Rule #1
When writing a paper, you want your own thinking and voice to be prominent. To avoid being drowned out by your sources, use them as succinctly as possible.
When you summarize, you need to reduce a source text to its most important basic message with the use of your own words. Occasionally, you can include quoted words or phrases from the source.
The same requirements apply to paraphrasing. In doing this however, your disclosure of your source’s ideas follows more closely the source’s particular order of presentation or reasoning.
|
According to Harvard’s Writing Sources, reasons to use direct quotations of a source include the following:
- The source author has made a point so clearly and concisely that it can’t be expressed any better.
- A certain phrase or sentence in the source is particularly vivid or striking, or especially typical or representative of some phenomenon you are discussing.
- An important passage is sufficiently difficult, dense, or rich that it requires you to analyze it closely, which in turn requires that the passage be produced so the reader can follow your analysis.
- A claim you are making is such that the doubting reader will want to hear exactly what the source said. This will often be the case when you criticize or disagree with a source; your reader wants to feel sure you aren’t misrepresenting the source. You need to quote enough of the source so the context and meaning are clear.
|
|
