Using Sources

Study carefully Raimes's discussion of how to incorporate source material into your text effectively (126-49), especially the guidelines for using direct quotations (137-43). Be sure to integrate quotation fully into your own sentences, and always avoid isolated quoted sentences. Isolated quotations occur when writers make statements of their own, ending with a period; then quote a whole sentence from a source, ending with another period; then make another statement or, still worse, insert yet another whole quoted sentence and so on. Such patchwork use of sources is evidence of careless attention to subordinating the research to the development of the writer's own point of view. See also the exercise in using sources in the paper.

A good example of the problem, along with good advice for avoiding it, is offered by Raimes (88-89). The following comments may also help:

When you make a statement of your own and then need to quote a sentence that supports or illustrates what you have said, use a colon instead of a period after your own sentence and use the quotation as a kind of attachment to your statement. [From the sample primary source paper on "The Necklace."]

On the contrary, she gives up her visits because they remind her only of what she lacks: "She would weep for the entire day [after a visit with Jeanne] . . . with sorrow, regret, despair, and misery" (4).

Use an introductory or transitional word or phrase to prepare for the quotation and make it part of your own text. Sometimes that can be done by citing the source directly in your own sentence.

According to Thompson and Sherman, "[w]restlers constitute the one group of male athletes most often mentioned as a population at risk for sports-induced eating disturbances" (47).

Paraphrase the sentence and quote only the words or phrases that are essential and cannot be adequately replaced with words of your own.

The origin of Mathilde's materialism can be explained by the influence of a culture that failed to encourage women to develop abilities and assets beyond "their beauty, their grace, . . . their charm," and "their inborn finesse, their elegant taste, their engaging personalities" (3-4). [From the sample primary source paper on "The Necklace."]

Be particularly careful with "indirect references," those cases in which you must use material that is quoted in the source you are using (see Raimes 159-60, item F). Ordinarily you should also go to the original, but if it is not available to you, you may cite the source you are using as long as you make clear to your readers that you are borrowing the idea indirectly. What goes on the works cited page is the source where you found the quotation, not the original source itself: Douthat, in Raimes's example, not Mansfield.

Be careful to reproduce quoted material exactly as you find it in the original.

If you must delete something to make the passage fit seamlessly into your own text, indicate the ellipsis with three spaced dots (and a fourth for the period if the omission comes at the end of a sentence within the quotation). Rarely is indicating an ellipsis at the very beginning or very end of a quotation necessary. Readers can usually tell when a quotation is incomplete. If there is any chance that they might be misled, however, then use the three spaced dots (Raimes 140-41).

If you must add something, perhaps to clarify the quotation or use [sic] to acknowledge an error in the source, then put the addition in square brackets--never parentheses (which the reader will assume are part of the original) (Raimes 141).

This study sheds light particularly on problems associated with the former Soviet space program. It "helps to explain why cosmonauts faint and get oedema [swelling from accumulation of fluid] after long missions. . . . When they return from space their withered arterial muscles cannot cope with the force of gravity," which "will pull blood away from the head and down to the feet" ("Gravity" 92).

If you are quoting a sentence that already contains quotation--quotation within quotation, then change the original double quotation marks to single quotation marks.

But Wesley Hymer, a Pennsylvania State researcher, has stated that adapting to space or readapting on earth "may not be 'straightforward'" (qtd. in Joyce 22).

When you are punctuating a sentence containing quotation, remember that periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks. An apparent exception that is not really an exception is a case in which parenthetical in-text documentation is used at the end of a sentence. In such cases, the period goes after the parenthetical documentation--simply because that is where the sentence ends. (The same holds true for in-text documentation at the end of a part of the sentence set off by a comma.) Other marks of punctuation go inside the quotation marks only if they are part of the original passage. If the sentence you are quoting is a question in the original, for instance, then the question mark would be retained inside the quotation marks, and, if in-text documentation ends the sentence, then a period follows the parenthesis.

According to Raimes (141-42), you should indent ("block" or "set off") a quotation that will become more than four lines long in your paper. In such cases, you should not add quotation marks (although, of course, you would retain any that are part of the original). The indenting of the quotation tells your reader that the whole passage is quoted. NB Do not single space a blocked quotation. Everything in the paper, including title page and outline, should be double spaced.

Riley's study offers this explanation:

Muscles can function only if they "receive signals from the brain which are transmitted down motor nerves to the muscle," but Riley's examination of other rat muscle specimens showed that nerve terminals had deteriorated. Because of the decrease in nerve input, cell death or muscle fiber shrinkage can occur. (Qtd. in McDonald)

[

English 112]