Guidelines for Quoting and Summarizing/Paraphrasing

Guidelines for Using Quotations

  • Select carefully the words you wish to quote. Make sure that they really do reinforce and illustrate the point you wish to make.
  • Include the exact words of the author in quotation marks (inverted commas). Either single '...' or double "..." inverted commas are acceptable.
  • State the author(s)' surname(s), the year of publication and the page number(s) from which the quotation has been taken.
  • Ensure you quote accurately. Do not introduce spelling or grammatical errors.
  • Keep the quotation reasonably short. It is recommended that two to three lines of a quotation should be sufficient to draw your reader's attention to the work of another author.
  • Integrate the quotation within your own text so that the reader can appreciate its significance.
  • Indicate the omission of any words from the quotation by the use of three dots, ... This system can be used to indicate omissions at the beginning, in the middle or the end of a quotation and is a useful device to avoid excessively long quotations.
  • Indent the quotation if you feel you need to have a quote that is longer than three lines. This will make it more obvious to the reader that a significant quotation is being provided. Only use a long quotation however, if it really does add valuable information.

Example quotation
The following is an example of how a writer has integrated a short quote, using the above guidelines.

According to Hyland (2018, p. 139) “Variability is a crucial factor in scientific data, and a great deal of hedging in science involves the manipulation of precision in quantification, …”. Hedging can be observed in the literature by the use of words like approximately, almost, about, roughly, nearly, and other such non-specific words.


Guidelines for Summarizing/Paraphrasing

  • Read and make sure that you fully understand the work to which you wish to refer.
  • Make notes of the key ideas from the source material, using your own words.
  • Use your own words and your own sentence structure to summarize or paraphrase the information.
  • Make sure you are not guilty of plagiarism; the act of using another author's words while pretending they are your own.
  • State the author(s)' surname(s) and the year of publication in any summary you provide of another author's work.

Example Summary
The following is an example of how an author, Spratt (2001), has summarized the work of the joint authors, Alcorso and Kalantzis.

In relation to studies of learners' preferences for activities, studies have tended to focus on the distinction between communicative and non-communicative activities, and to suggest that more students prefer the latter to the former. A study by Alcorso and Kalantzis (1985), for instance, indicated that learners tended to view more traditional activities as more useful in a lesson than the more communicative activities.

Spratt, M. (2001). The value of finding out what classroom activities students like. RELC Journal Vol.32 No.2. pp. 80-103.