In-text Citations

A good rough draft should provide you time to reflect on your reading to form an educated position that is supported with your own reasoning and logic.

The next step is begin to find direct supporting evidence—facts, expert opinion—from your references. You MUST use the essays from the text or the blog. You MAY use additional references in your paper. You may NOT use only outside references; you MUST use the essays from the text or the blog.  (Yes, I did repeat myself.)

EVERY reference listed on your Works Cited page should be used in your paper. There should be an in-text citation from EACH of your sources.

Your goal in writing the next draft of your essay is to synthesize the information you have gathered with your own ideas. To do that well requires real time and real thought. It is at this stage that you need to incorporate in-text citations.

Incorporate information using paraphrases, summaries or direct quotes, but provide in-text citations for each.

For example, if you summarize or paraphrase what an author says, you may use a statement that credits the source somewhere in the paraphrase or summary:

According to Richard Daines . . . blah, blah, blah (638). 

 In this example, Daines’ name is mentioned in the text of the sentence, and it is clear who the summary comes from. All you need to do is add the page number, in parentheses, followed by a period at the end of the sentence, if it is from the book.   

If the article is from the internet, using Daines’ name in the text of the sentence will be adequate to indicate the source.

If you use the author’s own words, exactly as they appear in the reference, introduce the quote with a signal phrase,  enclose the words with quotation marks, and provide an in-text citation. Follow the quote with a connection to your thesis or an explanation of the quote.

For example:

Although the internet has become the chosen form of research and communication for the twenty-first century, there are indications that people are becoming less capable of deep and sustained concentration. According to Nicholas Carr, “a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the Net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is also turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.” If Carr is correct, it may be time to re-examine the amount of time one spends using the internet.

In this example, the first sentence serves to lead into the second sentence and the second sentence identifies and gives credit to the reference. Also in this example, only the author’s name is used BECAUSE it is from an article in the Wall Street Journal which was found on the internet. 

Remember:

• Check your paraphrase or summary against the original text; correct any errors in content accuracy, and be sure to use quotation marks to set off any exact phrases from the original text
• Check your paraphrase or summary against sentence and paragraph structure, as copying those is also considered plagiarism.
• Put quotation marks around any unique words or phrases that you cannot or do not want to change: e.g., "savage inequalities" exist throughout our educational system (Kozol).

Writing direct quotations

• Keep the source author's name in the same sentence as the quote
• Mark the quote with quotation marks, or set it off from your text in its own block, per the style guide your paper follows
• Quote no more material than is necessary; if a short phrase from a source will suffice, don't quote an entire paragraph
• To shorten quotes by removing extra information, use ellipsis points (...) to indicate omitted text, keeping in mind that:
• In longer quotes where you have omitted a sentence in between other complete sentences, maintain terminal puncutation in between the ellipses. 
• Example: "None of the national reports I saw made even passing references to inequality or segregation. . . . Booker T. Washington was cited with increasing frequency, Du Bois never, and Martin Luther King only with cautious selectivity." (Kozol 3).
• To give context to a quote or otherwise add wording to it, place added words in brackets, ( [] ); be careful not to editorialize or make any additions that skew the original meaning of the quote—do that in your main text, e.g.,
• OK: Kozol claims there are "savage inequalities" in our educational system, which is obvious.
• WRONG: Kozol claims there are "[obvious] savage inequalities" in our educational system.
• Use quotes that will have the most rhetorical, argumentative impact in your paper; too many direct quotes from sources may weaken your credibility, as though you have nothing to say yourself, and will certainly interfere with your style

Revising, proofreading, and finalizing your paper

• Proofread and cross-check with your notes and sources to make sure that anything coming from an outside source is acknowledged in some combination of the following ways:
• In-text citation, otherwise known as parenthetical citation
• Footnotes or endnotes
• Bibliography, References, or Works Cited pages
• Quotation marks around short quotes; longer quotes set off by themselves, as prescribed by a research and citation style guide
• Indirect quotations: citing a source that cites another source
• If you have any questions about citation, ask your instructor well in advanceof your paper's due date, so if you have to make any adjustments to your citations, you have the time to do them well