Webinar Recording: Using and Integrating Quotations

• Webinar recording presented October 18, 2018

 

 

Transcript

 

Visual: The webinar begins with a PowerPoint title slide in the large central panel. A captioning pod, Q&A pod, and files pod are stacked on the right side.

The slide says, the title of the webinar, “Practical Skills: Using and Integrating Quotations” and the speakers name and information: Melissa Sharpe, Writing Instructor, Walden Writing Center.

Audio :Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us today for our webinar on properly using quotations in your academic writing. Before I had things over to our presenter Melissa.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Housekeeping

Recording

• Will be available online within 24 hours.
• Interact
  • Polls, files, and links are interactive. 
• Q&A
  • Now: Use the Q&A box.
  • Later: Send to [email protected] or visit our  Live Chat Hours.
• Help
  • Ask in the Q&A box.
  • Choose “Help” in the upper right-hand corner of the webinar room.

Audio: I just want to go over a few housekeeping things. So, my name is Kacy Walz I’m a writing instructor from Saint Louis Missouri and I’m going to be facilitating this webinar today. This webinar is being recorded and, in a day, or two you’ll be able to access it through our website. So, if you have to leave early or want to go over portions of this webinar again later. You’ll be able to check out the recording. Along with it you’ll find many other recorded webinars on various writing related topics

There’ll be several chances to interact with your colleagues and with our presenter Melissa So, please be sure to participate during the chat sessions, in the large chat box just like you did before the webinar started today. 

Also, all of the links in the slide show are active so you can click directly on them for access to more information now or later if you watch the recording. We also have a few helpful files in the File Pod and you can download them by clicking on the download file button at the bottom of the pod. If you want your own copy of the slide deck, that's where you can access this as well. 

There's going to be a lot of information in this webinar. And if you have any questions, you can use the Q & A Box in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. I'll be watching the Q & A Box and I’ll answer your questions as quickly as I can. If we run out of time however, or have questions later on, please send them to [email protected] and you'll get a response through e-mail. 

Finally, if you have any technical difficulty, there's a help button on the upper right-hand corner of the webinar screen and you can also reach out to me in the Q & A Box I have a few little tricks that I can hopefully help you out with. So, thank you again so much for joining us. Now I'm going to turn things over to our presenter Melissa Sharpe. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Title Slide

The slide says, the title of the webinar, “Practical Skills: Using and Integrating Quotations” and the speakers name and information: Melissa Sharpe, Writing Instructor, Walden Writing Center.

Audio: Melissa: Thanks, Kacy. Hi everyone, my name is Melissa Sharpe and I'm a writing instructor here at Walden University writing center. And tonight, we're going to be exploring the practical skill of using and integrating quotations into our academic writing. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Learning Objectives

•      How to integrate a quotation correctly

•      How to format citations with quotations

•      When to use quotations

Audio:The learning objectives for the webinar tonight are that by the time this webinar is over, you will be able to know how to integrate a quotation correctly. You will also know how to format citations to place with your quotations. And you will also know when to use a quotation. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Mechanics of Using Quotations in APA

Audio: So, the first thing we're going to look are the mechanics of using quotations in APA. A quote is just one way that you can integrate or use research in your academic writing. However, we have to make sure that the quotes we use are presented according to APA style guidelines, because here at Walden, we follow APA style. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Quotation and APA

APA recommends using paraphrasing more frequently than quoting 

because this allows the author to better integrate the information into 

the paper itself and add analysis.

•      However,there may be circumstances where a source’s quotation is

•      Too specific or full of factual information to paraphrase

•      Worded in a way that affects its role in your paper

•      Clear/effective when only a small portion is used

Audio: So, APA prefers that we paraphrase more often than quote in our writing. And the reason for that is because when we paraphrase research, that means we put it into our own words. And we remain the writer of our entire assignment. So even if you're just writing a discussion post, you want to be the author of that post from beginning to end as much as you can. However, you know that you need to have research to back up and support your ideas. So, in order to pull that research in, if you paraphrase, you still are the author beginning to end. 

However, there may be circumstances where you need to quote. And that could be because the section of a piece of research is too specific or it's full of factual information, and you just can't paraphrase it. This happens if we see something that's a little bit dense with numbers or statistics. Also, we may prefer to quote if the research is worded in a way that affects its role in the paper. And sometimes what that ends up looking like is it would be difficult to restate and still capture the exact same meaning, or we might be nervous about taking a quote out of context or getting something kind of wrong. And, so, when that's the case, it can be best to quote. 

Also, quoting can be useful if we are just quoting a small portion of, say, a larger sentence. And, so, instead of stressing out about paraphrasing, you know, these six words that we really like, we can just go ahead and quote those, because it's small and it will be relatively unobtrusive in our writing. So even though APA recommends that we paraphrase more often than we quote in our writing, there are instances where quoting is the best choice. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: How to Cite a Quotation

•      Similar to a paraphrase

•      Author

•      Year

•      Different from a paraphrase

•      Quotations are word for word exactly from the source

•      Page/paragraph #

More information: Paraphrasing Source Information 

and How and When to Include APA Citations webinar

Audio: Now, when you include a quotation in your writing, just like if you include a paraphrase in your writing, you have to make sure that you cite that. If you're familiar with APA at all, then you probably know that APA likes us to cite a lot. They prefer that we cite each and every sentence that contains information from one of our sources. So, when we cite in APA, we always include the author of the piece and the year of publication. Now note that the author can be a person's last name. But it also can be a government organization or a corporation if they're writing about themselves. However, sometimes sources do not have an author in which case we have to follow the APA rule of putting the title of that source. 

But a citation for a quote will contain the name of the author and the year of publication just like a paraphrase. However, after presenting the name and year, we want to also include either the page or paragraph number where that quote can be found. When we're quoting, we're using the exact same words as the source. It's word-for-word, the same as our source material. And if somebody wants to go find that quote, we want to go help point them. So that's why we include the page number for printed sources or perhaps you might find a scanned PDF when you're researching online. So those have page numbers. But for electronic documents, we use paragraph numbers, because, you know, there's no pages on your screen. 

So, when we cite a quotation, that quotation into include the name of author, the year of publication, and page or paragraph number where the quote can be found. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: How to Cite a Quotation

•      Introduced as Dialogue

•      The Writing Center stated, “Citing quotations is very important” (para. 5).

•      Integrated

•      The Writing Center stated that “citing quotations is very important” (para. 5).

•      According to the Writing Center, “citing quotations is very important” (para. 5).

More information: Paraphrasing Source Information 

and How and When to Include APA Citations webinar

Audio: So, when we cite a quote, we have couple of different style choices. And we'll be looking at quite a few of these today. But what you'll see here is that we can introduce a quote as if it was dialogue. As if a source was talking. And here in our example we have one that says, the Writing Center stated, and then it's followed by the quote. When we introduce a quote this way, it is as if that source is talking. 

So, we have that verb stated and then the source would open their mouth and complete the sentence for you. Well notice here in this example, I need to apologize, we do not have the year of publication in these examples. We can also integrate quotes into our writing in which we do not allow the source to talk. We just kind of, this sentence sounds almost as if it were paraphrased. 

For example, the Writing Center stated that citing quotations is important. Here, we're presenting the same idea, but we're not giving our source that ability to speak so to say, it's not introduced like dialogue. But you'll notice in all of these examples, the author is named as part of the sentence and then the citation comes after and that’s one of the ways you can quote in an APA style. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Citation Example

•      Quotation

•      Walt (2013) argued that “one reason academic writing is sometimes difficult is because the subjects being addressed are complicated and difficult and hart to explain with ordinary language” (para. 5).

•      Paraphrase

•      The issues and questions that academic writers address often lead to confusing and convolutely-worded papers (Walt, 2013).

Audio:So here are examples of what citations can look like if they are a quote where we have named the author as part of the sentence versus a paraphrase. So, you'll see on the left-hand side of the screen in our quotation, we have named the author Walt and we have the year of publication 2013. And we're saying Walt argued that. And then we present that had quote. You'll notice at the end we have the paragraph number where this quote can be found. When you're quoting, it's fine to split your citation in this way so you have the name and year before the quote and then we have the page and paragraph number at the end of the quote. 

So, if we compare that to the paraphrase, we'll see that here the entire citation appears at the end of the paraphrase with the last name and year of publication and then that's all that's there in for that citation of a paraphrase on the right, you'll notice there's not a page or paragraph number to direct the reader to. So, you can get a visual of the differences between citing a quotation and citing a paraphrase. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Quotations Introductions

•      That:

•      Walt (2013) argued that “a really well-crafted and well-supported argument will overcome a skeptic’s initial resistance” (para. 8). 

•      Comma:

•      Walt (2013) stated, “A really well-crafted and well-supported argument will overcome a skeptic’s initial resistance” (para.8)

•      Variations:

•      According to the author, “a really well-crafted and well-supported argument will overcome a skeptic’s initial resistance” (Walt, 2013, para. 8).

•      In an academic debate, “a really well-crafted and well-supported argument will overcome a skeptic’s initial resistance” (Walt, 2013, para. 8).

•      While“a really well-crafted and well-supported argument will overcome a skeptic’s initial resistance,” writers must prepare for critique (Walt, 2013, para. 8).

Audio: When we choose to include quotes in our writing, we want to introduce the source in some way. And the reason for this is you are allowing another author to speak in the middle of your paper. And sometimes I tell students it's similar to if you were having friends and family over one night, and all of a sudden, a person just burst in the door and started talking. It's kind of an awkward introduction. Usually a person will come in and say meet so-and-so. It's the same thing when we include a quote. If we just drop a quote in the middle of our writing, it is the equivalent of a person bursting out of our paper and start to go talk. So, we want to introduce that source to our reader. And there's a few ways to do this. 

Of course, naming the author in the beginning of the sentence is very helpful and there's some templates you can follow. The first on the screen here is using the word "That." So, we see it says Walt argued that, and then we present Walt's argument. You'll notice that this is cited by placing the year of publication immediately after the author's name. And then the page or paragraph number where the quote can be found. This gives us that none dialogue type of integration that we saw on the previous slide. 

We can also introduce the quote using a comma or presenting it as dialogue. And, so, in the second example, we see it says: "Walt stated." And then we know that it is Walt who is talking. Even that brief introduction is all it takes to introduce the reader to the idea that a quote is on its way. Once again, you'll see that this is cited in APA style by having the year of publication after the author's name and the paragraph number at the end. One thing that you might notice as we introduce the quote as dialogue, we will capitalize the first word of the quote, because it is a new sentence in theory, because it's the sentence that the speaker, Walt, in this case is saying. However, if we're going to blend that quote into part of our sentence, then that first word remains lowercase. 

Another, a few other ways to introduce quotes will just be according to the author is one way. We also have, in an academic debate. And we also have this one where we don't name the author at all, but we make sure the quote has something before-and-after it. In this way, we are wrapping our own words and thoughts and ideas around the quote. So, the quote is not just dropped in unexplained. You'll notice when we do not name the author as part of the sentences like these cases have, we put the entire citation information in one citation at the end. So that's going to include the author's last name, the year of publication, and the paragraph number. What I'm hoping you will have noticed at this point is that there are actually a lot of ways to introduce quotes and integrate quotes into your writing and so, you, as the writer gets to pick which one works best for you at that particular moment in time. All of these different introductions are correct and in APA format. So, it's up to you to choose which one works for you. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Quotations in the Middle of a Sentence

Narrative: 

Walt (2013) argued that “the process by which a scholar figures out the answer to a particular question is rarely if ever the best way to explain that answer to a reader” (para. 6), so scholars must develop strong writing skills.

Parenthetical: 

One mistake scholars occasionally make is presenting their argument in a chronological narrative, but “the process by which a scholar figures out the answer to a particular question is rarely if ever the best way to explain that answer to a reader” (Walt, 2013, para. 6).

Audio: We can also include quotation in the middle of a sentence. And you probably saw some of those on the previous slide. And that means that we are going to start with our own writing before the quote. And then after the quote, we will include more of our writing. The period will not immediately follow the citation and this is fine. You can quote in the middle of a sentence if you need to include your source's original words as part of a larger idea that you want to create. So here, we see in the first example that the quote starts off with introducing the author. We have Walt argued. And then after the quote, we have our own conclusion, which is that scholars must develop strong writing skills. 

So, the quote ends before the sentence ends. However, the citation appears at the end of the quote. In APA, we are asked to always cite the end of the quote or the end of the paraphrase, even if that appears in the middle of a sentence. And the reason for this is it make sure the reader knows exactly where that quote or paraphrase or summary ends. Because it allows us to see where your thoughts begin. Because your thoughts are not cited as the author of the paper. So, if you choose to quote in the middle of a sentence, you should make sure that your citation ends immediately after the quote. We want to keep that citation hugged closely to give the quote credit to that author, but also just this makes sure we do not give away credit for your own wonderful ideas.     

The next example that we have, the quote appears in the middle of a sentence, but it ends up where the sentence ends after that part of the quote. So here you'll see this writer has actually included quite a lot of information before we even get to the quote. It says one mistake collars occasionally make is presenting their argument in a chronological narrative, but, and because as a reader we see these quotation marks. We know this is where the ideas from the source begin. And we know that when we get to this citation, that is where the end of the ideas from the source appear. So once again, the citation immediately follows the quote. 

So, it's okay to begin a quote in the middle of a sentence. And you can choose to keep the sentence going after or you can choose to end the sentence after you present the quote. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Clarifying Quotations

•      Original

•      “We measured behavioral and education changes over 10 years, but chose to focus educational outcomes in the most recent survey. Little change was noted in those outcomes” (Harrison, 2018, para 6).

•      Paraphrase

•      Harrison (2018) found that “little change was noted in [educational] outcomes” (para 6).

Audio: My name is we need to clarify quotes a little bit. And this is completely acceptable. And the reason why we may need to clarify quotes is because in the original, perhaps the wording only makes sense if you are able to read the entire paragraph or a couple of sentences before the part that you want to quote. You know, writers don't know exactly what we're going to pull to make sure that each and every blurb perfectly stands on its own. 

So, for example, what this may look like, we have an original article on the left-hand side. And that original says: We measured behavioral and education changes over 10 years, but chose to focus on educational outcomes in the most recent survey. Little change was noted in those outcomes." Well as a student and I want to use that little bold piece, if I say "Little change was noted in those outcomes." You, as a reader probably are going to wonder well, what outcomes or what change? Or there's just something not super clear in that bit. So as a writer, I am able to add clarifying words to a quote. And when I do that, I want to make sure I place those clarifying ideas or words within brackets. 

In APA style and several other styles, in the middle of a quote, if we see brackets, we know as a reader that it is denoting something about the quote. And here it is denoting that, this word educational does not appear in the original document. However, it is the original meaning. So instead of saying, "Little change was noted in those outcomes" I have replaced the word "Those" with the type of outcomes, and now I have little change was noted in educational outcomes. And by presenting the quote this way, any reader is now going to be able to understand what this Harrison source had to say or what the findings were. 

Whereas, just saying those outcomes would be a bit confusing. So, if you need to clarify a quote by changing a word to give context, that is fine. However, when you change the word it's important to place it within brackets, because that is a clue to the reader that it is different than the original. Please note that you can't go and rewrite entire sentences and place it in brackets. This is only to be used sparingly to make sure the reader understands the quote and pronouns or references to things that appeared earlier in that article. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Poll

Please respond to the poll question!

Audio: All right. We're going to take a moment to respond to a poll. And I want to see if looking at some of these examples has helped you soak in some of the APA formatting. So, when you look at these four options, which one is incorrectly formatted? I'm going to give you 2-3 minutes to look these over and make your choice. 

[Polling]

In about a minute, I'm going show you what everyone's responses are to the poll so that we can talk about the formatting of some of these quotes. 

[Polling]

Okay. Responses have slowed down so I'm going go ahead and show you everyone's responses. And you'll see most of you chose C, which says we all deserve equal rights. Page 5 is an important idea. And you guys are correct. This one is not formatted correctly and reason for that is because it's missing the author's name and it's missing the year of publication. You'll notice that choices A, B, and D all include the right elements, which are name, year of publication, and page number and we do have some people who dislike B. And I'm going to tell you why. Even though this is technically has the right stuff, it's really ugly and out of order. So, if you chose that one, it's because you have the same feeling I think a lot of us have looking at this one which is Ugh! That's not right. However, it has all three parts that we are looking for. It's just not quite in the best shape that it could be. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Using Long Quotations in APA

•      Quotations under 40 words are cited as in previous examples

•      Quotations over 40 words require block quotations

•      Probably unnecessary for Walden papers

•      Block quotation rules

Students may have difficulty identifying source types in their academic writing. Bishop and Mabry’s (2016) findings illustrate this student issue: 

On average 18% of initial attempts at choosing the correct source type for scholarly and popular articles is incorrect each semester. This statistic is representative of students who pass the course, as submissions by students who did not submit all components of the PSLA were removed from the data set. (p. 74)

Audio: I want to thank everybody for participating in that poll. Sometimes we have a source where we would like to quote a large piece of it. And when this happens, even a medium size piece can end up being what we call a long quote. And a long quote is any quotation that's going to be over 40 words. All of the quotations that we've looked at so far are under 40 words and so they are presented and cited the way that we have seen in all those previous examples and in all the examples we'll see for the rest of this webinar. 

However, if you want to include a quotation that has more than 40 words, it requires a special type of formatting. And this will probably be unnecessary for your Walden course papers. If we're going -- if you are going to include a quote that's longer than 40 words, when you see it on the page, you'll discover that it takes up a lot of room. And if you have even a 5-page essay, giving up that much space to a source really just denies you that same space to present your idea. I don't know if I have seen a course paper come through to me in the Writing Center where I thought that a block quote was necessary. And you will probably find that they are not necessary for your course work. There are specific rules for including a long quote which is called block formatting. There's a link on this slide that will take you to those rules. You can, of course, access all the links that have been embedded in these slides by downloading the slides in the files pod and that way you can save it for future use. 

So, here's an example of the use of a long quote. Because this is a PowerPoint slide, we're kind of missing the indentation and look of a long quote on the page. But one of the things I think you'll notice right away is that this is a quote, yet, it does not have quotation marks around it. And when we do block quote formatting, the quote is indented a bit, so it looks more like it's toward the Center of the page. And that indicates that it is a quote and we don't put quotations marks around it. We also can tell that we're he wants entering a quote because we have that introduction that names the authors and gives us the year of publication and it introduces a quote with a colon. As this is a quote and I'm finding errors as we go here. This period should come at the end of the citation that way the citation is attached to the sentence. But at the end of the quote, we see that we have a page number. So, again, we have all those things that we need to cite. We have the name of the authors, we have the year of publication, and we have the page number. However, because this is a long quote, we are including it in block format which means there are no quotation marks before-and-after it, and in a Word document, it would be indented to set it off from the rest of the text. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Using Long Quotations in APA

•      Step 1: Shorten quotation by using an ellipses:

Full Quotation: 

“Really effective writing involves sitting down and thinking hard about the best way to present that argument to the reader. The most important part of that process is figuring out the overall structure of the argument — what points need to be developed first, and then what follows naturally or logically from them, and so on” (Walt, 2013, p. 47) 

(55 words)

Condensed: 

“Effective writing involves…thinking…about the best way to present the argument to the reader. The most important part…is figuring out the overall structure of the argument” (Walt, 2013, p. 47)

 (28 words)

Audio: Now, if you have a long quote that you would like to include, but you don't want to use that block quote formatting because it's probably unnecessary. You can actually make your long quote shorter. And you can shorten it by using ellipses which are those three dots. Here’s my full quote that I want to include. It's really long. It's 55 words but it has everything that I need to support my ideas. So, I can shorten it by removing some of the words and replacing it with the ellipses. This is in the original, effective writing involves sitting down and thinking hard about the best way to present that argument. I can remove some words and make it shorter. Effective writing involves... thinking... about the best way to present the argument. You notice I removed sitting down and replaced it with ellipses, and removed the word hard, and replaced it with ellipses and removed some words again. In removing some of the extra words from my original quotation, I have taken it from 55 words down to 28. And this is shorter. I don't have to use block formatting. And it will fit nicely within my writing. So, if you have a long quote and you would like to use it, it's okay to condense it by removing words and replacing them with ellipses or those three dots. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Using Quotations in APA

•      Step 1: Integrate condensed quotation:

Condensed: 

“Effective writing involves…thinking…about the best way to present the argument to the reader. The most important part…is figuring out the overall structure of the argument” (Walt, 2013, p. 47)

 (28 words)

Integrated: 

According to Walt (2013), “effective writing involves…thinking…about the best way to present the argument to the reader. The most important part…is figuring out the overall structure of the argument” (p. 47), which is why reading is such an important part of learning to write.

Audio: You should still, however, integrate that condensed quote. So, I've taken that 55-word quotation and I have trimmed it down to 28 words by removing some of the extras. And now I'm going to go ahead and introduce it. And I'm introducing it by naming the author at the beginning sentence. I'm saying according to Walt. then after I have presented my quote, I've cited it. This lets the reader know this is the official end of the quotation. And then I'm going to follow it up with the rest of my idea. A quote should always be surrounded in your own writing. And here we have it all happening in one sentence and me some other examples, maybe your follow-up would appear in a sentence immediately after. But this quote is fully integrated. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: When and How-to Best Use Quotations

Audio: Next we're going to talk about when and how-to best use quotations within your writing. But before we start, this part of the webinar, I want to pause to see if there's any questions that have come in that I can answer before we move on. 

Kacy: Thank you, Melissa. We did have a good question about quoting a mistake. So, if you are using a direct quote from someone else's work and they have maybe misspelled a word, or maybe incorrectly used an apostrophe or something like that, how would you let your reader know that, that mistake is from that original source and not your own typo or error? 

Melissa: Yes, this is a great question. And with this question, we get to see that bracket rule come into play. So earlier I said you can include, you can replace parts of a quote for clarity sake by changing a word and just placing it in brackets. Because those brackets let the reader know something is going on. So, if you have a quote where a person has misspelled something, maybe it's a typo or grammatical mistake, and you want to let your reader know, hey, something is going on with this quote that is not my mistake. What you do is immediately after the mistake, in brackets, you put SIC. Now, I don't know the best way to pronounce that, but this will allow your reader to realize that you have just taken the quote exactly as it is. And that error is not yours. And the SIC is actually Latin for thus or just as. This lets us know that this is just like the original. It's not mine. It's that other persons. So, if there's a misspelling in a quotation you want to use, leave the misspelling, but make sure you call attention to it by using SIC within brackets. 

Kacy: Thank you, Melissa. I think that's all we have right now. So, we're good to keep going on. 

Melissa: Okay, great. Thank you. That was a great question. I'm glad somebody brought that up.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: When to Use a Quotation

•      The wording is significant in relation to your argument or analysis

•      The quotation is too specific or full of factual information to paraphrase

•      You can use a portion of the phrasing/wording within your own unique sentence to help make your point

•      You have been directed to use direct quotations

Audio: So, when choosing to use a quotation, like I said earlier, APA recommends that we paraphrase more than we quote. But now that we know some of the ways to include a quotation, it’s important to discover, well when we should actually do that? And, so, some of the times to use a quotation are if the wording is significant. It is something that is stated in a way that you just could not repeat. It needs to be as it is. And sometimes this happens. And that's a call you have to make as the writer. If you need it in its original wording to go support your argument or analysis, then it's going to be good to quote. 

Also, if the quotation is very specific or full of factual information, maybe it's densely packed with statistics, there really is no way to put those statistics in your own word. We just want to present that as a quotation instead. 

Also, you can use a quotation if you, just like part of it. If you are going to be able to use just a portion of the quote, and embed that in your own unique sentence, then that's okay too. You don't have to include a quote from beginning to end of the author's original sentence. You're welcome to just go ahead and take a portion of it. Another time that you will find it important to use quotations are if you have been specifically directed to use them in an assignment. There may be a case where you are asked to analyze a few articles or maybe analyze the language of somebody's writing, or look at specific sources, in which case you will need to quote them in order to present your analysis and evaluation. So of course, if you are asked to use direct quotations, you should, go ahead and use direct quotations. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions to Ask BeforeUsing a Quotation

•      How does this quotation connect to my thesis?

•      How does it connect to the topic of this paragraph?

•      What does it really mean or imply?

•      Can I rephrase it in my own words?

•      Is there a portion of the quotation I’d like to use, rather than the entire quotation?

•      Is there an argument behind using a direct quotation rather than paraphrasing?

Audio: However, as you're walking yourself through the decision to use a quotation, you might want to ask yourself some of these questions and the first one is: How does it connect to my thesis? How does it connect to my overall main idea or purpose? If the quotation has a really strong connection to your main idea and purpose, it probably makes more sense to go ahead and quote it than if that quotation's connection is a little bit weak or less important. 

Also, you'll want to ask that question at the paragraph level, which is how does this quotation connect to the top of this paragraph? If it is highly relevant and important, and vital to developing the ideas of that paragraph, it might be better to quote that one. And it's definitely better to quote it than a bit of research that only sort of connects to the topic of the paragraph. 

You also want to take a look what that quote actually means or what it implies. If the quote is not completely presenting the ideas that you want it to, or it carries a different connotation than what you're looking for, it might not be what you need to include in your writing. 

You also want to ask the question, which is kind of rephrase it. Because if you're looking at a quote you would like to include, you should see first if you can put it in your own words. Our first option for including research in our writing is to see if we can paraphrase it. Now another way to look at it, is can I use the portion of this instead of the entire thing? If you include just a part of a larger sentence, it's less of a disruption than if you included an entire sentence as a quote. 

You'll also want to think about those reasons we explored for including quotations and see if you can create an argument for using the quotation instead of paraphrasing. So, as you can see, we want to put a lot of thought into the act of quoting before we just go ahead and do it. And this is because sometimes people think it's easier to quote. You can just copy those words and put them in your paragraph and you've included the research. But we really want to think about that quote. We want to think about giving, time and space over to another writer, to write in our paper and we also want to make sure it's going to match our purpose and tone. And, so, choosing to quote is a big decision and I want you to keep that in mind when you're working on your future papers here at Walden. 

 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Accurately Representing Quotes

•      Maintain the author’s original meaning

•      Can remove words by using ellipses …

•      Can replace words by using brackets [  ]

•      Check that partial quotations maintain meaning

•      Keep in mind the author’s contextand overall position

Audio: So, we have talked about how we can change quotes a little bit. We can shorten them. We can replace a word for clarity. However, whenever we represent quotes in our writing, we want to make sure that we are doing so with accuracy. We want to maintain the author's original meaning. So even though we can shorten quotes, we can clarify ideas, and we are allowed to include partial quotes, we want to make sure that those changes or that partial quotation, that they all maintain the meaning of the original source. We need to keep in mind what we call the author's context. And that author's overall position. If an author is arguing one thing, we want to make sure that part of the quote we use is in line with that argument. If an author is presenting historical information, we want to make sure that it's shared within that same context that this is historical information and not a current recommendation. Right? Because ideas and trends change over time. So, we want to keep the context and position clear when we choose to quote. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Accurately Representing Quotes

•      “There is some evidence that virtual therapy sessions are more effective” (Gattuso, 2018, para 13).

•      “There is some evidence that virtual therapy sessions are more effective than foregoing any therapy; however, strength of this evidence is low given the lack of repeat findings in other studies” (Gattuso, 2018, para 13).

Audio: So, here's an example of a quote that might appear in a paper. That says, there is some evidence that virtual therapy sessions are more effective. And when you look at this quote, it seems to support the idea that virtual therapy is a good idea, that it's worth doing. However, this is just a partial quote. And if we look at the original sources full quote, we'll notice that in reality, this says: "There is some evidence that virtual therapy sessions are more effective than foregoing any therapy, however, strength of this evidence is low given the lack of repeat findings in other studies." 

So, in reality this Gattuso source from 2018 is forwarding the idea that virtual therapy may not be strong enough or that there isn't enough research on the topic. And if we just stop the quote where the student did in the original, it presents sort of the opposite idea. This is not an accurate representation of the quote. Yes, it is word-for-word the same, however, that context and the original idea of the author have been misrepresented. So, when you're choosing to quote, you want to make sure you're not pulling parts of the quote that just line up with what you want them to say. But that you are representing the research, the way that the author was hoping their work would be used. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Practice Chat

“Being part of a writing group decreases isolation, aids retention, and helps students to define academic writing expectations, standards, and practices” (Melkun, 2012, p. 34).

In the chat box,

condense this quotation without altering the main idea/meaning.

Audio: We're going to take time to do a chat now. It's going to give you an opportunity to condense a quotation without changing the meaning and without taking anything out of context or misrepresenting it. So, we want to shorten this quotation without altering the idea. The quotation reads: “Being part of a writing group decreases isolation, aids retention, and helps students to define academic writing expectations, standards, and practices." So, go ahead in the chat box and try to condense that quote so that it's still a quotation, but that it is shorter than the original. I'm going to give you probably 4-5 minutes to work on this. 

[Practice session] 

I see some responses coming in and I like you're using different options for condensing quotes. So, we'll take a look at some of those in about 2 minutes. Go ahead and keep working on condensing the quotation without altering the main idea. 

[Practice session]

So, I have pulled some examples from the chat box into this note section so we can take a look at the two strategies for condensing a quote. And the first strategy is to replace some of the words with ellipses. So here in this first example, we see that the quote now reads, being part of a writing group decreases isolation and helps to define academic writing expectations, standards, and practices.  And you'll notice that quite a few the words from the original have been remove and replaced with the ellipses. However, the meaning of this condensed quote is exactly the same and also the citation is properly formatted. It appears at the end, it has name, date, and page number. 

The other way to condense a quote is to just grab a part of it. So, here in the second example, we see that we have Melkun contends and you know what I'm going to make this past tense because in APA they prefer we use past tense verbs when talking about research. So Melkun contended that being part of a writing group has multiple advantages for students. So, I'm going to take this citation if I'm going to, well, actually the whole sentence means the same thing so let's leave it there. So here again we have the name the author, the date of publication, and the page where the quote can be found. And in both of these examples, the original quotation has been condensed but the meaning is exactly the same. I want to thank everybody for participating in that chat. You guys did a great job.  

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Types of Quotation Integration

•      A few types of quotation integration:

•      Author’s name in text

•      Author’s name in parentheses

•      Partial quotation

•      Like a paraphrase, you will want to include a lead-inand a lead-outfor your quotation.

More information: Beyond Summary: Adding Analysis & Synthesis to Your Writing

webinar and Basics of Using Evidence

Audio: Earlier we looked at ways to look to include quotes. We are going to dig a little bit deeper into some of these. There are few types of quotation integration and those can include using the author's name as part of your text or keeping the author's name inside a citation, or some more partial quote techniques. Like a paraphrase, and like we've seen today, you always want to lead in and lead out of a quotation. I say that the quotation should be wrapped in some way, whether it's the same sentence or the sentence before-and-after, your writing needs to surround the quotation. And that's what we mean by integration. A quote should not just appear out of nowhere we should know it is coming. Either in the sentence before or at the beginning of the sentence. At the end, we should know why is that quotation there? 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Example 1: Author’s Name in Text

Isolated Quotation:

Walt (2016) stated that “the poor quality of academic writing is both aesthetically offensive and highly inefficient. Academics should strive to write clearly for the obvious reason that it will allow many others to learn more quickly” (para. 9). 

Integrated in a Paragraph: 

Though academic writing is not often read by large audiences, it is important to produce clear scholarly texts. Walt (2016) stated that “the poor quality of academic writing is both aesthetically offensive and highly inefficient. Academics should strive to write clearly for the obvious reason that it will allow many others to learn more quickly” (para. 9). Clear scholarship also opens up more possibilities for developing new arguments and ideas. 

Audio: So, one of the ways that we can include a quotation is when we use the author's name in text. And here we have an example, where yes, this quotation has been introduced. We know Walt stated that, but it's just the quotation. It's isolated in our writing. This sentence has been dropped into an essay and it's not yet fully integrated. However, to integrate that into a paragraph, we're going to do some work to introduce the quote beforehand, and that means we're going to focus our reader in on the topic, which is of course this idea of audience for academic writing related to the quality of it. 

So here we have introduced that idea. So, we're on the same topic as our quotation. Then we present the quotation, which is of course on that same topic as well. And then when we're done, we're going to follow it up, this is up to us. We can state why the quotation is important. We can connect it to other ideas. We can compare and contrast it to other researches. What matters is that the sentence that follows the quotation has something to do with that quotation. It doesn't ignore that there is the quotation right before it. It is tied to it in some way. And there isn't a formula for this. As the writer, these are decisions that you have to make. However, what we see here is that the sentences that the student has written both before-and-after the quotation relate to it and kind of explain or show us why that quotation is in the paper in the first place. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Practice Chat: Example 2

Isolated Quotation: 

“Many scholars [fail] to appreciate the difference between the logic of discovery and the logic of presentation. Specifically, the process by which a scholar figures out the answer to a particular question is rarely if ever the best way to explain that answer to the reader. But all too often articles and manuscripts read a bit like a research narrative” (Walt, 2013, para. 6) 

In the chat box, 

choose a line from this quotation and write a sentence introducing the quotation with the author’s name in-text.

Audio: Now we're going to do another example in the chat. So here is an isolated quote. And for this one, I would like you to just choose a line from the quotation and write a sentence that introduces it. So, we want to see more than just the author's name. You want to see more than Walt stated. We want to see a sentence that is going to lead us in to the same ideas of this quote. Kind of warm the reader up to the main idea or point or purpose that Walt is going to prove for us. 

I will read the quotation to you if it helps, because I know depending on the size of your screen, it may have shrunken down. The quotation says. Many scholars fail to appreciate the difference between the logic of discovery and the logic of presentation. Specifically, the process by which a scholar figures out the answer to a particular question is rarely if ever the best way to explain the answer to the reader. But all too often, articles and manuscripts read a bit like a research narrative. So, go ahead and choose one section of this larger quotation and write a sentence that introduces it to the reader. 

[Practice session: Example 2] 

As you continue to work on the responses to this chat, I'm going to share with you some tips that I have as I work through integrating quotations into my own writing. It's difficult since we are not the author of a paper on this topic and we just have to kind of assume some things based on the quotation that we have. However, before I'm going to include a quote, and I want to make sure that what I say before the quote is going to be an idea that could be supported by it. 

So here, I can tell that Walt is making a point about the readability of manuscripts that perhaps they're not perfectly in line what a reader wants or expects. So, I might say, let's see, there is an ongoing issue with, how about author and reader expectations misaligning in academic publishing. And now for this one I want to include the author's name so I'm going to do a good old according to Walt. And this is from 2013. Let's see. How about... [Typing] All too often, articles and manuscripts read a bit like a research narrative. 

And, of course, I would want to wrap this up in some way by explaining what that means and why it isn't in line with the -- or why it proves there's a misalignment between author reader and author's expectation. So, having a sentence that leads us into that is important. And one of the examples that I saw in the chat, that did include some of this, warming the reader up to the topic. So, it’s different types of readers that will be interested in study results, however, all too often articles and manuscripts read a bit like a research narrative. So, we're having this idea that readers are interested in research, but the way that they read may not be so reader-friendly. I want to thank you for participating in this chat, and hopefully it gave you time to practice and integrating a quotation in a way that lets the reader know what the main idea is prior to reading the quote on that same idea. I'd like to hear it from you first. 
 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Example 2: Author’s Name in Parentheses

Isolated Quotation:

“Many academics (and especially younger ones) tend to confuse incomprehensibility with profundity. If they write long and ponderous sentences and throw in lots of jargon, they assume readers will be dazzled by their erudition and more likely to accept whatever it is they are saying uncritically” (Walt, 2013, para.10).

Integrated in a Paragraph:

One goal of the Writing Center is to help students craft strong papers. Many new scholars mistakenly believe that “if they write long and ponderous sentences and throw in lots of jargon…readers will be dazzled by their erudition and…accept whatever it is they are saying” (Walt, 2013, para. 10). As outside readers, writing instructors can point out places where overly technical terminology or confusing sentence structures might mystify a writer’s argument.

Audio: Another way that you can integrate a quote, is not to name the author's part of the sentence, but instead just to put their name within parentheses in the citation at the end of the your quote, which is of course another way to cite a quotation that is perfectly correct in APA style. So here we have an isolated quote. You can see there's nothing before it and there's nothing after it. 

Remember, we want to wrap around our quotation when we include them in our writing. That means we want a sentence beforehand that tells the reader what the idea is. And here we're looking at a goal of a Writing Center. And now we're going to have a quote that is about the work of writing centers. And then afterwards, we're going to have our follow-up explanation of it, what it means, why it is important, or interesting. But what matters is that the sentence before-and-after the quote are there to introduce us to it. Wrap it up. Comment on it in some way. The sentences do not exist in isolation from the quote and the quote does not exist in isolation to the sentences before-and-after it. 

Here, you can see that the author is never named in the sentence but instead only appeared in the citation and that's one other way you can integrate a quote instead of just leaving it dropped in your writing. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Practice Chat: Example 3

Isolated Quotation: 

“The impact of unsuccessful writing cannot be fully measured, but it certainly includes frustrated instructors and discouraged students. We can speculate that, when students’ writing stagnates, so do their critical thinking abilities” (Harris, 2006, p.136).

Thesis/Main Idea:

Writing skills and critical thinking skills are linked

In the chat box, usethis quotation and contextualizepart of it into a sentence using the author’s name in parentheses.

Audio: And guess what? Now you're going to practice integrating the quote, naming an author in a citation. I think we have time for this one. We'll just spend couple of minutes on it. So here we have that long quote. And now I want you to add something to the quote. You can choose to do the sentence before-and-after it that will connect the main idea. And the main idea is writing skills if critical skills are linked, they are connected in some way. So how can we take this isolated quotation and integrate it so it works with our thesis and main idea? I'll give you couple of minutes to work on this in the chat box. 

[Practice session: Example 3] 

As you work in typing your integrated or contextualized quotation into the chat box, I'll walk you through some of the ways that I might do this and I know my mind idea is going to be writing skills and critical skills are linked. So, I would say just open with that. Why not. Writing skills and critical thinking skills are connected. And I would say so much so that we can speculate and I would just go ahead and just include that entire quote that, when student’s technique and thinking ability. So, the reader knows that -- and I want to thank you for this one in the chat box, because it did what I was trying to do much better. So here in this example, we see we have that context and we're introduced to the main idea of writing skills and critical thinking skills are linked as such. And now we have the quote. When and the quote is cited and including the writers name and publication and page number. 

Notice that the quote just appears, however it is fully integrated because it connects to the sentence before. And it has a little lead in. So, we know what it is doing there and I want to thank you again for participating in this chat. I want to move us along a little bit so we can wrap-up with some final thoughts before we end for the night. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Example 3: Integrated, Partial Quotation

Isolated Quotation:

“The assumption that students who have completed undergraduate work will be able to transfer those skills into scholarly writing fails students and faculty” (Harris, 2006, p.137).

Integrated in a Paragraph:

Even the most successful writers coming out of undergraduate institutions benefit from lessons in academic writing. Too often faculty assume students “will be able to transfer those skills” (Harris, 2006, p. 137) without instruction. When this transfer doesn’t occur automatically, both faculty and student is left dissatisfied and the student might suffer a loss of confidence in their academic abilities.

Audio: You can also, of course, integrate just part of a quote, which some of you have done in the last two examples and what that means is we have introduced a topic. We have a quote on the topic, but it's just a small piece of it. And what we say after builds on shows a connection, importance, comments on, that quote. So, we can integrate a quote that is just a tiny little piece. 

It doesn't matter the length of the quote and whether it's a full sentence or just a small part of a sentence. We want to make sure we have written something before-and-after it that wraps and surrounds that quote and makes it part of our writing. 

 

Visual: Side changes to the following: Review!

Before you use a quotation—think about...

•      What the quotation really means/implies

•      How what the quotation means/implies connects to your thesis

•      Is the quotation too long (over 40 words)?

•      Could you paraphrase the information?

•      Is there a small part of the quotation you could use?

When you use a quotation—be sure to...

•      Include an author’s name, publication year, and page number. The page number always goes after the quotation.

•      Have a lead-in and lead-out

Audio: So, we’re going to do a quick review. Before you use a quotation, you want to think about what the quote means and if it connects to your idea. The length of it, are you able to paraphrase it, could you just shorten it or use a small part of it? Do you really need that quotation? If you determine you absolutely need the quotation, remember that your citation needs to include the name, publication year, and page number and there's many ways to format this. And you need to have a lead in and lead out. Something needs to wrap around and surround that quotation before you include it. And that is the summary of this webinar all on this one slide. 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions: Ask Now or Later

[email protected]•  Live Chat Hours

Learn More:

Check out the recorded webinars “What is Academic Writing?”and “Writing and Responding to Discussion Posts”

Audio: Those are your big takeaways. I want to thank everybody for joining me here tonight and Kacy, if we had any last questions come in, I can address those before you wrap us up. 

Kacy: So, we just had a great question about citing a quotation from another source. So how do I cite something if another one of my sources is quoting someone else? 

Melissa: Yes. The quote of a quote. Or what we call secondary source. And we have some useful resources about this on our website. Where we can get a link to those, before were we finish tonight. But if you're reading an article, and that author has quoted somebody, and you want that quote. If you put that quote in your writing, you're now quoting someone else's quote. So, there's two things you can do. The first thing is if you see an awesome quote in an article that you want to use, go find that original source and just reference and quote and cite that instead. That way, you will have the full context of that author's meaning. And you don't have this kind of messy situation of doing a secondary citation. 

However, if that's not an option, you can do a special type of citation for secondary sources and what that citation will do is its going to give credit to both authors. You will name the original speaker, and then you will put as cited in or by the -- the language is escaping me now I apologize. The name of the author you read, along with the year of the publication of that source. On your reference page you can only list articles and sources you have read. So, you're not going to include your quote of a quote resource because you didn't actually read that one. So, your first choice is to go find that quote's original source and use that instead. Your second one is to use this link in the Q & A Box to discover how cite a secondary source. 

Kacy: Melissa thank you. Thank you, all, for joining us. I hope you got a lot of this webinar. I know I definitely did. Please feel free to check out the recording and check out some other webinars in our archive, including “What is academic writing” and “Writing and Responding to Discussion Posts”. So, thank you again. We hope to see you at another webinar soon!