Using Resources
A direct quotation is identical to and uses the exact words from another author.
Direct quotations should be used only for important ideas that cannot be expressed differently or sayings that are famous, distinctive or beautifully worded.
If a direct quotation is less than 40 words, put it into the text, and use double quotation marks “ ” around the words.
Example:
The event was referred to as “the most devastating in the history of the city” (Miele, 2013, p. 276)
If a quotation is 40 words or more, treat it as a block quotation. There are specific rules you must use:
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Start the quotation on a new line
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Indent the whole block from the left hand margin (the Publication Manual recommends 0.5” or 1.27cm, which is the default in MS Word)
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Double-line space the whole quotation
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Do not enclose the quotation in quotation marks
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Either:
- Cite the author and year in the narrative before the quotation and place only the page/para. number in parentheses after the quotation's final punctuation or
- Cite the source in parentheses after the quotation's final punctuation.
- Note that a full stop is NOT added after the parentheses.
Example:
As the tide of chemicals born of the Industrial Age has arisen to engulf our environment, a drastic change has come about in the nature of the most serious public health problems. For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death. (Carson, 2016, p. 24)
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If a sentence contains information paraphrased from several sources, you can include each source in a single set of parentheses at the end of the sentence.
The sources are arranged alphabetically by author, and separated by a semi-colon.
Example:
(Conger & Scheiber, 2019; Hawkins, 2019; Romo, 2019).
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A paraphrase is when you put into your own words a passage from another source.
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A paraphrase may be shorter than and condensed from the original text.
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An in-text citation should go at the end of the paraphrased sentence, giving credit to the original source.
Example:
Original text:
Engaged learning is a collaborative learning process in which the teacher and student are partners in constructing knowledge and answering essentials questions.
Paraphrase:
Through an involved and engaged environment of learning, educators and learners work together to build knowledge and find answers to important questions (Conrad & Donaldson, 2011, p. 6).
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A summary is when you put into your own words the main ideas of a text from another source.
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A summary is condensed from a much longer original text. For example, a writer may summarise an entire article into one paragraph.
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An in-text citation should go at the end of the last sentence of a summary, giving credit to the original source.
Example:
Original text:
The longest-lived robot ever sent from Earth to the surface of another planet, Opportunity, snapped pictures of a strange landscape and revealed surprising glimpses into the distant past of Mars for over 14 years. But on February 13, 2019, NASA announced that the rover is dead.
The rover was designed to last only three months, but proved itself to be one of the solar system’s most unexpected endurance athletes. It travelled more than the distance of a marathon when its designers only expected it to move about a kilometre. As it completed this course, Opportunity provided scientists a close-up view of Mars that they had never seen: finely layered rocks that preserved ripples of flowing water- a prerequisite for life - several billion years ago.
Summary:
NASA’s robotic vehicle travelled over 40 kilometers on Mars’ surface from 2005 to 2019, capturing important photographs for scientists. Pictures taken on the planet by the robot showed evidence that billions of years ago, there was running water, a necessity for lifeforms (Chang, 2019, n.p.g.).
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