17 Blending Research into Your Writing
When you are writing your research paper, you must think about how you’re going to blend the information you learned into your own writing. There are a couple of ways of doing this and it is by signal phrases, interpreting quotes, paraphrasing information and summarizing key points.
Signal Phrases
Signal Phrases are words used to introduce a quote or source information. I say introduce a quote, but the signal phrase can be at the beginning or end of the sentence. Signal phrases are phrases such as the following:
| As the author states, | According to my source, | The character exclaimed, |
| An internet source asserts | The theory can be summarized as follows, | My source acknowledges |
| As my sources confirm | Drawing from my sources, | The movie’s scene explains, |
| The video shows that, | According to the table, | The investigation concludes, |
| As a result, my source indicates that, | The law states, | The poem demonstrates, |
You can not tack on the quote unto the sentence before it because you just end up with a run-on sentence.
Interpreting Quotes
When you use a quote, you cannot assume that the author knows why you’re putting it there. You need to explain why you’re using the quote and you need to interpret it in your own words afterwards so that the reader fully understands why you are using it. It’s never a good idea to have quote after quote after quote. Your research should be what you learned, not what you copied and pasted into your document.
Paraphrasing and Summarizing
Paraphrasing is when you put something you read into your own words. It is different than interpretation because interpretation is what the information meant to you or what you learned from the source. Summary is the main idea of an article, idea, or topic and is generally shorter than paraphrases or interpretations. Using these writing devices can help you avoid over-quoting in your paper.
