Incorporating Sources

 

 Decide what level of detail you need and be sure to distinguish what you are doing:

  1. Summary - [[Restate in your own words, noting basic concepts but not exact (or near) phrases or sentences]].
  2. Paraphrase - Close restatement, capturing the general information in similar or identical language.
  3. Quotation - "Exact repetition of words, phrases, and sentences from the original."
Plagiarism Note: Whether you summarize, paraphrase or quote directly, you should attribute material to the sources!  Rare exceptions include when you summarize something which is in common knowledge.

Exercise A:

Look at the paragraph from the website Safe Tables Our Priority. 

Then take notes from it in one of the three fashions.  Always Start with Source Information and record page numbers when applicable.  Email it to sherwood@iup.edu. Be ready to explain why you chose the method you did.

 

Like a failing student who manages to crank out a last-minute paper in hopes of bringing his grade up to a “D”, USDA and FDA have taken each taken some strong eleventh-hour steps to address the threat of mad cow disease. But a single paper does not an “A” scholar make – and the agencies’ halfhearted effort to make food passingly safe is nowhere near what is required to keep millions of Americans from suffering needlessly in 2004 from devastating foodborne disease.

Last month, USDA banned the use of downer cows for human food, mandated temporary holding of any meat from cattle suspected of having BSE while tests are completed, and took other long-overdue steps to keep spinal tissue and other known BSE carrier-tissues out of the human food supply. FDA followed suit by announcing a host of new measures for animal feed, including a ban on feeding cow blood, poultry litter, and plate waste to cattle. These actions are well-warranted, and demonstrate a courage to stand up to industry previously unseen from the current administration. Yet the new measures remain grossly insufficient to protect American families from the impacts of mad cow disease – and do next-to-nothing to prevent the 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 annual deaths that already occur annually from contaminated food.

A Dire Report Card. Stop: Safe Tables Our Priority. 1 March 2004   www.safetables.org/Media/Press_Releases/comments2_6_2004.html

 

 

Exercise B:

As a class, let's see how we would revise the following paragraph from a sample essay to effectively include some information from this source.

SAMPLE ESSAY PARAGRAPH IN NEED OF SOURCE INCORPORATION

          When food-born illnesses make the evening news, media relations and advertising companies in the food-related industries go to work. They send the message that their product is healthy and subject to safeguards that guarantee consumers have little or nothing to worry about. What safeguards are in place and how effective are they?  Whether or not consumers hear the food-safe message and find it persuasive may mean the difference between millions of dollars in profit or losses.