Ethical Use of Sources

The key to properly citing sources is knowing which of these citation techniques to use (or not use) and how to do it. Some students think that all they need to do is slap a name and a year in parentheses after the quotes in their paper and then they’re all good. But citing sources runs much deeper than that, and these four terms–summary, paraphrase, quotation, and patchwriting–have a lot to do with it.

A Citation DTR: Summary, Paraphrase, Quotation, and Patchwriting

Summary, I love you!

Summary is the most felicitous type of citation and the most sophisticated. The reason most students choose not to summarize when citing sources is that summary has the highest degree of difficulty of all the types of source citation–and for good reason: you have to actually understand your source in order to summarize it. You can quote anything you want to without ever understanding what it means, but in a summary, you not only translate the text into your own words, you also shorten its length and provide just the highlights. That means that you have to understand what the most important points are. That is definitely harder than just quoting all the time, but if you add more summary to your papers, they will also increase in sophistication and probably in grade as well.

By learning how to summarize, you can show your research prowess and make better, more insightful points when you write–and your readers (and teacher) will notice. If I were having a DTR (Define the Relationship talk) with Summary, I would say,

Summary, I love you!

Not only can summary help you make better points, there is an advantage to putting things into your own words: you can control the language and match your writing style. And you can also highlight the parts of the sources that are the most relevant to your own paper, the parts you want your audience to notice. You can also discuss ideas and findings in general instead of sticking to shorter, individual points.

If you like more technical terms, here’s the way Howard and Jamieson defined summary in their study:

The author

• writes from a paragraph or more (technically at least 3 sentences)
• restates and condenses the text by at least 50%
• employs “fresh language,” or in other words, only uses 20% or less of the language from the passage (Howard, et al., 2010, p. 181)

Because summary is so powerful, I tell students to make a goal to summarize 50-70% of the time in their papers. If they’re writing a literature review, I say to use summary almost exclusively, often summarizing more than one article in the same sentence. In any case, my advice is to try to strengthen your relationship with summary. When you summarize a shorter passage, you should cite the page number where you found the information as well as the author and year, but when you discuss the ideas in a source in general, you don’t need to list a page number–just the author and year.

Paraphrase, I like you!

Paraphrase is an acceptable form of citation and has a medium degree of difficulty. It’s similar to summary because you’re also translating information into your own words. This comes with the same advantages of being able to control the language of your sentences and match your own writing style. By using your own language, you can also point out what’s most relevant to your paper, so that’s good. And by putting it in your own words, you prove that you at least understand what’s being said by the author(s) in that particular passage. However, the problem is that when you paraphrase, you only work with a short passage at a time (usually only a sentence or two). I know this might sound alarming, but for this reason, paraphrasing can actually be dangerous.

When you work sentence-by-sentence, you run the risk of doing what I did in my 6th grade report about penguins. I opened the encyclopedia labeled “P” (yes, I was very old school) and read a sentence about penguins. Then I turned to my (really old school) computer and tried to write the same sentence in my own words, but I would think to myself, “The encyclopedia said it so well, I can’t really think of a different way to say that.”

So I would substitute a few synonyms for some of the words or rearrange the order of the sentence, but I kept most of the encyclopedia’s wording and all of the ideas. Not cool. Technically, that’s considered plagiarism–taking someone else’s words or ideas and calling them your own–and I’m lucky I didn’t get into trouble in 6th grade. But I was 11 at the time, and my teacher probably recognized that I was an emerging writer still very new to writing about research. She knew I would eventually learn how to cite my sources.

So if you want to avoid the dangers of unintentional plagiarism, try not to work sentence-by-sentence and stick as much as you can to summary. But there are definitely times you’ll need to paraphrase, so here’s Howard and Jamieson’s definition of paraphrase to make things more precise:

In a paraphrase, the writer

• deals with a short passage [up to a paragraph]
• does not condense much
• employs “fresh language,” but sometimes keeps key words, (again, 20% or less) (Howard, et al., 2010, p. 181)

I tell students to paraphrase around 20-30% of the time. When should you choose to paraphrase? When you’re addressing a specific idea or point that an author made that you want to refer to but that doesn’t need to be quoted because the wording itself isn’t important. Just be sure to cite the page number(s) where you found that information as well as the author and year. I like to tell my students that if their instinct is to quote something, look at the wording and decide if it is really special, really unique. If the specific wording doesn’t matter, try paraphrasing.

Quotation, I just want to be friends.

Photo by Flow Graphics on Unsplash

Obviously, quotation has the lowest degree of difficulty of all the citation styles because all you have to do is take an author’s words exactly. But if you just use quote after quote, it will seem like you can’t speak for yourself or that you don’t actually understand your sources. So put quotations in the Friend Zone and hang out with them only occasionally. Save your quotes for those times when an author says something in a unique or special way and you want to highlight their language. Or if you want to highlight an expert’s authority, you can include a poignant quote. Again, with quotes, you’re working sentence-by-sentence, so in order to use them, you don’t have to understand the context of a quote or how it fits into the bigger picture. Try to avoid paparazzi syndrome–don’t take things out of context. It can be all too tempting to find a quote that supports your point without understanding the context or including all sides. Here’s Howard and Jamieson’s details about quotation:

In a quotation, the writer

• copies the wording exactly
• puts quotation marks around all copied words (please!)
• Long quotes (more than 40 words) are cited differently (indented as a block, see APA Manual)

I tell my students to use quotation only 5-10% of the time when you’re citing sources; use summary and paraphrase the rest of the time. Wait until you have that “killer quote.” If you’re writing a literature review then you should almost never quote. If you do need to quote, put quotation marks around all words that belong to that author and cite author’s name (use only their last name) and year. More importantly, you need to cite the page number each time you quote. In APA, it should look like this: (Charles, 2019, p. 345).

I also challenge my students to always introduce a quote (and usually also a paraphrase) and also comment about it afterward.

One caveat is that if you’re writing a paper that analyzes a literary text like a poem or novel (rare in the sciences), you are supposed to quote often from the literary work itself as part of your analysis. But the reason you’re supposed to quote in this case instead of paraphrase is that the wording is literary–which by definition means the language is special and unique. So it still follows the rules of when to quote vs. paraphrase–quote when the specific wording matters. But remember that literary analyses are the only time when a lot of quoting is considered felicitous. 

Patchwriting, I’m getting a restraining order!

Patchwriting is so 6th Grade. The penguin paper I described above was really an instance of patchwriting. Patchwriting is where a writer–whether intentionally or unintentionally–takes a text, changes some words or substitutes synonyms or changes some grammar but doesn’t change it enough to be considered their own words. The degree of difficulty is extremely low because you don’t have to understand the text well or even quote well to do it. You can be sloppy. But beware: the consequences can be as dire as if you plagiarize outright.

Howard’s definition:

• “Copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes” (Howard, 1993, p. 233)

A Word on Intentional Plagiarism

“If you plagiarize, I will come for you. If you take my work, you will pay for it and I will do my best to see you don’t write again.”

from Locus Magazine https://edtechbooks.org/-sun

Don’t lose your integrity for a relationship with plagiarism. It will end badly. Have a DTR with your sources and decide that you will love summary, like paraphrase, be friends with quotations, and run far, far away from patchwriting and plagiarism.