Using Sources

If you are writing a research paper, you will need to use outside sources to shore up your claims regarding your topic. After all, you are likely not an expert in the topic you’ll be writing on, so you’ll want to borrow the credibility of actual experts. You have two choices for incorporating outside material: paraphrasing and quoting.  

• As a general rule, you’ll want to paraphrase whenever you can, and quote whenever you must.  

• Paraphrasing is preferable because it more thoroughly integrates the source’s ideas into your own writing. Paraphrasing demonstrates the writer’s comprehension of the research that has been done.  

*It is important to note here that paraphrasing and quoting BOTH require proper citations within a paper.

There are occasions when you will want to preserve the original author’s wording. Perhaps the author uses specific terminology to refer to something, or maybe states something particularly eloquently, succinctly, or deftly. In these cases, you’ll want to make sure you follow some strategies to maximize the effectiveness of your quotations.  

• Avoid simply dropping quotations into your paragraphs to satisfy an arbitrary requirement. These are referred to as “floating” quotations because they are not connected to the rest of your paragraph. Effective source usage is about integrating quotations into the ideas you are developing in your body paragraphs, and the quotation sandwich can help in this regard.  

The quotation sandwich is named due to the fact that the quotation itself is only the middle component; it is preceded by an introduction of the idea or premise that the quotation supports or explores, and it is followed by an explanation of how the quotation exemplifies the point you’re trying to make with it. The following is an example of a quotation sandwich:  

• Child psychology is a field fraught with charlatans. According to Donald Miller, a full professor of psychology at Harvard University, “Fully a third of all so-called child psychology experts lack the education and experience to make verifiable claims about the nature of their analyses” (224). The danger to the public is that psychologists’ claims are not subject to hard scientific, empirical methods for evidentiary support, so we must rely on the expertise and intuition of psychology experts, which makes it nearly impossible to discern true experts from talented pretenders.  

  • The first sentence introduces the idea the quotation will address. The second sentence provides the quotation, along with a signal phrase that indicates the reliability of the source. (*It also contains a citation in parentheses.) The last sentence explains the relevance of this quotation to the larger point.  

Source consulted: The Upswing Writing Lab  

Guide created by: C.Larson 2019 

Revised by: B. McCoid 1/23/2024

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