owl purdue paraphrasing practice

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Paraphrase: Write It in Your Own Words

Learn to borrow from a source without plagiarizing .

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.

Six Steps to Effective Paraphrasing

• Reread the original passage until you understand its full meaning.
• Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card.
• 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.
• Check your rendition with the original to make sure that your version accurately expresses all the essential information in a new form.
• Use quotation marks to identify any unique term or phraseology you have borrowed exactly from the source.
• 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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paraphrasing Exercise

Directions: On a separate piece of paper, write a paraphrase of each of the following passages. Try not to look back at the original passage.

• "The Antarctic is the vast source of cold on our planet, just as the sun is the source of our heat, and it exerts tremendous control on our climate," [Jacques] Cousteau told the camera. "The cold ocean water around Antarctica flows north to mix with warmer water from the tropics, and its upwellings help to cool both the surface water and our atmosphere. Yet the fragility of this regulating system is now threatened by human activity."
• The twenties were the years when drinking was against the law, and the law was a bad joke because everyone knew of a local bar where liquor could be had. They were the years when organized crime ruled the cities, and the police seemed powerless to do anything against it. Classical music was forgotten while jazz spread throughout the land, and men like Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie became the heroes of the young. The flapper was born in the twenties, and with her bobbed hair and short skirts, she symbolized, perhaps more than anyone or anything else, America's break with the past.
• Of the more than 1000 bicycling deaths each year, three-fourths are caused by head injuries. Half of those killed are school-age children. One study concluded that wearing a bike helmet can reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent. In an accident, a bike helmet absorbs the shock and cushions the head.
• Matisse is the best painter ever at putting the viewer at the scene. He's the most realistic of all modern artists, if you admit the feel of the breeze as necessary to a landscape and the smell of oranges as essential to a still life. "The Casbah Gate" depicts the well-known gateway Bab el Aassa, which pierces the southern wall of the city near the sultan's palace. With scrubby coats of ivory, aqua, blue, and rose delicately fenced by the liveliest gray outline in art history, Matisse gets the essence of a Tangier afternoon, including the subtle presence of the bowaab, the sentry who sits and surveys those who pass through the gate.
• While the Sears Tower is arguably the greatest achievement in skyscraper engineering so far, it's unlikely that architects and engineers have abandoned the quest for the world's tallest building. The question is: Just how high can a building go? Structural engineer William LeMessurier has designed a skyscraper nearly one-half mile high, twice as tall as the Sears Tower. And architect Robert Sobel claims that existing technology could produce a 500-story building.

Paraphrasing Exercise: Possible Answers

Here are sample answers for the paraphrasing exercise:

• According to Jacques Cousteau, the activity of people in Antarctica is jeopardizing a delicate natural mechanism that controls the earth's climate. He fears that human activity could interfere with the balance between the sun, the source of the earth's heat, and the important source of cold from Antarctic waters that flow north and cool the oceans and atmosphere.
• During the twenties lawlessness and social nonconformity prevailed. In cities organized crime flourished without police interference, and in spite of nationwide prohibition of liquor sales, anyone who wished to buy a drink knew where to get one. Musicians like Louis Armstrong become favorites, particularly among young people, as many turned away from highly respectable classical music to jazz. One of the best examples of the anti-traditional trend was the proliferation of young "flappers," women who rebelled against custom by cutting off their hair and shortening their skirts.
• The use of a helmet is the key to reducing bicycling fatalities, which are due to head injuries 75% of the time. By cushioning the head upon impact, a helmet can reduce accidental injury by as much as 85%, saving the lives of hundreds of victims annually, half of whom are school children.
• Matisse paintings are remarkable in giving the viewer the distinct sensory impressions of one experiencing the scene first hand. For instance, "The Casbah Gate" takes one to the walled city of Tangier and the Bab el Aassa gateway near the Sultan's palace, where one can imagine standing on an afternoon, absorbing the splash of colors and the fine outlines. Even the sentry, the bowaab vaguely eyeing those who come and go through the gate, blends into the scene as though real..
• How much higher skyscrapers of the future will rise than the present world marvel, the Sears Tower, is unknown. However, the design of one twice as tall is already on the boards, and an architect, Robert Sobel, thinks we currently have sufficient know-how to build a skyscraper with over 500 stories.

• Olympic College
• Research Guides
• Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote
• ENGL 91 Library Guide
• Read for Comprehension
• Writing Basics
• Plan Your Writing
• Write a Thesis Sentence
• Revising & Proofreading
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Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

• Quoting, Summarizing, Paraphrasing, from OWL of Purdue Three ways of incorporating the words and ideas of other people into your own writing as explained by Purdue University Online Writing Lab.

Examples and Exercises for Understand Paraphrasing and Summarizing

Practice identifying appropriately paraphrased passages with the University of Arizona's Global Campus Writing Center Paraphrasing Activity .

Practice summarizing and paraphrasing with this introductory exercise from the Owl of Purdue, answers provided.

Write your own paraphrases and evaluate then with the OWL of Purdue paraphrasing exercise and answers .

Examples of plagiarism and Tutorials to learn more

• Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting from the OWL of Purdue
• Academic Integrity Tutorial with examples  from NIU
• Examples of Plagiarism from Bowdoin College
• Plagiarism Tutorial from IU
• Plagiarism Tutorial playllist on YouTube from Texas A&M

See also...

• MLA Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism
• MLA 9th Edition Guide from OC Libraries
• MLA Guide from OWL of Purdue
• Zotero Bib Free, high-quality citation generator with no ads
• << Previous: Write a Thesis Sentence
• Next: Revising & Proofreading >>
• Last Updated: Oct 6, 2023 12:10 PM
• URL: https://libguides.olympic.edu/ENGL91

• Cornette Library

Practice Paraphrasing

• Academic Integrity
• Generative AI
• Paraphrasing Practice Answers
• Direct Quotes
• Chicago/Turabian
• Other Styles
• Other Helpful Citation Resources
• Additional Info

Watch the video below then practice your paraphrasing skills by rewriting the five paragraphs on the Purdue Owl website in your own words. When you are done, go to Paraphrasing Practice Answers to check your work.

• << Previous: Paraphrasing Basics
• Next: Paraphrasing Practice Answers >>
• Last Updated: Mar 14, 2024 10:39 AM
• URL: https://infoguides.wtamu.edu/plagiarism

Reconstruction: Paraphrasing

• Primary Sources
• Common Knowledge
• Paraphrasing
• Annotated Bibliographies

The Purdue OWL site has some helpful exercises to practice paraphrasing.

• Purdue OWL Paraphrasing guide
• Purdue OWL exercises
• More Paraphrasing Exercises More exercises from Florida International University.

What is a paraphrase?

Paraphrasing is not simply rearranging the words of someone else's sentence. Nor is it replacing their words with synonyms. It is taking the gist of their idea and putting it into your own words. IT MUST BE FOLLOWED BY A CITATION. When should you paraphrase:

• You don't want to use a dull or bland quote.
• You want to avoid too many direct quotations
• paraphrasing is a good mental exercise that shows that you truly understand the material

If you are looking at a large amount of material, a paragraph let's say, you do not want to paraphrase line by line. Instead, you want to focus on reading the whole section and take out one main point. Can you summarize that section into one main idea sentence?

If your paraphrase is too close to the original content then it is better off to use quotation marks and just use the direct quotation.

Original Text from "Irish Immigration." Immigration . Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014:

"Their [the Irish's] organizational ability coupled with the large number of Irish living in U.S. cities, made the Irish a powerful political force. They literally transformed politics in American cities by putting local power in the hands of men of working class origin."

Bad Paraphrase:

The Irish changed politics in American cities. Men of working class origin were given local power and because of their organizational ability along with their large numbers living in U.S. cities they became a powerful political force.

Acceptable Paraphrase with CITATION:

The Irish wielded great political power, particularly in the cities. By empowering the working classes this ethnic group became a powerful and influental voice in politics ("Irish Immigration").

How to paraphrase

• Read the original text. Read it several times in order to truly understand it's meaning
• Cover up the original text
• Without looking at the original text write a summary or overview of the original source material in your owd words
• Compare the two to determine if yours is too close to the original
• << Previous: Common Knowledge
• Next: Citation >>
• Last Updated: Nov 30, 2023 3:36 PM
• URL: https://micds.libguides.com/Reconstruction

Avoiding Plagiarism: Quoting, Paraphrasing & Summarizing

• What is Plagiarism?
• Methods of Avoiding Plagiarism
• Quoting, Paraphrasing & Summarizing
• Building a Bibliography
• Copyright Guide
• Types of Plagiarism with Examples

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

Purdue owl resources:.

• Information about quoting, paraphrasing & summarizing The web page includes definitions of all and exercises to improve your understanding of the differences.
• Paraphrase Exercises Exercises to practice paraphrasing.

Additional Info:

• Handout from Aquinas College Library This guide shows a nice chart of when to quote, paraphrase or summarize.

Paraphrasing Example

This is a short video on how to paraphrase a paragraph of an article you've found. This was produced by EasyBib.

Paraphrasing from EasyBib on Vimeo .

• << Previous: Methods of Avoiding Plagiarism
• Next: Building a Bibliography >>
• Last Updated: Oct 13, 2023 1:19 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.txstate.edu/avoiding-plagiarism

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

3.4: Using Source Text: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

Once you have a collection of credible sources as part of a formal secondary research project, such as a report, your next step is to build that report around those sources, using them as anchors of evidence around your own arguments. If you began with an hypothesis and you’re using the sources as evidence to support it, or if you realize that your hypothesis is wrong because all the credible sources you’ve found poked holes in it, you should at this point be able to draft a thesis—your whole point concisely expressed. From there, you can arrange your sources in an order that follows a logical sequence, such as general to specific or advantages versus disadvantages. We will examine organizational structures in the next chapter ( Ch. 4 ) on drafting, but we are now going to focus on how to incorporate source material into usable evidence.

You essentially have four ways of using source material available to you, three of them involving text and one, media:

• Quoting text: copying the source’s exact words and marking them off with quotation marks
• Paraphrasing text: representing the source’s ideas in your own words (without quotation marks)
• Summarizing text: representing the source’s main ideas in your own words (without quotation marks)
• Reproducing media: embedding pictures, videos, audio, graphic elements, etc. into your document

In each case, acknowledging your source with a citation at the point of use and follow-up bibliographical reference at the end of your document (see §3.5 below) is essential to avoid a charge of plagiarism. Let’s now look at each of these in turn.

3.4.1: Quoting Sources

3.4.2: paraphrasing sources, 3.4.3: summarizing sources.

Quoting is the easiest way to use sources in a research document, but it also requires care in using it properly so that you don’t accidentally plagiarize, misquote, or overquote. At its simplest, quoting takes source text exactly as it is and puts quotation marks (“ ”) around that text to set it off from your own words. The following points represent conventions and best practices when quoting:

• You may have seen single quotation marks and think that they’re also acceptable to use, but that’s only true in the UK and some other Commonwealth countries, not in Canada; some European countries use << >> to set off quotations instead.
• Also use double quotation marks for putting a single word or two in “scare quotes” when you’re drawing attention to how people use certain words and phrases—again, not single quotation marks since there is no such thing as quotation marks “lite.”
• Use single quotation marks only for reported speech when you have a quotation within a quotation, as in, “The minister responded to say, ‘No comment at this time’ regarding the allegations of wrongdoing.”
• If no parenthetical citation follows immediately after the closing quotation marks, the sentence-ending period falls to the left of those closing quotation marks (between the final letter and the “99”); a common mistake is to place the period to the right of the closing quotation marks ( . . . wrongdoing”.).
• According to researchers Tblisky and Darion (2003), “. . .”
• As Vice President of Operations Rhonda Rendell has noted, “. . .”
• John Rucker, the first responder who pulled Mr. Warren from the wreckage, said that “. . .”
• Spokespersons Gloria and Tom Grady clarified the new regulations: “. . .”
• “. . . ,” confirmed the minister responsible for the initiative.
• “. . . ,” writes Eva Hess, “. . .”
• Quote purposefully: Quote only when the original wording is important. When we quote famous thinkers like Albert Einstein or Marshall McLuhan, we use their exact words because no one could say it better or more interestingly than they did. Also quote when you want your audience to see wording exactly as it appeared in the source text or as it was said in speech so that they can be sure that you’re not distorting the words as you might if you paraphrased instead. But if there’s nothing special about the original wording, then you’re better to paraphrase properly (see §3.4.2 below) than to quote.
• Students frequently overuse direct quotation [when] 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, 1976, pp. 46-47)
• Don’t quote excessively: As the above source says, a good rule of thumb is that your completed document should contain no more than 10% quoted material. Much above that will look lazy because it appears that you’re getting quotation to write your document for you. Quote no more than a sentence or two at a time if you quote at all.
• To avoid introducing spelling mistakes or other transcription errors, best practice (if your source is electronic) is to highlight the text you want to quote, copy it (ctrl. + c), and paste it (ctrl. + v) into your document so that it matches the formatting of the rest of your document (i.e., with the same font type, size, etc.). To match the formatting, use the Paste Options drop-down menu that appears beside pasted text as soon as you drop it in and disappears as soon as you perform any operation other than clicking on the drop-down menu.
• Though many people mistakenly refer to parentheses ( ) as “brackets”, brackets are squared [ ] and are used mainly to indicate changes to quoted words, whereas parentheses follow the quotation and mark off the citation. If you were to clarify and streamline the final sentence of the block quotation a few points above, for instance, you could say something like: Lester (1976) recommended “limit[ing] the amount of exact transcribing . . . while taking notes” (p. 47). Here, the verb “limit” in the source text needs to be converted into its participle form (having an -ing ending) to follow the past-tense verb in the sentence framing the quotation grammatically. Sneakily adding the “ing” to “limit” without using brackets would be misquotation because “limiting” appears nowhere in the original.
• Notice that the ellipsis above is three spaced periods (not three stuck together, as in “…”) and that one doesn’t appear at the beginning of the quotation to represent the words in the original prior to “limit” nor at the end to represent source text following the quoted words (“… limit …”). Use the ellipsis only to show that you’re skipping over unnecessary words within a quotation.
• Be careful not to use brackets and ellipses in a way that distorts or obscures the meaning of the original text. For instance, omitting “Probably” and changing “should” to “[can]” in the Lester quotation above will turn his soft guideline into a hard rule, which are not the same.
• When you said in the class discussion forum, “No one cares about grammer, [ sic ] it doesnt [ sic ] really matter,” you tend to undermine your credibility on the topic with poor spelling and a comma splice.
• Capitalize as in the original, even if it seems strange to start a quotation with a capital (because it was the first word in the original) though it’s no longer the first word because it follows a signal phrase in your sentence. See the example in the point above, for instance.
• Quotation is a powerful tool in the arsenal of any writer needing to support a point with evidence. Capturing the source’s words exactly as they were written or spoken is an honest way of presenting research. For more on quotation, consult Purdue OWL ’s series of modules starting with the How to Use Quotation Marks page and ending with their Quotation Mark Exercise and Answers .

Hacker, Diana. (2006). The Bedford handbook (7th ed.) . New York: St. Martin’s. https://department.monm.edu/english/mew/signal_phrases.htm

Lester, J. D. (1976). Writing research papers: A complete guide (2nd ed.). University of Michigan.

Purdue OWL. (n.d.a). How to use quotation marks .  https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/quotation_marks/index.html

Purdue OWL. (n.d.b). Quotation mark exercise and answers .  https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/quotation_marks/quotation_marks_exercise_and_answers.html

Paraphrasing or “indirect quotation” is putting source text in your own words and altering the sentence structure to avoid using the quotation marks required in direct quotation. Paraphrasing is the preferred way of using a source when the original wording isn’t important. This way, you can incorporate the source’s ideas so they’re stylistically consistent with the rest of your document and thus better tailored to the needs of your audience (presuming the original was tailored for a different audience with different needs). Also, paraphrasing a source into your own words proves your advanced understanding of the source text.

A paraphrase must faithfully represent the source text by containing the same ideas as in the original in about the same length. As a matter of good writing, however, you should try to streamline your paraphrase so that it tallies fewer words than the source passage while still preserving the original meaning. An accurate paraphrase of the Lester (1976) passage block-quoted in the section above, for instance, can reduce a five-line passage to three lines without losing or distorting any of the original points:

Lester (1976) advises against exceeding 10% quotation in your written work. Since students writing research reports often quote excessively because of copy-cut-and-paste note-taking, try to minimize using sources word for word (pp. 46-47).

Notice that using a few isolated words from the original (“research,” “students,” “10%”) is fine, but also that this paraphrase doesn’t repeat any two-word sequence from the original because it changes the sentence structure along with most of the words. Properly paraphrasing without distorting, slanting, adding to, or deleting ideas from the source passage takes skill. The stylistic versatility required to paraphrase can be especially challenging to EAL learners and native English users whose general writing skills are still developing.

A common mistake that students make when paraphrasing is to go only part way towards paraphrasing by substituting-out major words (nouns, verbs, and adjectives) here and there while leaving the source passage’s basic sentence structure intact. This inevitably leaves strings of words from the original untouched in the “paraphrased” version, which can be dangerous because including such direct quotation without quotation marks will be caught by the plagiarism-busting software that college instructors use these days. Consider, for instance, the following botched attempt at a paraphrase of the Lester (1976) passage that subs out words selectively (lazily):

Students often overuse quotations when taking notes, and thus overuse them in research reports. About 10% of your final paper should be direct quotation. You should thus attempt to reduce the exact copying of source materials while note taking (pp. 46-47).

Let’s look at the same attempt, but bold the unchanged words to see how unsuccessful the paraphraser was in rephrasing the original in their own words (given in black):

As you can see, several strings of words from the original are left untouched because the writer didn’t adequately change the sentence structure of the original. The Originality Report from plagiarism-catching software such as Turnitin would indicate that the passage is 64% plagiarized because it retains 25 of the original words (out of 39 in this “paraphrase”) but without quotation marks around them. Correcting this by simply adding quotation marks around passages like “when taking notes, and” would be unacceptable because those words aren’t important enough on their own to warrant direct quotation. The fix would just be to paraphrase more thoroughly by altering the words and the sentence structure, as shown in the paraphrase a few paragraphs above. But how do you go about doing this?

Paraphrase easily by breaking down the task into these seven steps:

• Read and re-read the source-text passage so that you thoroughly understand each point it makes. If it’s a long passage, you might want to break it up into digestible chunks. If you’re unsure of the meaning of any of the words, look them up in a dictionary; you can even just type the word into the Google search bar, hit Enter , and a definition will appear, along with results of other online dictionary pages that define the same word.
• Look away and get your mind off the target passage. Process some different information for a while (e.g., a few minutes of gaming or social media—but just a few!)
• Without looking back at the source text, repeat its main points as you understood them—not from memorizing the exact words, but as you would explain the same ideas in different words out loud to a friend.
• Still without looking back at the source text, jot down that spoken wording and tailor the language so that it’s stylistically appropriate for your audience; edit and proofread your written version to make it grammatically correct in a way that perhaps your spoken-word version wasn’t.
• Now compare your written paraphrase version to the original to ensure that:
• Deleting any of the original points
• Adding any points of your own
• Distorting any of the ideas so they mean something substantially different from those in the original, or even take on a different character because you use words that, say, put a positive spin on something neutral or negative in the original
• You haven’t repeated any two identical words from the original in a row
• If any two words from the original remain, go further in changing those expressions by using a thesaurus in combination with a dictionary. When you enter a word into a thesaurus, it gives you a list of synonyms, which are different words that mean the same thing as the word you enter into it.
• For instance, the noun party can mean a group that is involved in something serious (e.g., a third-party software company in a data-collection process), but the verb party means something you do on a wild Saturday night out with friends; it can also function as an adjective related to the verb (e.g., party trick , meaning a trick performed at a party).
• Whenever you see synonymous words listed in a thesaurus and they look like something you want to use but you don’t know what they mean exactly, always look them up to ensure that they mean what you hope they mean; if not, move on to the next synonym until you find one that captures the meaning you intend. Doing this can save your reader the confusion and you the embarrassment of obvious thesaurus-driven diction problems (poor word choices).
• Cite your source. Just because you didn’t put quotation marks around the words doesn’t mean that you don’t have to cite your source. For more on citing, see §3.5.2 below).

For more on paraphrasing, consult the Purdue OWL Paraphrasing learning module, Exercise , and Answer Key .

Purdue OWL (n.d.a). Paraphrase: Write It in Your Own Words . https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/paraphrase_exercises/index.html

Purdue OWL (n.d.b). Paraphrasing Exercise . https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/paraphrase_exercises/paraphrasing_exercise.html

Purdue OWL (n.d.c). Paraphrasing Exercise: Possible Answers . https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/paraphrase_exercises/paraphrasing_exercise_answers.html

Summarizing is one of the most important skills in communications because professionals of every kind must explain to non-expert customers, managers, and even co-workers the complex concepts on which they are experts, but in a way that those non-experts can understand. Adapting the message to such audiences requires brevity but also translating jargon-heavy technical details into plain, accessible language.

Summarizing is thus paraphrasing only the highlights of a source text or speech. Like paraphrasing, a summary is indirect quotation that re-casts the source in your own words; unlike a paraphrase, however, a summary is a fraction of the source length—anywhere from less than 1% to a quarter depending on the source length and length of the summary. A summary can reduce a whole novel or film to a single-sentence blurb, for instance, or it could reduce a 50-word paragraph to a 15-word sentence. It can be as casual as a spoken run-down of a meeting your colleague was absent from and wanted to know what he missed, or an elevator pitch selling a project idea to a manager. It can also be as formal as a memo report on a conference you attended on behalf of your organization so your colleagues there can learn in a few minutes of reading the highlights of what you learned in a few days of attending the conference, saving them time and money.

The procedure for summarizing is much like that of paraphrasing except that it involves the extra step of pulling out highlights from the source. Altogether, this can be done in six steps, one of which includes the seven steps of paraphrasing, making this a twelve-step procedure:

• Determine how big your summary should be (according to your audience’s needs) so that you have a sense of how much material you should collect from the source.
• Read and re-read the source text so that you thoroughly understand it.
• Disregard detail such as supporting evidence and examples.
• If you have an electronic copy of the source, copy and paste the main points into your notes; for a print source that you can mark up, use a highlighter then transcribe those main points into your electronic notes.
• How many points you collect depends on how big your summary should be (according to audience needs).
• Paraphrase those main points following the seven-step procedure for paraphrasing outlined in §3.4.2 above.
• Edit your draft to make it coherent, clear, and especially concise.
• Ensure that your summary meets the needs of your audience and that your source is cited. Again, simply not having quotation marks around words is unacceptable for documenting your source(s).

Once you have a stable of summarized, paraphrased, and quoted passages from research sources, building your document around them requires good organizational skills. We’ll focus more on this next step of the drafting process in the following chapter ( Ch. 4 ), but basically it involves arranging your integrated research material in a coherent fashion, with main points up front and supporting points below proceeding in a logical sequence towards a convincing conclusion. Throughout this chapter, however, we’ve frequently encountered the requirement to document sources by citing and referencing, as in the last steps of both summarizing and paraphrasing indicated above. After reinforcing our quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing skills, we can turn our focus on how to document sources.

Key Takeaway

• If you’ve already pulled out the main points as part of the previous exercise, practice including them as properly punctuated quotations in your document with smooth signal phrases introducing them.
• Paraphrase those same main-point sentences following the seven-step procedure outlined in §3.4.2 above. In other words, if Exercise 1 above was direct quotation, now try indirect quotation for each passage.
• Following the six-step procedure outlined in §3.4.3 above, summarize the entire source article, webpage, or whatever document you chose by reducing it to a single coherent paragraph of no more than 10 lines on your page.

3.4: Using Source Text: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing Copyright © 2022 by John Corr; Grant Coleman; Betti Sheldrick; and Scott Bunyan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Multivolume Work

Articles in periodicals.

APA style dictates that authors are named with their last name followed by their initials; publication year goes between parentheses, followed by a period. The title of the article is in sentence-case, meaning only the first word and proper nouns in the title are capitalized. The periodical title is run in title case, and is followed by the volume number which, with the title, is also italicized. If a DOI has been assigned to the article that you are using, you should include this after the page numbers for the article. If no DOI has been assigned and you are accessing the periodical online, use the URL of the website from which you are retrieving the periodical.

Article in Print Journal

Note: APA 7 advises writers to include a DOI (if available), even when using the print source. The example above assumes no DOI is available.

Article in Electronic Journal

Note :  This content also appears on Reference List: Online Media .

As noted above, when citing an article in an electronic journal, include a DOI if one is associated with the article.

DOIs may not always be available. In these cases, use a URL. Many academic journals provide stable URLs that function similarly to DOIs. These are preferable to ordinary URLs copied and pasted from the browser's address bar.

Article in a Magazine

Article in a newspaper.

• Arts & Humanities

Purdue OWL - Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

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