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Back to DownloadsDo you see how in a summary you must distill the most important ideas into a much shorter length? This is hard because you need to understand what the most important ideas are, but it also allows you to explain things in your own words and adjust to your audience.
This time you're going to practice paraphrasing. To get practice adjusting your wording to a different situation, choose a new audience and/or context for your paraphrase. Remember that you should choose only a short passage to paraphrase, and your text should be about the same length as the original, just in your own words. Because a paraphrase should come from a short passage, any in-text citations should include the page number(s). Since the Gettysburg Address is so short, use the paragraph number like this: (para. 2).
Do you see how summary and paraphrase allow you to change your wording and approach based on your audience? For example, if you were simply quoting, it would be much harder to explain something to a 5-year-old.
Now I want you to choose a quote from the Gettysburg Address where the wording really sticks out as beautiful or poignant or illustrates a point well. This is the trick with quoting—you don't want to just quote large chunks. You need to be selective. In fact, if you'd like, you can write a sentence that is mostly in your words but adds short quotations inside your sentence. Quotes work best if you introduce them in your own words and/or give commentary about them after. In-text citations are the same as with paraphrases. Include the page number(s), or in the case of the Gettysburg Address, use the paragraph number.
Now that you know how to cite sources, you're ready to start focusing on writing your paper. Your teacher has probably either assigned you to write a literature review or a proposal next. So choose the corresponding chapter (Chapter 10 for Literature Reviews or Chapter 13 for Proposals), and you can continue your research journey.
Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing & Pedagogy, 2.2, 177-192.