period of life when ...’(year of publication:
page number)

Task 2
What is wrong with these examples? Can you suggest ways in which they can be
improved?

a) Murray has defined health as ‘Health is a complete physical, mental, and

social well-being.’
b) As Pearson states that:
Self motivation to learn is preferable to motivation imposed by external
sources.
c) Johnson and Scholes (1984: 44) described the manager’s recipe for change as,
‘Faced with the need for change, managers will seek to deal with the situation
in ways which protect the recipe from challenge.’

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d) Intonation is very important in spoken English. According to Harmer
(1991:12): Intonation is clearly very important, and competent users of the
language recognise what meaning it has and can change the meaning of what
they say through using it in different ways.

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2. Paraphrasing and summarising

Paraphrasing is:
a tool to demonstrate good scholarship, i.e. that you
 have consulted other sources
 have understood the literature
 can integrate sources in your own argumentation

The following technique can be very helpful:

1. Read the section you want to cite.
2. Read the section again, making sure you really understand the author’s point
3. Without looking back at the section, make some notes about it in English.
4. Think about what the original author said: why are you writing about this (e.g. to give
evidence for your own your point of view, to contrast with what another writer has said) and
how does it relate to the essay question you are addressing? Write some notes about this too.
5. Put the notes together in a few sentences. Do not look back at the original section but use
your own words. Don’t worry about your words not being as ‘good’ as the original author’s.
They don’t need to be.
6. Compare what you have written to the original section. If you have changed the original
idea, you will have to amend your text.

Task 3
Use the paraphrasing technique above to write a paraphrase. You have to write an essay
which asks you to ‘discuss the relationship between external money and income’. You
want to paraphrase the relevant information from the following source text:

Monetary policy plays an important role in boosting the economic growth of any country
provided money has an external origin. Its impact on income and prices has been widely
examined in the developed and developing countries in the context of Monetarists and
Keynesians controversies (Abbas and Husain, 2006). These two very different theories
explain the direction of causation between money, prices and income.

According to the Monetarists money plays an active role and leads to changes in income and
prices. Hence, the direction of causation runs from money to income and prices without any
feedback.

The Keynesians, on the other hand, argue that money does not play any significant role in
changing income and prices. In fact, changes in income cause changes in money stocks
through demand for money, implying that there exists a one-directional causality from income
to money. Similarly, changes in prices are mainly caused by structural factors.
(adapted from Money, Price and Output: A Causality Test for Nigeria, by O. Chimobi and U. Uche, American Journal of
Scientific Research Issue 8(2010), pp.78-87, http://www.eurojournals.com/ajsr.htm)

Paraphrasing is not:
a language exercise in which you simply have to
 change word order
 use synonyms

Of course, when you are using your own words, you are likely to use some synonyms
and other substitutions. To help you with the language, there are some techniques in
the appendix. However, we cannot stress enough that paraphrasing is not a
language exercise, but evidence of good scholarship.

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Appendix
‘A good paraphrase is significantly different from the wording of the original, without
altering the meaning at all’ (Bailey 2006:29).

Task 4ii
Read the text below and then decide which is the better paraphrase, (a) or (b).

Original text:
Ancient Egypt collapsed in about 2180 BC. Studies conducted of the mud from the
River Nile showed that at this time the mountainous regions which feed the Nile
suffered from a prolonged drought. This would have had a devastating effect on the
ability of Egyptian society to feed itself.

Paraphrase texts:

(a) The sudden ending of Egyptian civilisation over 4,000 years ago was
probably caused by changes in the weather in the region of the south.
Without the regular river flooding there would not have been enough food.

(b) Research into deposits of the Egyptian Nile indicate that a long dry period
in the mountains at the river’s source may have led to a lack of water for
irrigation around 2180 BC, which was when the collapse of Egyptian
society began.

Paraphrasing techniques
In order to paraphrase and summarise effectively, the language used in the source text
needs to be manipulated:

Here are some useful summarising techniques:

a Expanding noun groups

Expanding noun groups by putting more information in the noun group is usually associated
with summarising. For example:

Urbanization of the Western countries began with the industrial revolution and
proceeded as the nations moved from an agrarian to an industrial society.

This sentence can be summarised by putting information in the noun group:

...the large scale population movement from rural to urban areas during the industrial
revolution...

Packing the noun group with more information often involves changing some of the
structures in the original source (such as verbs and adjectives) into nouns. For example:

Urbanization of the Western countries began with the industrial revolution and proceeded
as the nations moved from an agrarian to an industrial society.

....the initial cause......movement...

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However, a paraphrase does not normally aim to shorten a text, but merely to restate it. Here
are some paraphrasing techniques:

b 'Unpacking' noun groups

Unpacking noun groups is the opposite process to that of expanding the noun group. Since
both paraphrasing and summarising often occur simultaneously, you will often also find that
you will be packing and unpacking noun groups at the same time in order to change the
language of the source for your own purposes.

By unpacking the noun group, nouns are often changed to verbs. For example:

The consolidation of rural farming areas into larger units… (= a 'packed' noun group)

Farming areas have been consolidated into larger units… (= 'unpacked' from noun groups)

c Alternating active and passive verbs

The radiation levels in food that remain after irradiation are small. (= active)

A small amount of radiation is found in food after it has been irradiated. (= passive)

d Using synonyms

a) all the regions of the world > world wide

b) Western countries > developed world

There are two main sources of information on synonyms: a thesaurus in book form, and the
thesaurus that you can find on most word processors. Use both very carefully!

Look at the following sentences. The words in bold have been changed in the second
using the thesaurus in Word.

Although individuals ultimately select their own purchases, they are very much influenced by
the society in which they live, with much of this influence being at the subconscious level.

Although human beings finally select their own acquisitions, they are very much affected by
the association in which they live, with much of this power being at the subconscious plane.

Clearly the second does NOT mean the same as the first. If possible, you should always check
that two words are synonymous in a particular context with the help of an English dictionary.

Task 5
Find synonyms for the words in italics in the following sentences:

1. The growth of the car industry parallels the development of modern capitalism.
2. It began in France and Germany but took off in the United States.

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e Changing word form
To change a verb to a noun, an adverb to an adjective, a noun to a verb, etc.
a) the nations moved > the population movement
b) controversy > controversial

This is an important technique for paraphrasing because it also involves changing the original
sentence structure in some way unlike the use of synonymy. The following example illustrates
this:

Successful listening in a second language is often due to good memorization.

Listeners often succeed in listening in a second language because they have a good memory.

Good memorization skills often result in success in listening in a second language.

Task 6
Change the word form of the words in italics and rewrite the sentence:

1. In the 1920s Alfred Sloan’s management theories helped General Motors to

become the world’s dominant car company.

f Using different logical connectors and patterns of subordination and

coordination
Urbanization of the Western countries began with the industrial revolution and proceeded as
the nations moved from an agrarian to an industrial society. ... While this was a major factor
in the initial increase...

Although the large scale population movement from rural to urban areas during the
industrial revolution was the initial cause of urbanization in the developed world, continued...

g Changing the order of the information

Urbanization of the Western countries began with the industrial revolution and proceeded as
the nations moved from an agrarian to an industrial society.

Although the large scale population movement from rural to urban areas during the
industrial revolution was the initial cause of urbanization in the developed world...

Task 7
Change the order of information in the following sentence:
1. At this time, trade unions became increasingly militant in defence of their members’ jobs.

! Reminder: just replacing words with synonyms and changing the word order is
not acceptable. You need to demonstrate your understanding. More information
is in our hand-out on ‘Citing’.

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 Key
Task 1: possible answers
1. This is a contentious statement, especially the last sentence.
2. This is a specific aim, similar to a definition, and put succinctly.
3. This draws attention to the specific words that the original author used.
4. The exact questions that were investigated need to be stated; the author’s words (rather than the idea) were
important as they are an admission.
5. The author’s exact wording of the conclusion is important, and possibly contentious.
6. This is a definition.
7. This is a personal and contentious statement.

Task 2
a) Murray has defined health as ‘a complete physical, mental, and social well-being.’
b) Pearson (year:page) states that:
Self motivation to learn is preferable to motivation imposed by external sources.
c) Johnson and Scholes (1984: 44) described managers’ reaction to needing to change as seeking ‘to deal
with the situation in ways which protect the recipe from challenge.’
d) Intonation is very important in spoken English. According to Harmer (1991:12):
Intonation is clearly very important, and competent users of the language recognise what meaning
it has and can change the meaning of what they say through using it in different ways.

Task 3: suggested answer:

Notes
Monetarists: money income
Keynesianists: income money (demand for money causes stock changes)
my understanding: directly opposite views, both 1-directional.
Paraphrase
There are two opposing monetary theories: whereas Monetarists believe that money impacts on
income, Keynesanists say that it is the other way around. Neither theory allows for the possibility that
there is a causal link in both directions. (Chimobi & Uche, 2010)
Please note that:
There was no need to manipulate language, because the ideas were given in a different way, to answer
the question in the essay. This new purpose is also why ‘prices’ were not mentioned in the paraphrase.

Task 4
(b) is better: ‘changes in the weather’ and ‘the region to the south’ (in (a)) are not as precise as ‘a long dry period’
and ‘the mountains at the river’s source (in (b)). Moreover, the reference to the research is lost in (a). Also the
claim in (a) that the ending of Egyptian society is probably caused by changes in the weather seems to go a bit
further than the original.

Task 5: suggested answer

1. The rise of the car industry matched the progress of contemporary capitalism.
2. It started in France and Germany but accelerated in the United States.

Task 6: suggested answer

In the 1920s with help from the managerial theories of Alfred Sloan, General Motors dominated the world’s car
companies.

Task 7: suggested answer

1. At this time, increasingly militant trades unions defended their members’ jobs./In order to defend their
members’ jobs, trade unions became increasingly militant at this point.

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i
Last updated 2010 and task 3 added, EVG.
ii
Exercise taken from Bailey, S., Academic Writing. A handbook for International Students, Routledge, 2006: 29.