Quoting and Citing your Sources

How to Quote, Paraphrase and Cite your Sources

When you use quotations or paraphrases in your text you need to follow a few conventions and understand the terminology used to discuss your sources. We are going to use a simple example taken from an online publication called “The Conversation”. You can read this short article on THE CONVERSATION.

The article discusses how we get ideas for new inventions from nature, but also that just copying from nature isn’t enough - copying doesn’t always work. He give examples of why this is so. We want use this idea in our text so we need to say where this information came from, who wrote it and so on.

We have taken one phrase from this text in order to discuss sources, authors, signal phrases, quotation marks, quotations, and citations. Mouse over the text (and click on each bubble) to see these explanations.

Here is the sentence we are going to insert into our text:

1. Sources

There are many types of sources you may wish to use in support of arguments in your text. For example, books, journals, newspapers, web pages (which may be online versions of journals, newspapers, etc.), videos, podcasts, blogs, and many others. When you quote or paraphrase information in your text, you need to consider the authority of the source (is it a reliable source of information?). See more on source evaluationGo to the 'How to Evaluate Sources page.' on the research page.

2. The author

There may be more than one author (scientific papers often have many), or the author may be unknown. For more information about citing and referencing authors in APA style see this YouTube video Watch the Video .

3. Signal phrases

Signal phrases, sometimes called reporting phrases, introduce the quotation or paraphrase you cite in you text. Signal phrases are important because they make it clear who said what, and because they can indicate your stanceAttitude or position on a particular matter. The writer's opinion, approach, or position on a topic, including feelings, critiques or assessments. Stance may be expressed grammatically or lexically. (whether you agree or disagree with the author you are quoting). For more examples see the signal phrasesGo to the 'How to use Signal Phrases page.' page.

4. Quotation Marks

Quotation marksGo to the 'Quotation Marks page.', or speech marks help to show exactly what an author said and to separate this from your own words.

5. The Quoted Text

For information about how to choose text to quote and how to style it, see the quotationsGo to the 'How to quote page.' page.

6. The Citation

For more examples of how to format in-text citations see the in-text citationsGo to the 'How to format in-text citations page.' page. You can also view information about citations in APA style in this YouTube video Watch the Video .

7. Citation Tools

For information about how to speed up your writing see the research tools section on the source managmentGo to the 'Source Management page.' page.