Chapter 13
DOCUMENTING YOUR SOURCES
Chapter overview
This chapter covers the basics for both formal and informal documentation. My emphasis is on
taking the mystery out of a relatively straightforward process.
Brief outline of the chapter
I. Identifying borrowed material. This section covers the short and long quotation,
paraphrase, and mixed paraphrase and quotation.
II. Using parenthetical documentation. This is the most popular form of documentation.
III. Exercises.
General comments
I find that most students, both undergraduate and graduate, are uncomfortable with
documentation. Perhaps the risk of unintentional plagiarism and concern about the inscrutable
details of formatting a bibliography are at the root of that fear. So although I don’t actually have
a lot of documenting in my assignments, other than on the final project, I cover documentation to
help take the mystery out of it.
I typically cover documentation by simply asking questions and having the students try to answer
(usually, even though many are well educated adults, they have trouble coming up with the
answers):
• How do you show readers where a quotation begins and ends? (easy one for starters)
• How do you show where a quotation came from?
• Should you introduce a quotation with the author’s name (or a mention of the source)?
• When is a quotation long enough that you need to use a block quotation?
• Do you put quotation marks around a block quotation?
• How do you format a block quotation?
• What do you call something that’s not the exact words of someone but expresses his or
her ideas?
• How do you show where a paraphrase begins and ends?
• How do you show where it came from?
• How do you handle something that’s mainly paraphrase but has some of the exact words?
• What if you’re quoting and want to leave out some of the words in the middle? At the
beginning? At the end?
• How do you make a comment in the middle of a quotation?
• What does [sic] mean?
I just use the board and scribble all over it by the time we’re through.
Notes on the exercises