There are several ways to include outside sources in your research paper:
- You can take the exact words of an outside source and include them in your paper.
- You can change the ideas of the outside sources into your own words.
- In both cases, you still need to include what points to that outside source to avoid plagiarism.
Click the arrows in the gray bar under the slides to learn more about using direct quotes, plus quotes with brackets, and quotes with ellipses.
**All examples are done in MLA Style, 9th edition (however, the principles are the same no matter what citation style you're using).
Common Mistakes to Avoid with Direct Quotes
Here are some common mistakes to avoid when using direct quotes in your writing:
- Not putting quotation marks on directly cited words and phrases
- Not including an in-text citation after a quote (ex: "quoted sentence (Smith 210-211))
- Putting quotes around words that do not exactly match the original text--did you know that if you change any word in a direct quote, you must use brackets ( [ ] ) around the changed work?
- If you cut out a portion of a quotation to make it shorter, you need to use ellipses ( ... ) to show this.
- Not making it clear where your quote came from--be sure to cite the author (or title, if there is no author) and the page number(s) that the quote appears on directly after the end of the quote.
