Citing Your Sources

For detailed help, see the University of Wisconsin's Writing Center How to Quote a Source page.

Put quotation marks around any sentences, phrases or distinctive/unusual terms taken word-for-word from the source material.

A direct quotation is usually blended into your own text:

• You can begin by telling the reader who is speaking, then follow with that person's words.
• Make sure to clearly mark the boundary between your text and the words you are quoting.

EXAMPLE: Brownlee argues that “captive animals must be allowed to serve as ambassadors for their species”(72).

Quoting more than 3 lines? 

• Set the quotation off from the rest of the text in a block quotation, and don’t use quotation marks.
• The sentence before the quotation should introduce it and the sentence after the quotation should link it to the text that follows.
• Here's an example of a block quotation, from page 32 of Dorothy Seyler's 1991 book Read, Reason, Write:

Summary and paraphrase are terms often used interchangeably -- that is, as synonyms. They refer, however, to somewhat different activities. A paraphrase, like a summary, is a nonevaluative restatement of someone's writing.... The goal of a paraphrase is to represent accurately, but in simpler words and sentences, the work in question. (32)