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A Writer's Research Manual /
Practice: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing 
You can incorporate source material into your paper in a variety of ways. Quoting reproduces an author's exact words. Paraphrasing restates an author's ideas fully but in your own words. Summarizing extracts the essence of an author's meaning and states it "in a nutshell." Read the following paragraph, then follow the instructions below. Government action against new or unorthodox religious groups, advocated by some anticult workers, bodes ill not only for such movements but also for everyone in our society. It arrogates to the state a power that all must oppose and depends on a very restricted reading of the constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion. New and unconventional religions provide some of the most vivid examples of nay-saying in contemporary American society. To enlist the state in an effort to control or eradicate such groups is to deprive our common life of an invigorating diversity, as well as to sanction its immense power to enforce conformity. The anticult activists’ claim to support the fundamental values of American democratic society is undermined by their willingness to suppress the exercise of religious freedom and, moreover, to engage the state in that campaign. If the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect religions from the state, rather than the state from religion, there is no constitutional basis for enlisting the power of the state in the campaign against so-called cults. That does not mean that the state is impotent to punish illegal acts done in the name of religion, but that the intervention must be carried out through normal legal channels. A wholesale government crusade against "destructive cults," such as that championed after Waco, is illegitimate and unconstitutional. In the text box below, type the paragraph's topic sentence as a direct quote. Now, using your own words, paraphrase the passage in the text box below. Next, summarize the passage in the text box below. Now, look at the quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing checklist for help on how to avoid plagiarism when using these three methods to incorporate source material into your paper. With the checklist's questions in mind, make any necessary changes to your work. Now, see examples of how you might have quoted, paraphrased, and nutshelled the passage. |
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