Chapter 3: The Writing Process 2: Researching
Learning Objectives
3. Quote source text directly with accuracy and correct punctuation.
4. Use effective reading strategies to collect and reframe information from a variety of written materials accurately.
iii. Read with a purpose to identify needed information.
iv. Paraphrase, summarize, and reformat information collected from written materials.
5. Locate, select, and organize relevant and accurate information drawn from a variety of sources appropriate to the task.
vi. Compile and organize information.
6. Integrate and document information using commonly accepted citation guidelines.
i. Credit other’s work or ideas to avoid plagiarism.
ii. Incorporate research information in written materials and oral messages.
Once you have a collection of credible sources as part of a formal secondary research project such as a report, your next step is to build that report around those sources, using them as anchors of evidence around your own arguments. If you began with an hypothesis and you’re using the sources as evidence to support it, or if you realize that your hypothesis is wrong because all the credible sources you’ve found poked holes in it, you should at this point be able to draft a thesis—your whole point in a nutshell. From there, you can arrange your sources in an order that follows a logical sequence such as general to specific or advantages versus disadvantages. We will examine organizational structures in the next chapter (Ch. 4) on drafting, but we are now going to focus on how to incorporate source material into usable evidence.
You essentially have four ways of using source material available to you, three of them involving text, and one media:
- Quoting text: copying the source’s exact words and marking them off with quotation marks
- Paraphrasing text: representing the source’s ideas in your own words (without quotation marks)
- Summarizing text: representing the source’s main ideas in your own words (without quotation marks)
- Reproducing media: embedding pictures, videos, audio, graphic elements, etc. into your document
In each case, acknowledging your source with a citation at the point of use and follow-up bibliographical reference at the end of your document (see §3.5 below) is essential to avoid a charge of plagiarism. Let’s now look at each of these in turn.
3.4.1: Quoting Sources
Quoting is the easiest way to use sources in a research document, but it also requires care in using it properly so that you don’t accidentally plagiarize, misquote, or overquote. At its simplest, quoting takes source text exactly as it is and puts quotation marks (“ ”) around that text to set it off from your own words. The following points represent conventions and best practices when quoting:
- Use double quotation marks: In North America, we set off quoted words from our own words with double quotation marks (“ ”). For a pneumonic device, you might want to think of a quotation as a hockey legend play