Exercise on Citation, Quotation and Paraphrase 


Section 1 

Paraphrase 

Short Quotation 

Long Quotation 

Using an Idea from a
Source 

Works Cited 

Section 2 
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Section 1

The passage used as a source in this section occurs near the end of the
article "There's No Place Like Home: An Analysis of Homeless
Testimonial Narratives" by Niki L. Young. In this article, Young
emphasizes the importance of community and discusses how the
homeless, often excluded from community, seek to remain connected.

By analyzing the testimony of sixteen homeless individuals at four
congressional hearings, Young shows how these individuals "confront
exclusion and reassert their humanity." She finds seven common
strategies in the language these homeless people use: exploring their
uniqueness, presenting the challenges they face, describing the
difficulties they encounter, explaining their loss of hope, claiming that
the system has failed, requesting help, and presenting themselves as
survivors. According to Young, these strategies allow individuals "to
confront and overcome social exclusion and to reclaim membership in
the community" (329).

The following passage, which appears on page 338, examines the
effect of such testimony not only on those who give it, but on the
community as a whole when scholars study the testimony:

Stories bring people together. Speaking before
congressional committees is a way of combating
invisibility, a method of situating oneself, a means of
overcoming liminality. Testifying may be a ritual process
which offers the homeless the opportunity to reassert
their humanity and ultimately to reclaim their lost sense of
community.

The seven features in these narratives illustrate how
individuals can use language to overcome situational
constraints. The simplicity and understatement associated
with telling one's story are powerful and sophisticated
tools for confronting and overcoming the dehumanizing
side of rhetoric.

Taken together, these narratives allow the scholar to
construct a collective argument that the individuals are
unable to make. The study of narrative, K. M. Langellier
notes, has socio-political and cultural implications: "The
study of personal narratives . . . invites researchers to
listen on the margins of discourse and give voice to
muted groups in our society" (234). A collective analysis
of this testimony resituates individuals, placing individuals
at the center, removing them from the margins. The
experience of homelessness becomes the focus of
inquiry. Situating testimony in this way ultimately
empowers the homeless, for only they can articulate their
own experience. The only people who can fully
communicate the meaning of homelessness are the
people who have experienced homelessness. Publicly
sharing individual experience is a means of developing
social understanding of that experience. In this
postmodern age, characterized by separation and
alienation, elaborating the role of communication in
forming community may be more vital than ever.

Now let's imagine how a writer might use this passage in various ways.



PARAPHRASE

Suppose a writer wishes to paraphrase Young’s main idea. Let's
imagine that this writer uses Young's view to exemplify how a scholar
might examine the concept of community:

Young makes a powerful and provocative claim that
simply talking about homelessness in front of
congressional committees can benefit both the homeless
themselves and others in society. Having the homeless tell
their stories to such committees can empower the
testifiers; in addition, scholarly study of such individual
testimony can help members of the larger society
understand homelessness more clearly. For Young, such
narratives are powerful because they affect those both
who tell their stories and those who hear them. (338).

Notes:

1. No quotation marks are used because the words are entirely the
writer's, not Young's.

2. The writer not only moves away from Young's language but also
from the way Young has organized and structured the ideas.

3. The parenthetical citation (338) does not include Young's name;
since the name has already appeared in the text, the reader should
understand that this citation refers to Young's article.

4. A full citation to Young's article will appear in the list of Works
Cited, which in MLA style is alphabetized by authors' last names.

SHORT QUOTATION

In using Young’s article as a source, a writer might instead quote
snippets, short phrases or words from the passage. In the following
example, a writer uses snippets from Young's passage to suggest the
positive tone of the article:

Young's focus in this article is a hopeful one. She
certainly believes in communication, in its power to bring
a community together. For example, she speaks of the
"social understanding" that will come from the public
testimony; she speaks of the "role of communication in
forming community." She quotes Langellier's claim that
studies of the testimony "give voice" to those without it.
Most optimistically, she sees this public sharing of stories
as a means of "empower[ing]" homeless individuals
(338).

Notes:

1. In a paragraph which quotes many such snippets, and in which both
the snippets and the ideas in the paragraph are taken from one place,
the parenthetical citation comes at the end, not after each quoted
fragment.

2. Quotation marks indicate words taken directly from Young.

3. Brackets ("empower[ing]") indicate material such as letters, words,
or punctuation added to bring the quotation into grammatical
agreement with the sentence in which it is used. Ellipses (three spaced
periods) would indicate any material left out.

4. The text attributes Langellier's words to Langellier; the wording of
the sentence clearly indicates that the phrase "gives voice" is
Langellier's, not Young's.

5. A full citation will appear, properly alphabetized, in the list of
Works Cited.



LONG QUOTATION

Or, a writer may wish to use a long quotation from this passage. The
following paragraph illustrates such use:

Young focuses throughout the article on the connections
between individuals and the community. While her study
examines the individual testimonies of only sixteen
homeless persons, she believes this kind of public
testimony has profound impact on the community:

Publicly sharing individual experience is a
means of developing social understanding of
that experience. In this postmodern age,
characterized by separation and alienation,
elaborating the role of communication in
forming community may be more vital than
ever. (338)

Notes:

1. This paragraph begins with a paraphrase summarizing Young’s
general point; following that paraphrase, an indented quotation carries
the point further.

2. The indented quotation is in Young's exact words.

3. There are no quotation marks around the quotation because the
indentation itself indicates a direct quotation.

4. Young's name does not occur in the parenthetic citation (338)
because the phrase "she believes" in the sentence leading to the
quotation gives the reader sufficient notice of the source.

5. The citation is placed to the right of the final period because the
quotation is indented. The citation is understood to refer to the entire
paragraph because the paragraph begins with an attribution to Young
("Young focuses . . .") and ends with her precise words ("may be
more vital than ever").

6. A full citation will appear in its proper place in the list of Works
Cited.

USING AN IDEA FROM A SOURCE

Finally, a writer may sometimes take from a source a general idea that
is not common knowledge and develop another idea. In such a case,
the writer must cite the source if reading it led to an idea the writer
would otherwise probably not have had. Note in the following
paragraph how the author takes an idea from Young and pushes it in
another direction:

If communication may make a social community more
likely and more enduring (Young), it follows that
communication may also improve communities such as
families. However, Young's example, in which homeless
individuals testify before Congress, suggests that only a
certain type of communication will foster such hoped-for
changes. Her example further suggests that what may
improve understanding is not small talk or superficial chat
-- forms of interaction which are perhaps common in
families -- but formal and straightforward telling of
stories, with one party talking and the other offering a
willing ear.

Notes:

1. The parenthetical citation gives no page number because the claim
cited is a generalized inference from the whole article.

2. Both the citation (Young) and the wording of the second sentence
("Young's example . . . suggests") indicate which ideas are Young's.
Here the writer, making an inference from Young's idea, applies that
author’s ideas about communication in society to another situation,
communication in families.

3. A full citation to Young will appear in its proper place in the list of
Works Cited.

WORKS CITED

As the notes indicate, a paper containing one of these paragraphs
would list Young's essay in a separate "Works Cited" page at the end,
so the reader can find full information on the source. In the following
example, Young's essay appears in the MLA style.

Works Cited

Young, Niki L. "There's No Place Like Home: An
Analysis of Homeless Testimonial Narratives." Midwest
Journal: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 37
(1996): 32-340.

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Section 2
                       
The following passage is quoted from pages 444-445 of a Civil War
history entitled Never Call Retreat, published in 1965 by Doubleday
& Company, Inc. of Garden City New York. In this passage historian
Bruce Catton writes of the day in early April 1865, when the arrival in
Richmond Virginia of news of the fall of Petersburg made necessary
the Confederates’ abandonment of their capital city. 

Richmond people remembered how that last Sunday
came in as a special sort of day. It was warm, with a mild
breeze stirring the early blossoms on the capitol grounds;
the city’s churches were crowded, not because national
affairs were at crisis but simply because it was a good
day to go to church, with high spring in the air and Easter
only two weeks away. One woman recalled it as "one of
those unusually lovely days that the spring sometimes
brings, when delicate silks that look too fine at other
times seem just to suit." A Massachusetts soldier out in
the siege lines confessed that spring reaches Virginia
"with greater splendor" than New England ever sees, and
felt that there had not been a finer day than this one since
the creation. Secretary of the Navy Mallory wrote that in
all the war the city had never looked more serene and
quiet, and the woman who had put on her best silk said
that she never saw a calmer Sunday morning – or a more
thoroughly confused and alarming Sunday evening.

The news from Petersburg came up shortly after the
eleven o’clock services had begun, and an aide with a
telegram from General Lee extracted President Davis
from St. Paul’s just as Dr. Minnigerode intoned the
words: "The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth
keep silence before Him." The congregation took Mr.
Davis’ departure calmly enough – after all, the President
might get called out of church at any time, by almost
anything – but other dignitaries were called out later,
from this church and from others, (444) and by early
afternoon the tidings had gone all across the city: Lee
was going to retreat, the government was to move out
tonight, the Yankees would take over in the morning.
Those who could leave the city were comparatively few;
for most people there could be nothing now but a
restless, fruitless stirring-about in the face of approaching
catastrophe. (445)

1. Write a paragraph that includes a paraphrase from Catton’s
passage, without quoting directly or using his words, sentence
structure, or paragraph structure. Include appropriate citation, using
whatever style your professor suggests.

2. Write a paragraph that quotes snippets from the passage. Include
appropriate citation.

3. Construct a paragraph in which you use a long quotation from
Catton’s passage. Include appropriate citation.

4. Now construct a paragraph that makes a point quite different from
Catton’s, but one inspired generally by his passage. Give proper
credit.

5. Write an entry for your list of works cited that refers to Catton’s
book. Use MLA style.
Works Cited

Fulwiler, Toby, et al. The College Writer's Reference.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

N.B. Normally, this list would also include Young's essay and
Catton’s book, but these have been omitted because the Young essay
was used to demonstrate how to do a Works Cited page earlier in this
document, and because you are asked to put Catton’s work in the
proper form yourself.