How to Work with Information from Sources

Identifying the Source of and Providing a Context for Quotations

Why should you identify the source of a quotation? There are three main reasons to properly identify your sources:

1. To avoid plagiarism.
2. To help you (and your readers) distinguish between your ideas and those of your sources.
3. To strengthen your overall argument by calling attention to the qualifications or experiences of the person you are quoting.

To introduce a quotation effectively, you should provide sufficient background information about the source of your quotation and use signal phrases or colons to smoothly integrate the quotation into your document. Doing so gives your reader a better understanding of how you are using the source information.

To begin this demonstration, click on the Continue button.