2020 using paraphrased quotations
- 1. USING PARAPHRASED QUOTATIONS A Guide to Selecting, Integrating, and Citing in APA Style (7th ed.)
- 2. Step 1: Choose a Passage that Supports Your Position Just like when using quotations, the most important part of the process is finding a passage that effectively supports your position, idea, or statement. Depending on the assignment, you may need one, two, or several sources to support your ideas. Sometimes these sources have many lines that you want to use. This is a good time to paraphrase.
- 3. Step 1: Choose a Passage that Supports Your Position (continued) Say, for example, that I want to make the point that Desiree’s racial heritage is unknown in Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby.” My first step is to reread the story, looking for the passage that supports my claim. What I am looking for is in Volume 2 of your textbook near the top of page 443: “Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation.”
- 4. Step 2: Read the Passage Until You Fully Understand What Is Being Said Active reading can also help during this step. Try underlining or highlighting the passage, circling any words that are unclear to you, and making notes in the margins. When paraphrasing source material into your writing, you must understand the original idea before you begin to put the idea into your own words. This may involve reading the passage more than once.
- 5. Step 3: Summarize the Ideas in Your Own Words It may help to remove the source from your view while writing the paraphrase. Flip over the article, close the book, or minimize the window in which the source appears. A common misconception is that when paraphrasing, you only have to change every third or fifth word of a source. This is plagiarism, as you cannot copy any words nor the sentence structure from a source. You must completely put the idea into your own words.
- 6. Step 3: Summarize the Ideas in Your Own Words (continued) “The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation.” People speculated that Desiree had been abandoned by travelers passing through the area.
- 7. Step 4: Add an In-Text Citation In-text citations for our textbook are as follows: (author last name, original year of publication/date of textbook publication, p. # on which the quote appears) (Chopin, 1894/2017, p. 443).
- 8. Step 5: Follow Up Your Quote with a Sentence Remind Your Reader of Original Point: • Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the story. Paraphrased Quote and Citation: • People speculated that Desiree had been abandoned by travelers passing through the area (Chopin, 1894/2017, p. 443). Follow-Up Sentence: • People wondered but did not definitively know exactly where Desiree had come from, so her racial background remained a mystery.
- 9. Step 6: Put it All Together Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the story. People speculated that Desiree had been abandoned by travelers passing through the area (Chopin, 1894/2017, p. 443). People wondered but did not definitively know exactly where Desiree had come from, so her racial background remained a mystery.
- 10. Step 7: Include a Reference Citation Reference citations for our textbook are as follows: Author, A.A., & B.B. (Year of textbook publication). Title. In A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (edition) (inclusive page numbers). Publisher. (original year of publication). Chopin, K. (2017). Desiree’s baby. In R.S. Levine, M. A. Elliott, S. M. Gustafson, A. Hungerford, & M. Loeffelholz (Eds.), The Norton anthology of American literature (Shorter 9th ed.) (Vol. 2, pp. 442-446). Norton. (Original work published 1894).
- 11. The Finished Product Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the story. People speculated that Desiree had been abandoned by travelers passing through the area (Chopin, 1894/2017, p. 443). People wondered but did not definitively know exactly where Desiree had come from, so her racial background remained a mystery. Chopin, K. (2017). Desiree’s baby. In R.S. Levine, M. A. Elliott, S. M. Gustafson, A. Hungerford, & M. Loeffelholz (Eds.), The Norton anthology of American literature (Shorter 9th ed.) (Vol. 2, pp. 442-446). Norton. (Original work published 1894).