Plato said that art (including writing) is mimetic in nature. You must always research your topics, no matter what kinds of papers you write or what your audience is. The masters of words from WritersHouse explain: “For example, it may turn out that the idea that seems original to you has already been used by someone else. Nevertheless, there are always many opportunities to consider the same subject from different perspectives.”
If you’re inspired by someone else’s ideas, there are many ways to use them in your writing. You can summarize them, quote or paraphrase the author. However, it’s not enough to just incorporate these ideas in writing, you should also make your text interesting and appealing to readers. In addition, you must make sure that your interpretation of other authors’ ideas is correct.
Summarizing and paraphrasing are usually quite long segments of the text, while quotations are short. In addition, paraphrasing is aimed to present ideas from a certain part of a source (sentences or passages) in a concise manner, while summarizing is intended to present the meaning of large segments (for example, a whole chapter of a book). Although all these elements of writing must be formatted differently, they should always be cited to avoid plagiarism. If you want to learn more about summarizing, paraphrasing, and quotations, check out this quick guide from Writers-House.com.
Quotations
Quotations represent a source exactly. You may quote both spoken words and written sources. The main purpose of quotes is to provide an authoritative opinion that serves as a reliable piece of evidence. The main thing is to use quotes to support your claims, not to replace them.
You should write direct quotes in quotation marks, citing them properly. Long quotes (three lines or more) can be integrated into your text as standalone blockquotes, while short quotes are usually just written in quotation marks, as a part of a sentence.
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is a method of presenting someone else’s ideas while rephrasing them in your own words. However, when paraphrasing sources, you must make sure that you reflect the actual meaning of the source material. Paraphrasing can help you explain complex ideas and better understand them. This method will also help you use information from figures, diagrams, and tables.
When paraphrasing, you may use synonyms and alter phrases, so make sure that you don’t change the author’s intention and don’t misinterpret your source. You can change words and expressions but not ideas. While paraphrasing, you can also use quotes to keep the most important phrases unchanged. We also recommend that you use paraphrasing to avoid the excessive use of quotations.
Summarizing
A summary is an overview of a certain source that provides its general meaning without unnecessary details. A summary is only aimed to provide crucial ideas.
While reading your source, note key points to use these notes when writing a summary. Your summary must be comprehensive and clear so that your readers can understand all the most important ideas of the source. You can also make your summary better if you provide relevant examples.
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