Integrating Sources
This guide is intended to help you, the student, incorporate sources into your paper. If you have additional questions about using sources, contact you class instructor, the Writing Center or Ask a Librarian.
Why use sources?
The use of sources is what separates a research paper from other kinds of writing. Your paper needs documentation and evidence, of course, but it also needs to take part in the conversation, so to speak, that other researchers are having about the topic. Acknowledging sources is a way of helping your reader hear and understand this conversation. It should also help readers recognize how your voice, as student, writer, and researcher, differs from the rest.
How to use sources
There are three main ways of incorporating sources into your paper:
- Quote - This method should be used the least, but remember that any time you use the exact wording found in a source it needs to be "quoted," like that. Use only when the source has written something in an interesting/distinctive way that you can't live up to with your own words.
- Paraphrase - Putting an excerpt from a source in your own words, rephrasing but not shortening it.
- Summarize - Boiling an excerpt down to its essential points, like describing an entire book in one or two sentences.
Tips for quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing:
- Remember that all three methods require a citation! See our Citation Styles page for more on how to do this.
- Limit block quotes (long, direct quotations from a source) as much as possible.
- Don't do this: "A quotation from a source without any explanation." It's called a dropped quote, it just sits in a paragraph on its own. Always explain where a quotation is from and why it's interesting. Analyze its language, explain it relevance to the research question you are pursuing.
- Introducing and commenting on every quotation, paraphrase, and summary makes it easier to distinguish your voice from the source's.
- Summaries are handy when you need to explain a lot of sources in a small space, to help the reader understand the background of your topic. Choose your words carefully to emphasize the most relevant aspects of longer passages.
Where to get more help
- Library Online Basic Orientation at NC State - has a great section on Using Resources, plus lots more.
- Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing (Purdue's Online Writing Lab)
- UIUC's Writer's Workshop - Tips on using quotations.
- Citation Styles - UGL page on how to cite sources.
Updated: 7/19/2007
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