Don’t just drop a quote and hope for the best. Integrating someone else’s words into your own sentences matters just as much as citing them. Clumsy integration, even with a citation, can still cross into plagiarism.
Below are five short interactive videos, each under two minutes, on common ways to integrate sources. Each interactive video includes examples in APA, MLA, and Chicago.
Definition: Using the exact words of the writer, in quotation marks.
Example (APA): “A tool is a thing out there in the world, a palpable object that one can store in the garage and retrieve as necessary” (Welch, 1999, p. 145).
Definition: Quoting part of a passage while removing words in the middle.
Example (APA): “A tool is a… palpable object that one can store in the garage and retrieve as necessary” (Welch, 1999, p. 145).
Definition: Blending the quotation with your own words.
Example (APA): As Welch (1999, p. 145) notes, “a tool is a thing out there in the world… A tool can be put aside; language cannot.”
Definition: Setting apart longer quotations without quotation marks. Format guidelines:
Definition: Restating an author’s ideas in your own words.
Example (APA): Writing is not simply a tool; it is part of language itself and cannot be “set aside” as a tool can (Welch, 1999, p. 145).
Welch, K. E. (1999). Electric rhetoric: Classical rhetoric, oralism, and a new literacy. MIT Press.