QUOTING MATERIAL

WHAT IS QUOTING?
Taking the exact words from an original source is called quoting. You should quote
material when you believe the way the original author expresses an idea is the most
effective means of communicating the point you want to make. If you want to borrow an
idea from an author, but do not need his or her exact words, you should try
paraphrasing instead of quoting.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I QUOTE?

Most of the time, paraphrasing and summarizing your sources is sufficient (but
remember that you still have to cite them!). If you think its important to quote
something, an excellent rule of thumb is that for every line you quote, you should have
at least two lines analyzing it.

HOW DO I INCORPORATE QUOTATIONS IN MY PAPER?

Most of the time, you can just identify a source and quote from it. Sometimes, however,
you will need to modify the words or format of the quotation in order to fit in your paper.
Whenever you change the original words of your source, you must indicate that you
have done so. Otherwise, you would be claiming the original author used words that he
or she did not use. But be careful not to change too many words! You could accidentally
change the meaning of the quotation, and falsely claim the author said something they
did not.
For example, let's say you want to quote from the following passage in an essay called
"United Shareholders of America," by Jacob Weisberg:
The citizen-investor serves his fellow citizens badly by his inclination to withdraw from
the community. He tends to serve himself badly as well. He does so by focusing his
pursuit of happiness on something that very seldom makes people happy in the way
they expect it to.

When you quote, you generally want to be as concise as possible. Keep only the
material that is strictly relevant to your own ideas. So here you would not want to quote
the middle sentence, since it is repeated again in the more informative last sentence.
However, just skipping it would not work -- the final sentence would not make sense
without it. So, you have to change the wording a little bit. In order to do so, you will need
to use some editing symbols. Your quotation might end up looking like this:
In his essay, United Shareholders of America, Jacob Weisberg insists that The
citizen-investor serves his fellow citizens badly by his inclination to withdraw from the
community. He tends to serve himself badly... by focusing his pursuit of happiness on
something that very seldom makes people happy in the way they expect it to.
to
He tends to serve himself badly...by focusing his pursuit of happiness on [money].

The brackets around the word [money] indicate that you have substituted that word for
other words the author used. To make a substitution this important, however, you had
better be sure that [money] is what the final phrase meant -- if the author intentionally
left it ambiguous, you would be significantly altering his meaning. That would make you
guilty of fraudulent attribution. In this case, however, the paragraph following the one
quoted explains that the author is referring to money, so it is okay.
As a general rule, it is okay to make minor grammatical and stylistic changes to make
the quoted material fit in your paper, but it is not okay to significantly alter the structure
of the material or its content.

QUOTING WITHIN QUOTES

When you have "embedded quotes," or quotations within quotations, you should switch
from the normal quotation marks ("") to single quotation marks ('') to show the
difference. For example, if an original passage by John Archer reads:
The Mountain Coyote has been described as a wily and single-minded predator by
zoologist Lma Warner.

your quotation might look like this:

As John Archer explains, The Mountain Coyote has been described as a 'wily' and
'single-minded' predator by zoologist Lma Warner.

HOW DO I INCLUDE LONG QUOTES IN MY PAPER?

The exact formatting requirements for long quotations differ depending on the citation
style. In general, however, if you are quoting more than 3 lines of material, you should
do the following:
1.

change the font to one noticeably smaller (in a document that is mostly 12 point
font, you should use a 10 point font, for example)

2.

double indent the quotation -- that means adjusting the left and right margins so
that they are about one inch smaller than the main body of your paper.

3.

if you have this option in your word-processor, "left-justify" the text. That means
make it so that each line begins in the same place, creating a straight line on the
left side of the quotation, while the right side is jagged.

4.

do NOT use quotation marks for the entire quotation -- the graphic changes you
have made already (changing the font, double indenting, etc.) are enough to
indicate that the material is quoted. For quotations within that quotation, use normal
quotation marks, not single ones.

5.

you might want to skip 1.5 times the line-spacing you are using in the document
before you begin the quotation and after it. This is optional and depends on the
style preferred by your instructor.

For example, a properly-formatted long quotation in a document might look like this:
Akutagawa complicates the picture of picture of himself as mere reader on the verge of
writing his own text, by having his narrated persona actually finish authoring the work in
wich he appears. In the forty-ninth segment of the text, entitled A Stuffed Swan, he
writes:
Using all of his remaining strength, he tried to write his autobiography. Yet it was not an
easy task for him. This was due to his still lingering sense of pride and skepticism...
After finishing A Fool's Life, he accidentally discovered a suffered swan in a used
goods store. Although it stood with its head raised, even its yellowed wings had been
eaten by insects. He thought of his entire life and felt tears and cruel laughter welling up
inside. All that remained for him was madness or suicide.
With this gesture Akutagawa ironizes the impossibility of truly writing the self by
emphasizing the inevitable split that must occur between writing and written self, the
Akutagawa still writing A Fool's Life cannot possibly be identical with the narrated
persona which has finished the work.
Note Card the basic of note taking for research paper

Using 3" x 5" note cards

This is a paper-writing technique I was taught way back in my own high school days.
You know, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth? It is the most helpful technique
about paper-writing that I ever learned, and I continued to use it throughout my
scholastic career, especially when I wrote my Master's Thesis.
Note cards consist of two types: bibliography cards and data cards. Both are
necessary in order to organize your paper properly.
Bibliography cards
You prepare one of these for each and every source that you use in your paper. The
technique is this: as you do your research you have blank cards at the ready and
every time you find a source that even might be useful you fill out a 3" x 5" card with
all of the bibliographical data that will be required when you prepare the paper's
bibliography: author(s) name(s), title, publication data. Since publication data for
books and magazines or computer sources are different you must be thorough here;
more data taken down is better than less. Be careful. You don't want to be writing
your paper and realize that you've left off an important piece of information and have
to make another trip to the library!
When all of your cards are completed and you're about to write the paper, review
them and make sure that there are no cards in the deck for sources that you've
decided not to use. If you find any, discard them. Citing a source in the bibliography
that has not actually been used in your paper ("padding the bibliography") is a
cardinal sin.
At the end of writing the paper, when you're preparing to write your bibliography,
take the card deck and alphabetize it. Then, as you word process the bibliography
you need only make an entry using the information on the top card, then flip to the
second and write up its entry, and so forth.
It's really easy!
Note cards
These are also used for your research and for writing the actual paper. Some people
have scoffed at me for using this "low-tech" method, but nothing is more frustrating
when you're organizing your paper as you sit near the computer, than shuffling
through odd and ends of pieces of paper, trying to make sense of the facts and

quotations you've gathered in your research. Another colleague noted that she
merely recorded all of her data on the computer itself, then returned to the file(s) to
put her paper together. But how, I asked her, do you then organize your thoughts as
you look at the various parts and pieces? So, use this technique, old-fashioned as it
may seem. As you breeze through the actual writing of your paper, you'll be glad that
everything you need is at hand and that you can (literally) write a five-page paper in
about two hours if you truly know your subject and you're on top of things.
So, the note cards... As you are doing your research, keep a stack of these cards at
your side. As you come to any piece of information that might appear to be useful,
take a card and write it down, being careful also to note the source and page
number (if a book) or any other information that might be necessary for a footnote in
your paper.
When you're ready to start writing you'll have a stack of cards in front of you. (For
my master's thesis I had a few hundred, though you'll probably have less than fifty
for most major papers.) Take each card and examine it, thinking about where it
belongs in the paper; what is its theme or "chapter"? Then sort the cards into piles
by topic or issue. Resort them into the most logical way of organizing your thought
as you imagine making your arguments in the paper. When finished, you will actually
have the outline of your paper in front of you!
When you finally sit at your keyboard, you first write your introduction and thesis
then, just like with your bibliography cards, you take the first card and its data or
quotation or whatever, incorporate it into your paper, write some more, take the
second, and so on. Using this organization technique you can write a lengthy paper
in a short period of time. Once I had organized the note cards and annotated and
sorted them, I wrote my Master's Thesis, a paper of approximately 100 pages, in
about three days!

Bibliography
When putting together your actual bibliography, do not number the entries and you
must alphabetize the entries by authors last name. For entries with no author, put
them at the bottom of the listing, alphabetized by title of article or entry.
Examples of bibliographical entries
From a Book (Author, Title, Publication Data):
Prange, Gordon. At Dawn We Slept. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985.
For a book with multiple authors (first author is last name first, others as normal):
Craddock, Martin, and James Durridge. Dickens and the Coalminers. London:
Infinity Press, 1993.
(Note that the second line of an entry is indented three spaces.)
For a book with multiple authors, edited by one of them, or as the major contributor:
Johnson, Alfred, ed. Essays on American History. New York: Dunham, 1996.
Johnson, Alfred, et al. Essays on American History. New York: Dunham, 1996.
From a Magazine (Author (if known), Title of Article, Name of Magazine, Vol:No,
Date):
Hemingways Tragedy. Newsweek. Vol. 22:46 (December 19, 1984).
From an Encyclopedia (Author (if known), Title of Entry, Name of Encyclopedia,
Edition):
Smith, James. The Maya Indians. The Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1994 edition.
From Encarta or another encyclopedia CD:
(Same as for a regular encyclopedia, but use Encarta for the name.)
From the Internet (Author (if known), Title of Entry, Internet Address):

Jones, Michael. The Demise of Roundball. Http//:www.basketball.com.

Primary data is original, new data that the researcher personally gathers by
conducting surveys, experiments, interviews, fieldworks or direct
observation.
Secondary data collection of data that have already been published. That is
the researcher looks information on the internet, books, journals, magazines,
newspapers, reports, or any other type of source where data can be found.

In making research, specifically, you will add statements by experts or

data that agree with your ideas and help you explain why you have
reached your conclusions.
Remember, a GOOD RESEARCH PAPER is not just your ideas and
opinions, and it is not just a collection of quotations and paraphrases
that you put together.

primary data and secondary data

What does each and every research project need to get results? Data or
information to help answer questions, understand a specific issue or support
a hypothesis.
At the Institute for Work & Health, researchers conduct many projects each year. Some projects involve
going into workplaces and asking workers questions. Researchers who do this have specific workhealth questions in mind that theyd like answered.
The answers or data used from the responses are called primary data.
Other Institute projects involve using data that has already been gathered by someone else, such as
survey information from the Canadian Census. Researchers then examine this information in a different
way to find a response to their question. This data are called secondary data.
What are the advantages of using these two types of data? Which tends to take longer to process and
which is more expensive? This column will help to explain the differences between primary and
secondary data.

Using primary data

An advantage of using primary data is that researchers are collecting information for the specific
purposes of their study. In essence, the questions the researchers ask are tailored to elicit the data
that will help them with their study. Researchers collect the data themselves, using surveys, interviews
and direct observations (such as observing safety practices on a shop floor).
Lets take an example. In a recent Institute study, researchers wanted to find out about workers
experiences in return to work after a work-related injury. Part of the research involved interviewing
workers by telephone and asking them questions about how long they were off work and about their
experiences with the return-to-work process.
The workers answers are considered primary data. From this, the researchers got answers to specific
information about the return-to-work process including the rates of work accommodation offers, and
why some workers refused such an offer.

Using secondary data

There are several types of secondary data. They can include information from the Census, a companys
health and safety records such as their injury rates, or other government statistical information such as
the number of workers in different sectors across Canada.
Secondary data tends to be readily available and inexpensive to obtain. In addition, secondary data
can be examined over a longer period of time. For example, you can look at a companys lost-time
rates over several years to see at trends.
In the same Institute study mentioned above, the researchers also examined secondary data. They
looked at workers compensation lost-time claims and the amount of time workers were receiving wage
replacement benefits.
With a combination of these two data sources, the researchers were able to determine which factors
predicted a shorter work absence among injured workers. This information was shared with return-towork professionals to help improve return to work for other injured workers.

Both primary data and secondary data have their pros and cons. Primary data offers tailored
information but tends to be expensive to conduct and takes a long time to process. Secondary data is
usually inexpensive to obtain and can be analyzed in less time. However, because it was gathered for
other purposes, you may need to tease out the information to find what youre looking for.
The type of data researchers choose can depend on many things including the research question, their
budget, their skills and available resources. Based on these and other factors, they may choose to use
primary data, secondary data - or both.

Why use secondary data?

It is unobtrusive research
It can be less expensive than gathering the data all over again.
It may allow the researcher to cover a wider geographic or temporal range.
It can allow for larger scale studies on a small budget.
It does not exhaust people's good will by re-collecting readily available data.

Secondary data, is data collected by someone other than the user. Common
sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, organisational
records and data collected through qualitative methodologies or qualitative
research. Primary data, by contrast, are collected by the investigator conducting
the research.
Secondary data analysis saves time that would otherwise be spent collecting
data and, particularly in the case of quantitative data, provides larger and higherquality databasesthat would be unfeasible for any individual researcher to collect
on their own. In addition, analysts of social and economic change consider
secondary data essential, since it is impossible to conduct a new survey that can
adequately capture past change and/or developments.
Sources of secondary data[edit]

As is the case in primary research, secondary data can be obtained from

different research strands:
prior documentation such as Census, housing, social security as well as electoral
statistics and other related databases. internet searches, libraries; progress
reports; etc. It does not include interviews as this collect primary data for analysis
to generate information.
A clear benefit of using secondary data is that much of the background work
needed has already been carried out, for example: literature reviews, case
studies might have been carried out, published texts and statistics could have
been already used elsewhere, media promotion and personal contacts have also
been utilized.
This wealth of background work means that secondary data generally have a
pre-established degree of validity and reliability which need not be re-examined
by the researcher who is re-using such data.
Furthermore, secondary data can also be helpful in the research design of
subsequent primary research and can provide a baseline with which the collected
primary data results can be compared to. Therefore, it is always wise to begin
any research activity with a review of the secondary data.

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