English 123: Recording Borrowed Material
Ways to collect information for your Research Paper (after carefully reading and deciding what information might be useful in your paper)
Using Direct Quotations: copied exactly word for word, punctuation for punctuation, error from a source. Enclosed in quotations. Proofread what you have copied to make sure that your quoted material is accurate. Use direction quotations when:
To modify a direct quotation, use the ellipsis (. . .) to indicate material you have omitted.
Introduce the quotation with an author tag or source acknowledgement. After the quotation place documentation in a parenthetical note with author's last name and page number or paragraph number.
Example: The best definition for naturalism comes from A Handbook to Literature which defines the literary movement as "the application of the principles of scientific determinism to fiction. It draws its name from the basic assumption that everything that is real exists in Nature. . ."(Thrall, Hubbard, and Holman 301).
Using a Paraphrase: writing borrowed material in your own words; passage should be about the same length. Paraphrasing generally is the preferred way to incorporate borrowed material in your research paper. Paraphrased material also needs to be documented, and it is best to use the author tag or acknowledgement phrase to introduce the paraphrased material to separate it from your own text, followed by a parenthetical note.
Assignment: Read the article, highlight, underline take notes. Write notes you take on a sheet of paper, as you would on a note card. Then write a short paragraph using one quotation and 1 paraphrase. Document borrowed material.
Paragraph structure: