10.3 Quotation, Summary, and Paraphrasing

Many college writing assignments require you to write about outside or external sources or to involve external sources in your essay, such as articles, books, or Websites. In other words, you are often required to write about someone else’s writing. This might occur when you have to write an analysis about a course reading use research to complete a report or bring in evidence to support an argument.

Regardless of the type of assignment, there are only three ways to bring external sources into your essay: quotation, summary, and paraphrasing.

Each of these methods requires the same type of citation in essays. How to format that citation is a different lesson; this is about how and why to use the strategies of summary, paraphrasing, and quotation. For information on how to cite, see the chapter MLA Format.

Quotation

Probably the most common citation, quotation is the strategy of using the source’s same words. You will indicate this in an essay by putting quotation marks (“ ”) around the original.

Direct quotes are good for establishing ethos and providing evidence. Quoting is a good choice when how something is said matters; it gives readers a sense of the tone, style, and perspective of the source.

In a humanities essay, you will be expected to use some direct quotes; however, too many direct quotes can overwhelm your thesis and undermine your sense of ethos. Your research paper should strike a balance between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing—and articulating your perspective!

There are lots of details about how to quote well technically (punctuation, citation, etc.)—a different lesson (see the chapter MLA Format)—but there is also a way to quote well strategically. First, introduce the quotation to come by leading the reader’s interest into the heart of the idea to come or somehow contextualize the quotation to come. Second, give the quotation. Third, discuss what the quotation said.

Bad or weak uses of quotations will drop in the quotation out of nowhere as if the sentences around it don’t acknowledge that the quotation exists. In those bad examples, one could take out the quotation and the paragraph still makes sense, which means the quotation was irrelevant to the writing. Here is a bad example using the same Lovecraft quotation as above:

Good uses of quotation make the quoted section necessary to the surrounding sentences, which directly incorporate the ideas of the original in some way. Here is a good example using the same Lovecraft quotation as above:

Basics of Quoting

1. All quoted material should be enclosed in quotation marks to set it off from the rest of the text. The exception to this is block quotes, which require different formatting.
2. Quoted material should be an accurate word-for-word reproduction from the author’s original text. You cannot alter any wording or any spelling. If you must do so, you must use a bracket or an ellipsis (see number 2 in the section below).
3. A clear signal phrase/attribution tag should precede each quotation.
4. A parenthetical citation should follow each quotation.
5. You, as the author of your essay, should explain the significance of each quotation to your reader. This goes far beyond simply including a signal phrase. Explaining the significance means indicating how the quoted material supports the point you are making in that paragraph.
6. Sometimes, to smoothly integrate quoted material into your paper, you may need to remove a word or add a word to make the quote make sense. If you make any change to the quoted material, it must be formatted correctly using an ellipsis or brackets
7. When in doubt, strive to allow your voice – not a quote from a source –  to begin each paragraph, precede each quote, follow each quote, and end each paragraph.
8. Quotes that are integrated well into a paper allow you to control the paper. That is what a reader wants to see: your ideas and the way that you engage sources to shape and discuss your ideas.

Summary

First, note that to summarize a work has two different meanings, both of which are relevant here. One meaning is the larger or general acts of conveying what a source said, and that can involve all three of the more specific techniques below (quotation, summary, and paraphrasing). The other meaning is the specific technique described and demonstrated next.

For instance, a college writing assignment might ask you to summarize an article, and as you do so, you might choose to quote it, paraphrase it, and even summarize it. It might feel odd that we can say we’re summarizing in our summary, but this is just one of the myriad oddities of the English language.

Summary

Summary is writing your brief version of what someone else wrote. This means finding your words to explain a condensed version of the source material. You would do this when you want to convey the overall ideas of a larger work but in a short space.

Good summaries are accurate and comprehensive, meaning that they should cover every important idea without distorting meanings. Weak summaries tend to leave out important ideas or suggest the wrong ideas.

If you use the same key phrases or unique terms, you are involving a different strategy of quotation and should indicate that accordingly. And remember that every instance of summary in an essay should cite its source.

Example of Summary

Below is an excerpt from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr., and following that is an example of a good one-sentence summary of it.

Basics of Summary

1. Summaries allow you to describe general ideas from a source. You do not express detailed information as you would with a paraphrase.
2. Summaries are shorter than the original text.
3. Any summaries of the text should not include direct wording from the original source. All text should be in your words, though the ideas are those of the original author.
4. A signal phrase should let your readers know where the summarized material begins.
5. If you are offering a general summary of an entire article, there is no need to cite a specific page number.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing (sometimes called Paraphrasis) is a lot like summary, but the difference is that summary skips over all the details and sub-points, and paraphrasis conveys every idea—just in different words than the original. This means that a section of paraphrasing is just as long (if not longer) than the original.

Why do you bother with paraphrasing? You shouldn’t if the original is right for your audience, tone, and purpose—you should just quote the original. But if the original is unclear to your particular audience, or if it doesn’t convey or emphasize the idea in the way you want to, then you would want to say it in your way, which is paraphrasing. Paraphrasing helps establish background knowledge or consensus, simplifying a complicated idea, or reminding your reader of a certain part of another text. It is also valuable when relaying statistics or historical information, both of which are usually more fluidly woven into your writing when spoken with your voice.

Good examples of paraphrasing will convey all the ideas accurately in a different way. Weak or incorrect examples of paraphrasing will be inaccurate or too close to the original wording, which would defeat the purpose of explaining the same idea differently. And remember that every instance of summary in an essay should cite its source.

Example of Paraphrasing

Below is an excerpt from “Supernatural Horror in Literature” by H.P. Lovecraft, and following that is a good example of paraphrasing those ideas for a very different intended audience.

Basics of Paraphrasing

1. Paraphrases allow you to describe specific information from a source (ideas from a paragraph or several consecutive paragraphs) in your own words.
2. Paraphrases are like translations of an author’s original idea. You retain the detail of the original thought, but you express it in your way.
3. Paraphrases of the text should be expressed in your own words, with your sentence structure, in your way. You should not simply “word swap”, that is, replace a few words from the original with synonyms.
4. If you must use a few of the author’s words within your paraphrase,  they must have quotation marks around them.
5. Paraphrases often include attributive tags or signal phrases to let your readers know where the paraphrased material begins.
6. Paraphrases should be followed by parenthetical citations.
7. As with a quote, you need to explain to your reader why the paraphrased material is significant to the point you are making in your paper.