Blog #7
Summarizing sources is going to be really important in writing our papers. Our papers can’t consist mostly of quotes, especially since they’re research papers, so we have to know how to integrate the sources we find into our papers without directly quoting the source. It’s also good to summarize a source when you really only want to use the main idea without going into details. In order to summarize, you have to capture the main idea while also writing it in your own words. One way to make sure it’s in your own words is to write the main ideas down from memory. A summarized source should also be much shorter than the original work it came from. Another thing to watch out for is to make sure that, in summarizing a source, you’re getting the main ideas of the source without including your own opinions. The most important aspect is to credit the author in the paper as well as in the bibliography in order to avoid plagiarism. Many of the sources we find to use for our papers probably aren’t going to capture the subject of our papers; rather, only some of the main ideas of them are going to have something to do with what we’re choosing to write about. It’s because of this that knowing how to summarize sources and integrate them into the research paper is vital.