{"id":137,"date":"2019-11-14T12:43:08","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T17:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openbooks.macewan.ca\/navigatingsocialscience\/?post_type=chapter&p=137"},"modified":"2019-12-09T18:59:13","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T23:59:13","slug":"integrating-evidence-into-your-writing","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/openbooks.macewan.ca\/navigatingsocialscience\/chapter\/integrating-evidence-into-your-writing\/","title":{"raw":"3.5 Integrating Evidence Into Your Writing","rendered":"3.5 Integrating Evidence Into Your Writing"},"content":{"raw":"

The following section on integrating evidence into your writing follows citation rules detailed the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association<\/em> (2020), which we discuss in much more detail in Chapter 5<\/a>. However, these approaches to integrating other people's works into your own work through quoting and paraphrasing apply regardless of which citation style you use.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Using Quotes<\/h2>\r\n

When you quote a source, you must indicate that you are taking an author\u2019s exact words by using quotation marks <\/em>(\u201c__\u201d):<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Adler and Van Doren (1972) asserted that \u201cyou have not completed your interpretation of an important sentence until you have separated out of it all the different . . . propositions\u201d (p. 125).<\/div>\r\n

Quotations are helpful in many situations, such as when an author has said something so well that including their exact words would add insightful emphasis to your point, or when you are using the exact words that a research subject shared in a study you or someone else has conducted. However, many students rely too heavily<\/em> on quotations in their papers, which can disrupt the flow of their writing because their paper starts to look like a big mashup of soundbites from different authors.<\/p>\r\n

Another rookie mistake is assuming that quotations are self-explanatory, when in fact, they usually require some explanation so that the reader understands the context of the quotation and how it connects to the argument. See how in the following example, the quotation is contextualized and explained by the sentences before and after it:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

One common misconception is that students are automatically able to intuit and use the reference tools made available to them. As Adler and Van Doren (1972) stated, \u201cReference books are useless to people who know nothing. They are not guides to the perplexed\u201d (p. 178). In other words, a certain level of knowledge and familiarity with reference sources and their subjects is required for students to know what to look for and how to navigate these resources to find that information.<\/div>\r\n

Another mistake some students make is that they use quotations that, when taken by themselves, do not accurately represent what the author intended. A classic case of this would be when an author makes a statement, which a student uses as evidence in their paper, but in the actual article, that statement was followed by a big BUT<\/em> or another key piece of information that changes the context of the remark.<\/p>\r\n

Before using quotations in your paper, ask yourself:<\/p>\r\n\r\n