What is the difference between quoting and paraphrasing a source

Changing a few words here and there isn't considered paraphrasing. Make sure to also include an in-text citation whenever you paraphrase. Quoting is a sentence or passage taken directly from a source. To identify a quote, you place quotation marks around the selected passage.

Make sure to include an in-text citation whenever you quote. Was this helpful? Yes 5 No 1. When students enter a university, most of the lecturers assign them with various writing tasks. In these assignments, the students have to incorporate the ideas of others as well. Also, they have to use various forms of evidence and information to prove their arguments.

In such instances, quoting and paraphrasing are used by the students. Quoting refers to the repeating something spoken or written by another. Paraphrasing is expressing a certain idea in our words without repeating the exact words. This is the key difference between quoting and paraphrasing. If you go through academic articles, you will notice instances where the writer has used quotes or paraphrased the ideas of another to support his argument.

Quoting is one of the key techniques used by academic writers. This means the writer repeats the exact words of the original text.

Quoting always involves due respect to the author of the work and compliance with copyright laws. They are borrowed for the purpose of review. Some famous quotations are used as a means of inspiration and conjure up deep thinking from the reader.

Paraphrasing Paraphrasing involves copying the thought from another author and putting it into your own words. It is a summary of what you have heard, read, or have seen somewhere into your own style of writing. What you paraphrase is your own work with the original idea borrowed from someone else. Paraphrasing does not involve the use of quotation marks. The important characteristics of paraphrasing are:. Paraphrasing does not involve copying. Paraphrasing involves grabbing the original idea and putting it into your own words.

Paraphrasing does not intend to change the original meaning of the text. Paraphrasing must always be accompanied by the citation from the original source. A paraphrase has a slightly compressed text as compared to the original work.

When you paraphrase, you are making choices: of how to restructure information, of how to organize and prioritize it. Although the purpose of both quoting and paraphrasing is to introduce the ideas of an external source, they are used for different reasons.

A direct quote is better when you feel the writer made the point perfectly and there is no reason to change a thing. If the writer has a strong voice and you want to preserve that, use a direct quote. For example, no one should ever try to paraphrase John. However, think of direct quotes like a hot pepper: go ahead and sprinkle them around to add some spice to your paper, but… you might not want to overdo it.

Rather, it condenses the section of text into something more useful for your essay. If you were to paraphrase the section of the article about Victorian orphans mentioned earlier, you might write something like this:. Considering the development of the novel, which portrayed everyday people making their way through life, using an orphan as a protagonist was effective.

Orphans are characters that, by definition, need to find their way alone. The author can let the protagonist venture out into the world where the anything, good or bad, might happen Mullan. One, there are no quotation marks, but there is still an in-text citation the name in parentheses. Everything the author used has been changed. A single paragraph of text has been explained in different words—which is the heart of paraphrasing.

Next, we come to summarizing. Summarizing is on a much larger scale than quoting or paraphrasing. Summaries are useful because they allow you to mention entire chapters or articles—or longer works—in only a few sentences. However, summaries can be longer and more in-depth. They can actually include quotes and paraphrases. Keep in mind, though, that since a summary condenses information, look for the main points.

It might be helpful to quote or paraphrase specific lines that contribute to the main themes of such a work.