Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

This handout is intended to help you become more comfortable with the uses of and
distinctions among quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. This handout compares
and contrasts the three terms, gives some pointers, and includes a short excerpt that
you can use to practice these skills.

What are the differences among quoting, paraphrasing,

and summarizing?
These three ways of incorporating other writers' work into your own writing differ
according to the closeness of your writing to the source writing.
Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source.
They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the
original author.
Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A
paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is
usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the
source and condensing it slightly.
Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the
main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original
source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview
of the source material.
Why use quotations, paraphrases, and summaries?
Quotations, paraphrases, and summaries serve many purposes. You might use them
to:

 Provide support for claims or add credibility to your writing

 Refer to work that leads up to the work you are now doing
 Give examples of several points of view on a subject
 Call attention to a position that you wish to agree or disagree with
 Highlight a particularly striking phrase, sentence, or passage by quoting the
original
 Distance yourself from the original by quoting it in order to cue readers that the
words are not your own
 Expand the breadth or depth of your writing

Writers frequently intertwine summaries, paraphrases, and quotations. As part of a

summary of an article, a chapter, or a book, a writer might include paraphrases of
various key points blended with quotations of striking or suggestive phrases as in the
following example:
In his famous and influential work The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
argues that dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious" (page #), expressing in coded
imagery the dreamer's unfulfilled wishes through a process known as the "dream-work"
(page #). According to Freud, actual but unacceptable desires are censored internally
and subjected to coding through layers of condensation and displacement before
emerging in a kind of rebus puzzle in the dream itself (page #).
How to use quotations, paraphrases, and summaries
It might be helpful to follow these steps:

 Read the entire text, noting the key points and main ideas.
 Summarize in your own words what the single main idea of the essay is.
 Paraphrase important supporting points that come up in the essay.
 Consider any words, phrases, or brief passages that you believe should be
quoted directly.

There are several ways to integrate quotations into your text. Often, a short quotation
works well when integrated into a sentence. Longer quotations can stand alone.
Remember that quoting should be done only sparingly; be sure that you have a good
reason to include a direct quotation when you decide to do so. You'll find guidelines for
citing sources and punctuating citations at our documentation guide pages.

Paraphrase: Write It in Your Own Words

Paraphrasing is one way to use a text in your own writing without directly quoting source
material. Anytime you are taking information from a source that is not your own, you
need to specify where you got that information.
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A paraphrase is...
 Your own rendition of essential information and ideas expressed by someone
else, presented in a new form.
 One legitimate way (when accompanied by accurate documentation) to borrow
from a source.
 A more detailed restatement than a summary, which focuses concisely on a
single main idea.

Paraphrasing is a valuable skill because...

 It is better than quoting information from an undistinguished passage.
 It helps you control the temptation to quote too much.
 The mental process required for successful paraphrasing helps you to grasp the
full meaning of the original.

6 Steps to Effective Paraphrasing

1. Reread the original passage until you understand its full meaning.
2. Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card.
3. Jot down a few words below your paraphrase to remind you later how you
envision using this material. At the top of the note card, write a key word or
phrase to indicate the subject of your paraphrase.
4. Check your rendition with the original to make sure that your version accurately
expresses all the essential information in a new form.
5. Use quotation marks to identify any unique term or phraseology you have
borrowed exactly from the source.
6. Record the source (including the page) on your note card so that you can credit it
easily if you decide to incorporate the material into your paper.

Some examples to compare

Note that the examples in this section use MLA style for in-text citation.
The original passage:
Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they
overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final
manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit
the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James
D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed., 1976, pp. 46-47.
A legitimate paraphrase:
In research papers, students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material
down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is
essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).
An acceptable summary:
Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize
the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).
A plagiarized version:
Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too
many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final
copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of
source material copied while taking notes.
A note about plagiarism: This example has been classed as plagiarism, in part, because
of its failure to deploy any citation. Plagiarism is a serious offense in the academic
world. However, we acknowledge that plagiarism is a difficult term to define; that its
definition may be contextually sensitive; and that not all instances of plagiarism are
created equal—that is, there are varying “degrees of egregiousness” for different cases
of plagiarism.

QUOTING AND PARAPHRASING

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College writing often involves integrating information from published sources into your
own writing in order to add credibility and authority–this process is essential to
research and the production of new knowledge.

However, when building on the work of others, you need to be careful not to plagiarize:
“to steal and pass off (the ideas and words of another) as one’s own” or to “present as
new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.”1 The University of
Wisconsin–Madison takes this act of “intellectual burglary” very seriously and considers
it to be a breach of academic integrity. Penalties are severe.

These materials will help you avoid plagiarism by teaching you how to properly integrate
information from published sources into your own writing.

1. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-

Webster, 1993), 888.

HOW TO AVOID PLAGIARISM

When using sources in your papers, you can avoid plagiarism by knowing what must be
documented.
SPECIFIC WORDS AND PHRASES
If you use an author’s specific word or words, you must place those words within
quotation marks and you must credit the source.
INFORMATION AND IDEAS

Even if you use your own words, if you obtained the information or ideas you are
presenting from a source, you must document the source.

Information: If a piece of information isn’t common knowledge (see below), you need
to provide a source.
Ideas: An author’s ideas may include not only points made and conclusions drawn, but,
for instance, a specific method or theory, the arrangement of material, or a list of steps
in a process or characteristics of a medical condition. If a source provided any of these,
you need to acknowledge the source.
COMMON KNOWLEDGE?

You do not need to cite a source for material considered common knowledge:

General common knowledge is factual information considered to be in the public

domain, such as birth and death dates of well-known figures, and generally accepted
dates of military, political, literary, and other historical events. In general, factual
information contained in multiple standard reference works can usually be considered
to be in the public domain.
Field-specific common knowledge is “common” only within a particular field or
specialty. It may include facts, theories, or methods that are familiar to readers within
that discipline. For instance, you may not need to cite a reference to Piaget’s
developmental stages in a paper for an education class or give a source for your
description of a commonly used method in a biology report—but you must be sure that
this information is so widely known within that field that it will be shared by your
readers.
If in doubt, be cautious and cite the source. And in the case of both general and field-
specific common knowledge, if you use the exact words of the reference source,
you must use quotation marks and credit the source.

PARAPHRASING VS. QUOTING — EXPLANATION

SHOULD I PARAPHRASE OR QUOTE?
In general, use direct quotations only if you have a good reason. Most of your paper
should be in your own words. Also, it’s often conventional to quote more extensively
from sources when you’re writing a humanities paper, and to summarize from sources
when you’re writing in the social or natural sciences–but there are always exceptions.
In a literary analysis paper, for example, you”ll want to quote from the literary text
rather than summarize, because part of your task in this kind of paper is to analyze the
specific words and phrases an author uses.
In research papers, you should quote from a source

 to show that an authority supports your point

 to present a position or argument to critique or comment on
 to include especially moving or historically significant language
 to present a particularly well-stated passage whose meaning would be lost or
changed if paraphrased or summarized
You should summarize or paraphrase when

 what you want from the source is the idea expressed, and not the specific
language used to express it
 you can express in fewer words what the key point of a source is

HOW TO PARAPHRASE A SOURCE

GENERAL ADVICE

When reading a passage, try first to understand it as a whole, rather than pausing
to write down specific ideas or phrases.
 Be selective. Unless your assignment is to do a formal or “literal” paraphrase, you
usually don?t need to paraphrase an entire passage; instead, choose and
summarize the material that helps you make a point in your paper.
 Think of what “your own words” would be if you were telling someone who’s
unfamiliar with your subject (your mother, your brother, a friend) what the
original source said.
 Remember that you can use direct quotations of phrases from the original within
your paraphrase, and that you don’t need to change or put quotation marks
around shared language.
METHODS OF PARAPHRASING

 Look away from the source then write.

Read the text you want to paraphrase several times until you feel that you
understand it and can use your own words to restate it to someone else. Then,
look away from the original and rewrite the text in your own words.
 Take notes.
Take abbreviated notes; set the notes aside; then paraphrase from the notes a day
or so later, or when you draft.

If you find that you can’t do A or B, this may mean that you don’t understand the
passage completely or that you need to use a more structured process until you have
more experience in paraphrasing.

The method below is not only a way to create a paraphrase but also a way to understand
a difficult text.
PARAPHRASING DIFFICULT TEXTS

Consider the following passage from Love and Toil (a book on motherhood in London
from 1870 to 1918), in which the author, Ellen Ross, puts forth one of her major
arguments:

 Love and Toil maintains that family survival was the mother’s main charge
among the large majority of London?s population who were poor or working
class; the emotional and intellectual nurture of her child or children and even
their actual comfort were forced into the background. To mother was to work for
and organize household subsistence. (p. 9)
 Change the structure
Begin by starting at a different place in the passage and/or sentence(s), basing
your choice on the focus of your paper. This will lead naturally to some changes
in wording. Some places you might start in the passage above are “The mother’s
main charge,” “Among the . . . poor or working class,” “Working for and
organizing household subsistence,” or “The emotional and intellectual nurture.”
Or you could begin with one of the people the passage is about: “Mothers,” “A
mother,” “Children,” “A child.” Focusing on specific people rather than
abstractions will make your paraphrase more readable.At this stage, you might
also break up long sentences, combine short ones, expand phrases for clarity, or
shorten them for conciseness, or you might do this in an additional step. In this
process, you’ll naturally eliminate some words and change others.Here’s one of
the many ways you might get started with a paraphrase of the passage above by
changing its structure. In this case, the focus of the paper is the effect of economic
status on children at the turn of the century, so the writer begins with children:

Children of the poor at the turn of the century received little if any emotional or
intellectual nurturing from their mothers, whose main charge was family
survival. Working for and organizing household subsistence were what defined
mothering. Next to this, even the children’s basic comfort was forced into the
background (Ross, 1995).

Now you’ve succeeded in changing the structure, but the passage still contains
many direct quotations, so you need to go on to the second step.

 Change the words

Use synonyms or a phrase that expresses the same meaning. Leave shared
language unchanged.It’s important to start by changing the structure, not the
words, but you might find that as you change the words, you see ways to change
the structure further. The final paraphrase might look like this:

According to Ross (1993), poor children at the turn of the century received little
mothering in our sense of the term. Mothering was defined by economic status,
and among the poor, a mother’s foremost responsibility was not to stimulate
her children’s minds or foster their emotional growth but to provide food and
 shelter to meet the basic requirements for physical survival. Given the
magnitude of this task, children were deprived of even the “actual comfort” (p.
9) we expect mothers to provide today.

You may need to go through this process several times to create a satisfactory
paraphrase.

SUCCESSFUL VS. UNSUCCESSFUL PARAPHRASES

Paraphrasing is often defined as putting a passage from an author into “your own
words.” But what are your own words? How different must your paraphrase be from the
original?

The paragraphs below provide an example by showing a passage as it appears in the

source, two paraphrases that follow the source too closely, and a legitimate paraphrase.

The student’s intention was to incorporate the material in the original passage into a
section of a paper on the concept of “experts” that compared the functions of experts
and nonexperts in several professions.

THE PASSAGE AS IT APPEARS IN THE SOURCE

Critical care nurses function in a hierarchy of roles. In this open heart surgery unit,
the nurse manager hires and fires the nursing personnel. The nurse manager does not
directly care for patients but follows the progress of unusual or long-term patients. On
each shift a nurse assumes the role of resource nurse. This person oversees the hour-
by-hour functioning of the unit as a whole, such as considering expected admissions
and discharges of patients, ascertaining that beds are available for patients in the
operating room, and covering sick calls. Resource nurses also take a patient
assignment. They are the most experienced of all the staff nurses. The nurse clinician
has a separate job description and provides for quality of care by orienting new staff,
developing unit policies, and providing direct support where needed, such as assisting
in emergency situations. The clinical nurse specialist in this unit is mostly involved
with formal teaching in orienting new staff. The nurse manager, nurse clinician, and
clinical nurse specialist are the designated experts. They do not take patient
assignments. The resource nurse is seen as both a caregiver and a resource to other
caregivers. . . . Staff nurses have a hierarchy of seniority. . . . Staff nurses are assigned
to patients to provide all their nursing care. (Chase, 1995, p. 156)

WORD-FOR-WORD PLAGIARISM
Critical care nurses have a hierarchy of roles. The nurse manager hires and
fires nurses. S/he  does not directly care for patients but does  follow unusual or long-
term cases.  On each shift a resource nurse attends to the  functioning of the unit as a
whole, such as making sure  beds are available in the operating room, and also has  a
patient assignment. The nurse clinician  orients new staff, develops policies, and
provides support where needed. The clinical nurse specialist also  orients new staff,
mostly by  formal teaching. The nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse
specialist, as  the designated experts, do not take patient assignments . The resource
nurse is not only a caregiver but  a resource to the other caregivers. Within the staff
nurses there is also  a hierarchy of seniority. Their job is to give assigned patients  all
their nursing care.
WHY THIS IS PLAGIARISM

Notice that the writer has not only “borrowed” Chase’s material (the results of her
research) with no acknowledgment, but has also largely maintained the author’s method
of expression and sentence structure. The phrases in red are directly copied from the
source or changed only slightly in form.

Even if the student-writer had acknowledged Chase as the source of the content, the
language of the passage would be considered plagiarized because no quotation marks
indicate the phrases that come directly from Chase. And if quotation marks did appear
around all these phrases, this paragraph would be so cluttered that it would be
unreadable.

A PATCHWORK PARAPHRASE
Chase (1995) describes how nurses in a critical care unit  function in a hierarchy that
places  designated experts at the top and the least senior staff nurses at the bottom.
The experts — the nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist — are
not involved directly in patient care. The staff nurses, in contrast,  are assigned to
patients and  provide all their nursing care. Within the staff nurses is a  hierarchy of
seniority in which the most senior can become resource nurses: they are assigned a
patient but also serve as  a resource to other caregivers. The experts have
administrative and teaching tasks such as selecting and  orienting new staff,
developing unit policies, and giving hands-on  support where needed.
WHY THIS IS PLAGIARISM

This paraphrase is a patchwork composed of pieces in the original author’s language (in
red) and pieces in the student-writer’s words, all rearranged into a new pattern, but with
none of the borrowed pieces in quotation marks. Thus, even though the writer
acknowledges the source of the material, the underlined phrases are falsely presented as
the student’s own.

A LEGITIMATE PARAPHRASE

In her study of the roles of nurses in a critical care unit, Chase (1995) also found a
hierarchy that distinguished the roles of experts and others. Just as the educational
experts described above do not directly teach students, the experts in this unit do not
directly attend to patients. That is the role of the staff nurses, who, like teachers, have
their own “hierarchy of seniority” (p. 156). The roles of the experts include employing
unit nurses and overseeing the care of special patients (nurse manager), teaching and
otherwise integrating new personnel into the unit (clinical nurse specialist and nurse
clinician), and policy-making (nurse clinician). In an intermediate position in the
hierarchy is the resource nurse, a staff nurse with more experience than the others,
who assumes direct care of patients as the other staff nurses do, but also takes on tasks
to ensure the smooth operation of the entire facility.

WHY THIS IS A GOOD PARAPHRASE

The writer has documented Chase’s material and specific language (by direct reference
to the author and by quotation marks around language taken directly from the source).
Notice too that the writer has modified Chase’s language and structure and has added
material to fit the new context and purpose — to present the distinctive functions of
experts and nonexperts in several professions.

SHARED LANGUAGE

Perhaps you’ve noticed that a number of phrases from the original passage appear in the
legitimate paraphrase: critical care, staff nurses, nurse manager, clinical nurse
specialist, nurse clinician, resource nurse.

If all these phrases were in red, the paraphrase would look much like the “patchwork”
example. The difference is that the phrases in the legitimate paraphrase are all precise,
economical, and conventional designations that are part of the shared language within
the nursing discipline (in the too-close paraphrases, they’re red only when used within a
longer borrowed phrase).

In every discipline and in certain genres (such as the empirical research report), some
phrases are so specialized or conventional that you can’t paraphrase them except by
wordy and awkward circumlocutions that would be less familiar (and thus less readable)
to the audience.

When you repeat such phrases, you’re not stealing the unique phrasing of an individual
writer but using a common vocabulary shared by a community of scholars.

SOME EXAMPLES OF SHARED LANGUAGE YOU DON’T NEED TO PUT IN

QUOTATION MARKS

 Conventional designations: e.g., physician’s assistant, chronic low-back pain

 Preferred bias-free language: e.g., persons with disabilities
 Technical terms and phrases of a discipline or genre : e.g., reduplication,
cognitive domain, material culture, sexual harassment
References

Chase, S. K. (1995). The social context of critical care clinical judgment. Heart and
Lung, 24, 154-162.
HOW TO QUOTE A SOURCE
INTRODUCING A QUOTATION

One of your jobs as a writer is to guide your reader through your text. Don’t simply drop
quotations into your paper and leave it to the reader to make connections.

Integrating a quotation into your text usually involves two elements:

 A signal that a quotation is coming–generally the author’s name and/or a

reference to the work
 An assertion that indicates the relationship of the quotation to your text

Often both the signal and the assertion appear in a single introductory statement, as in
the example below. Notice how a transitional phrase also serves to connect the
quotation smoothly to the introductory statement.

Ross (1993), in her study of poor and working-class mothers in London from 1870-
1918 [signal], makes it clear that economic status to a large extent determined the
meaning of motherhood [assertion]. Among this population [connection], “To mother
was to work for and organize household subsistence” (p. 9).

The signal can also come after the assertion, again with a connecting word or phrase:

Illness was rarely a routine matter in the nineteenth century [assertion]. As

[connection] Ross observes [signal], “Maternal thinking about children’s health
revolved around the possibility of a child’s maiming or death” (p. 166).

FORMATTING QUOTATIONS
SHORT DIRECT PROSE

Incorporate short direct prose quotations into the text of your paper and enclose them
in double quotation marks:

According to Jonathan Clarke, “Professional diplomats often say that trying to think
diplomatically about foreign policy is a waste of time.”

LONGER PROSE QUOTATIONS

Begin longer quotations (for instance, in the APA system, 40 words or more) on a new
line and indent the entire quotation (i.e., put in block form), with no quotation marks at
beginning or end, as in the quoted passage from our Successful vs. Unsucessful
Paraphrases page.
Rules about the minimum length of block quotations, how many spaces to indent, and
whether to single- or double-space extended quotations vary with different
documentation systems; check the guidelines for the system you’re using.

QUOTATION OF UP TO 3 LINES OF POETRY

Quotations of up to 3 lines of poetry should be integrated into your sentence. For

example:

In Julius Caesar, Antony begins his famous speech with “Friends, Romans,
Countrymen, lend me your ears; / I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (III.ii.75-
76).

Notice that a slash (/) with a space on either side is used to separate lines.

QUOTATION OF MORE THAN 3 LINES OF POETRY

More than 3 lines of poetry should be indented. As with any extended (indented)
quotation, do not use quotation marks unless you need to indicate a quotation within
your quotation.
PUNCTUATING WITH QUOTATION MARKS
PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS

With short quotations, place citations outside of closing quotation marks, followed by
sentence punctuation (period, question mark, comma, semi-colon, colon):

Menand (2002) characterizes language as “a social weapon” (p. 115).

With block quotations, check the guidelines for the documentation system you are
using.

COMMAS AND PERIODS

Place inside closing quotation marks when no parenthetical citation follows:

Hertzberg (2002) notes that “treating the Constitution as imperfect is not new,” but
because of Dahl’s credentials, his “apostasy merits attention” (p. 85).

SEMICOLONS AND COLONS

Place outside of closing quotation marks (or after a parenthetical citation).

QUESTION MARKS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS

Place inside closing quotation marks if the quotation is a question/exclamation:

Menand (2001) acknowledges that H. W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage is “a classic
of the language,” but he asks, “Is it a dead classic?” (p. 114).

[Note that a period still follows the closing parenthesis.]

Place outside of closing quotation marks if the entire sentence containing the quotation
is a question or exclamation:

How many students actually read the guide to find out what is meant by “academic
misconduct”?

QUOTATION WITHIN A QUOTATION

Use single quotation marks for the embedded quotation:

According to Hertzberg (2002), Dahl gives the U. S. Constitution “bad marks in

‘democratic fairness’ and ‘encouraging consensus'” (p. 90).

[The phrases “democratic fairness” and “encouraging consensus” are already in

quotation marks in Dahl’s sentence.]

INDICATING CHANGES IN QUOTATIONS

QUOTING ONLY A PORTION OF THE WHOLE

Use ellipsis points (. . .) to indicate an omission within a quotation–but not at the

beginning or end unless it’s not obvious that you’re quoting only a portion of the whole.

ADDING CLARIFICATION, COMMENT, OR CORRECTION

Within quotations, use square brackets [ ] (not parentheses) to add your own
clarification, comment, or correction.

Use [sic] (meaning “so” or “thus”) to indicate that a mistake is in the source you’re
quoting and is not your own.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
INFORMATION ON SUMMARIZING AND PARAPHRASING SOURCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). (2000). Retrieved
January 7, 2002, from http://www.bartleby.com/61/

Bazerman, C. (1995). The informed writer: Using sources in the disciplines (5th ed).
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Leki, I. (1995). Academic writing: Exploring processes and strategies (2nd ed.) New
York: St. Martin?s Press, pp. 185-211.

Leki describes the basic method presented in C, pp. 4-5.

Spatt, B. (1999). Writing from sources (5th ed.) New York: St. Martin?s Press, pp. 98-
119; 364-371.

INFORMATION ABOUT SPECIFIC DOCUMENTATION SYSTEMS

The Writing Center has handouts explaining how to use many of the standard
documentation systems. You may look at our general Web page on Documentation
Systems, or you may check out any of the following specific Web pages.

If you’re not sure which documentation system to use, ask the course instructor who
assigned your paper.

 American Psychological Assoicaion (APA)

 Modern Language Association (MLA)
 Chicago/Turabian (A Footnote or Endnote System)
 American Political Science Association (APSA)
 Council of Science Editors (CBE)
 Numbered References

You may also consult the following guides:

 American Medical Association, Manual for Authors and Editors

 Council of Science Editors, CBE style Manual
 The Chicago Manual of Style
 MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
 Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association