Quoting versus Paraphrasing

Student writers are often unsure about how much to use quoted material in an essay and how much to paraphrase sources. The insecure and perhaps less engaged essayist may end up using secondary sources too heavily and stinting on original ideas and commentary. Some students fault the other way, producing essays that are devoid of direct quotation; all the secondary information has been paraphrased.

Quotations that stand as evidence for an argument are of vital importance in an essay. There are also other reasons for choosing to include quoted material in a piece of writing. Paraphrasing is the best choice when you want to present another person's ideas but feel that the original words are not distinctive enough to merit direct quotation.

Here are some rules of thumb for using direct quotation:

Use quotations at points in your essay where:

• you rely on other sources, published studies or documents as primary evidence for your arguments
  
• you invoke a recognized authority on your topic
  
• the specific words in the quotation matter because

  a) they are vivid or significant
  b) your discussion focusses on how the source idea is expressed
  c) you are disputing the claims in the quoted material
  d) the exact words have been important in other research

• In any event, you should keep the quotations as short as possible and only quote that material which you deem necessary to support your discussion.

Paraphrase your source material when:

• the content of your source is more important than how the ideas are worded
  
• you feel you can make the desired point just as clearly if not moreso yourself
  

A sample paraphrase:

To illustrate how a passage might be paraphrased, read the following paragraph from Lt-Col David Bashow's article "The Incomparable Billy Bishop: The Man and the Myths." Canadian Military Journal 3.3, Autumn 2002, 55-60.

Why in recent years has there been so much controversy with respect to Bishop's First World War record? Upon close examination, none of the reasons are particularly mysterious. Most importantly, one must come to grips with the paradox inherent in both his writings and his personality. On the one hand, there was the terse, laconic, even understated nature of his combat reports, which formed the basis for his victory claims and awards. Far from embellishing the truth, he was renowned for tending not to claim categorical success, leaving confirmation to corroborating witnesses, if they existed. On the other hand, there was the unadulterated exaggeration of his social writings and other ‘yarn-spinning.' The prototypical fighter pilot, he loved to regale audiences and family with ‘fishing tales,' a pastime which he freely admitted.

This was notably true in Winged Warfare and in various 1920s and 1930s trade and adventure journals. In later life he was embarrassed by these embellishments. In an interview with the Toronto Globe & Mail published on 12 September 1956, just two days after his death, he is quoted as saying, "It is so terrible that I cannot read it today. It turns my stomach. It was headline stuff, whoop do doop, red-hot, hurray-for-our side stuff. Yet the public loved it." However, these stories should not be confused with his highly professional combat reports. There are several documented cases on record where he actually understated combat results that were later confirmed by others.

If you wanted to use the information in Bashow's article, you might paraphrase the paragraph this way:

Contemporary war historians have questioned the authenticity of Bishop's reputed aerial adventures. In part, this is prompted by the contrast between his understated combat reports and what Bashow calls "the unadulterated exaggeration of his social writings and other ‘yarn-spinning.'" Bishop had a reputation for embellishing his exploits in repeated retellings. This is especially true in the partially fabricated inspirational stories he wrote in Winged Warfare (1918) and published in various journals. Bishop later regretted writing these exaggerated tales, and repudiated them in a Globe and Mail interview published on 12 September 1956, in the wake of his death. He called his fabrications "terrible" and remarked, "I cannot read [them] today. It turns my stomach. . . . Yet the public loved it." Bishop's fictionalized exploits for public consumption are at odds with his "highly professional combat reports," which at times make cautious claims that turned out to be more significant than what Bishop reported (Bashow 57-58).

When you paraphrase source material, you put it into your own words and sentence structures. If you use key phrases or repeat quotations from the original, you need to acknowledge this with quotation marks. Paraphrased material also needs to be properly documented. Observe the following guidelines to ensure that your paraphrase is accurate and does not ‘borrow' inappropriately from the original:

• put the main points in your own words
  
  
• order the points in the same way in which they appear in the original
  
  
• put in quotation marks any significant phrases or poignant expressions you incorporate from the original
  
  
• check to see that you have not distorted the author's meaning through your rewording of ideas and information