7.1 Draft in the Way That Feels Most Comfortable
7.2 Develop Productive Drafting Habits
7.3 Use Your Key Terms to Keep Yourself on Track
7.4 Quote, Paraphrase, and Summarize Appropriately
7.5 Integrate Quotations into Your Text
7.6 Use Footnotes and Endnotes Judiciously
7.7 Interpret Complex or Detailed Evidence Before You Offer It
7.9 Guard against Inadvertent Plagiarism
7.9.1 Signal Every Quotation, Even When You Cite Its Source
7.9.2 Don’t Paraphrase Too Closely
7.9.3 Usually Cite a Source for Ideas Not Your Own
7.9.4 Don’t Plead Ignorance, Misunderstanding, or Innocent Intentions
7.10 Guard against Inappropriate Assistance
7.11 Work Through Chronic Procrastination and Writer’s Block
Some writers think that once they have an outline or storyboard, they can draft by just grinding out sentences. If you’ve written a lot to explore your ideas, you may even think that you can plug that preliminary writing into a draft. Experienced writers know better. They know two things: exploratory writing is crucial but often not right for a draft, and thoughtful drafting can be an act of discovery that planning and storyboarding can prepare them for but never replace. In fact, most writers don’t know what they can think until they see it appear in words before them. Indeed, you experience one of the most exciting moments in research when you discover yourself expressing ideas that you did not know you had until that moment.
So don’t look upon drafting as merely translating a storyboard or outline into words. If you draft with an open mind, you can discover lines of thought that you couldn’t have imagined before you started. But like other steps in the process, even surprises work better with a plan.
Writers draft in different ways. Some are slow and careful: they have to get every paragraph right before they start the next one. To do that, they need a meticulous plan. So if you draft slowly, plan carefully. Other writers let the words flow, skipping ahead when they get stuck, omitting quotations, statistics, and so on that they can plug in later. If they are stopped by a stylistic issue such as whether to represent numbers in words or numerals, they insert a [?] and keep on writing until they run out of gas, then go back and fix it. But quick drafters need lots of time to revise. So if you draft quickly, start early. Draft in whatever way works for you, but experienced writers usually draft quickly, then revise extensively.
Most of us learn to write in the least efficient way—under pressure, rushing to meet a deadline, with a quick draft the night before and maybe a few minutes in the morning for proofreading. That rarely works for a short paper, almost never for a longer one. You need time and a plan that sets small, achievable goals but keeps your eye on the whole.
Most important, draft regularly and often, not in marathon sessions that dull your thinking and kill your interest. Set a small goal and a reasonable quota of words for each session, and stick to it. When you resume drafting, you need not start where you left off: review your storyboard to decide what you’re ready to draft today. Review how it will fit into its section and the whole: What reason does this section support? Where does it fit in the overall logic? Which key terms state the concepts that distinguish this section? If you’re blocked, skip to another section. Whatever you do, don’t substitute more reading for writing. Chronic procrastinators are usually so intimidated by the size of their project that it paralyzes them, and they just keep putting off getting started. You can overcome that destructive habit by breaking your project into small, achievable goals (see 7.11).
As you draft, keep in front of you a separate list of the key terms for your general concepts that should run through your whole report. From time to time, check how often you’ve used those words, both those that run through the whole report and those that distinguish one section from another. But don’t let those words stifle fresh thinking. If you find your-self wandering, let yourself go for a while. You may be developing an interesting idea. Follow it until you see where it takes you.
We covered this issue when we discussed note-taking (4.2.2). You should build most of your report out of your own words that reflect your own thinking. Much of the support for that thinking will be in quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. Different fields, however, use them in different proportions. In general, researchers in the humanities quote most often; social and natural scientists typically paraphrase and summarize. But you must decide each case for itself, depending on how you use the information in your argument. Here are some principles:
■ Summarize when details are irrelevant or a source isn’t important enough to warrant more space.
■ Paraphrase when you can state what a source says more clearly or concisely than the source, or when your argument depends on the details of a source but not on its specific words. (Before you paraphrase, however, read 7.9.)
■ Quote for these purposes:
■ The exact wording constitutes evidence that backs up your reasons.
■ A passage states a view that you disagree with, and to be fair you want to state it exactly.
■ The quoted words are from an authority who backs up your view.
■ The quoted words are strikingly original.
■ The quoted words express your key concepts so compellingly that the quotation can frame the rest of your discussion.
You must balance quotations, paraphrases, and summaries with your own fresh ideas. Do not merely repeat, or worse, download, words and ideas of others and stitch them together with a few sentences of your own. All teachers have ground their teeth over such reports, dismayed by their lack of original thinking. In an advanced project such as a thesis or dissertation, readers reject a patchwork of borrowings out of hand.
Readers value research only to the degree that they trust its sources. So for every summary, paraphrase, or quotation you use, cite its bibliographic data in the appropriate citation style (see part 2).
You can insert quotations into your text in two ways:
■ Run four or fewer quoted lines into your running text.
■ Set off five or more lines as an indented block.
You can integrate both run-in and block quotations into your text in two ways:
1. Drop in the quotation as an independent sentence or passage, introduced with a few explanatory words. But avoid introducing all of your questions with just a says, states, claims, and so on:
Diamond says, “The histories of the Fertile Crescent and China … hold a salutary lesson for the modern world: circumstances change, and past primacy is no guarantee of future primacy” (417).
Instead, provide some interpretation:
Diamond suggests that one lesson we can learn from the past is not to expect history to repeat itself. “The histories of the Fertile Crescent and China … hold a salutary lesson for the modern world” (417).
2. Weave the grammar of the quotation into the grammar of your sentence:
Political leaders should learn from history, but Diamond points out that the “lesson for the modern world” in the history of the Fertile Crescent and China is that “circumstances change, and past primacy is no guarantee of future primacy” (417). So one lesson from history is that you can’t count on it to repeat itself.
To make a quoted sentence mesh with yours, you can modify the quotation, so long as you don’t change its meaning and you clearly indicate added or changed words with square brackets and deletions with three dots (called ellipses). This sentence quotes the original intact:
Posner focuses on religion not for its spirituality but for its social functions: “A notable feature of American society is religious pluralism, and we should consider how this relates to the efficacy of governance by social norms in view of the historical importance of religion as both a source and enforcer of such norms” (299).
This version modifies the quotation to fit the grammar of the writer’s sentence:
In his discussion of religious pluralism, Posner says of American society that “a notable feature … is [its] religious pluralism.” We should consider how its social norms affect “the efficacy of governance … in view of the historical importance of religion as both a source and enforcer of such norms” (299).
(See chapter 25 for more on integrating quotations with your text.)
When you refer to a source the first time, use his or her full name. Do not precede it with Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Professor (see 24.2.2 for the use of Dr., Reverend, Senator, and so on). When you mention a source thereafter, use just the last name:
According to Steven Pinker, “claims about a language instinct … have virtually nothing to do with possible genetic differences between people.”1 Pinker goes on to claim that…
Except when referring to kings, queens, and popes, never refer to a source by his or her first name. Never this:
According to Steven Pinker, “claims about a language instinct…” Steven goes on to claim that…
If you are using bibliography-style citations (see 3.2.1), you will have to decide as you draft how to use footnotes and endnotes (for their formal requirements, see chapter 16). You must cite every source in a note, of course, but you may also decide to use footnotes and endnotes for substantive material that you don’t want to include in the body of your text but also don’t want to omit. (You might also use such substantive notes in combination with parenthetical citations in author-date style; see 18.3.3.)
■ If you cite sources in endnotes, put substantive material in footnotes. Otherwise you force readers to keep flipping to the back of your report to check every endnote to see whether it is substantive or bibliographical.
■ Use substantive footnotes sparingly. If you create too many, you risk making your pages look choppy and broken up.
In any event, keep in mind that many readers ignore substantive footnotes on the principle that information not important enough for you to include in the text is not important enough for them to read in a footnote.
By this point you may be so sure that your evidence supports your reasons that you’ll think readers can’t miss its relevance. But evidence never speaks for itself, especially not a long quotation, an image, a table, or a chart. You must speak for it by introducing it with a sentence stating what you want your readers to get out of it.
For example, it’s hard to see how the quoted lines in this next passage support the introductory sentence:
When Hamlet comes up behind his stepfather Claudius at prayer, he coolly and logically thinks about whether to kill him on the spot.claim
Now might I do it [kill him] pat, now he is praying:
And now I’ll do’t; and so he goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng’d …
[But this] villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.evidence
Nothing in those lines obviously refers to cool rationality. Compare this:
When Hamlet comes up behind his stepfather Claudius at prayer, he coolly and logically thinks about whether to kill him on the spot.claim First he wants to kill Claudius immediately, but then he pauses to think: If he kills Claudius while he is praying, he sends his soul to heaven. But he wants Claudius damned to hell, so he coolly decides to kill him later:reason
Now might I do it [kill him] pat, now he is praying:
And now I’ll do’t; and so he goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng’d …
[But this] villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.evidence
That kind of explanatory introduction is even more important when you present quantitative evidence in a table or figure (see 8.3.1).
If you write as you go and plan your best case before you draft, you’re unlikely to be utterly surprised by how your draft develops. Even so, be open to new directions from beginning to end:
■ When your drafting starts to head off on a tangent, go with it for a bit to see whether you’re on to something better than you planned.
■ When reporting your evidence leads you to doubt a reason, don’t ignore that feeling. Follow it up.
■ When the order of your reasons starts to feel awkward, experiment with new ones, even if you thought you were almost done.
■ Even when you reach your final conclusion, you may think of a way to restate your claim more clearly and pointedly.
If you get helpful new ideas early enough before your deadline, invest the time to make the changes. It is a small price for a big improvement.
It will be as you draft that you risk making one of the worst mistakes a researcher can make: leading readers to think that you’re trying to pass off the work of another writer as your own. Do that and you risk being accused of plagiarism, a charge that, if sustained, could mean a failing grade or even expulsion.
Many instructors warn against plagiarism but don’t explain it, because they think it is always an act of deliberate dishonesty that needs no explanation. And to be sure, students know they cheat when they put their name on a paper bought online or copied from a fraternity or sorority file. Most also know they cheat when they pass off as their own page after page copied from a source or downloaded from the Internet. For those cases, there’s nothing to say beyond Don’t.
But many students fail to realize that they risk being charged with plagiarism even if they were not intentionally dishonest but only ignorant or careless. You run that risk when you give readers reason to think that you’ve done one or more of the following:
■ You cited a source but used its exact words without putting them in quotation marks or in a block quotation.
■ You paraphrased a source and cited it, but in words so similar to those of your source that they are almost a quotation: anyone could see that you were following the source word for word as you paraphrased it.
■ You used ideas or methods from a source but failed to cite it.
Even if you cite your source, readers must know which words are yours and which you quote. You risk the charge of plagiarism if you fail to use quotation marks or a block quotation to signal that you have copied as little as a single line of words.
It gets complicated, however, when you copy just a few words. Read this:
Because technology begets more technology, the importance of an invention’s diffusion potentially exceeds the importance of the original invention. Technology’s history exemplifies what is termed an autocatalytic process: that is, one that speeds up at a rate that increases with time, because the process catalyzes itself (Diamond 1998, 301).
If you were writing about Jared Diamond’s ideas, you would probably have to use some of his words, such as the importance of an invention. But you wouldn’t put that phrase in quotation marks, because it shows no originality of thought or expression. Two of his phrases, however, are so striking that they do require quotation marks: technology begets more technology and autocatalytic process. For example,
The power of technology goes beyond individual inventions because technology “begets more technology.” It is, as Diamond puts it, an “autocatalytic process” (301).
Once you cite those words, you can use them again without quotation marks or citation:
As one invention begets another one and that one still another, the process becomes a self-sustaining catalysis that spreads exponentially across all national boundaries.
This is a gray area: words that seem striking to some readers are commonplace to others. If you use quotation marks for too many common phrases, readers might think you’re naive or insecure, but if you fail to use them when readers think you should, they may suspect you’re trying to take credit for language and ideas not your own. Since it’s better to seem naive than dishonest, especially early in your research career, use quotation marks freely. (You must, however, follow the standard practices of your field. For example, lawyers often use the exact language of a statute or judicial opinion with no quotation marks.)
You paraphrase appropriately when you represent an idea in your own words more clearly or pointedly than the source does. But readers will think that you cross the line from fair paraphrase to plagiarism if they can match your words and phrasing with those of your source. For example, these next sentences plagiarize the two sentences you just read:
Booth, Colomb, and Williams claim that appropriate paraphrase is the use of one’s own words to represent an idea to make a passage from a source clearer or more pointed. Readers can accuse a student of plagiarism, however, if his paraphrase is so similar to its source that someone can match words and phrases in the sentence with those in that source.
This next paraphrase borders on plagiarism:
Appropriate paraphrase rewrites a passage from a source into one’s own words to make it clearer or more pointed. Readers think plagiarism occurs when a source is paraphrased so closely that they see parallels between words and phrases (Booth, Colomb, and Williams 2013).
This paraphrase does not plagiarize:
According to Booth, Colomb, and Williams (2013), paraphrase is the use of your own words to represent the ideas of another more clearly. It becomes plagiarism when readers see a word-for-word similarity between a paraphrase and a source.
To avoid seeming to plagiarize by paraphrase, don’t read your source as you paraphrase it. Read the passage, look away, think about it for a moment; then, still looking away, paraphrase it in your own words. Then check whether you can run your finger along your sentence and find the same ideas in the same order in your source. If you can, so can your readers. Try again.
This rule is more complicated than it seems, because most of our own ideas are based on or derived from identifiable sources somewhere in history. Readers don’t expect you to find every distant source for every familiar idea, but they do expect you to cite the source for an idea when (I) the idea is associated with a specific person and (2) it’s new enough not to be part of a field’s common knowledge.
For example, psychologists claim that we think and feel in different parts of our brains. But no reader would expect you to cite that idea, because it’s no longer associated with a specific source and it’s so familiar that no one would think you implied that it was yours. On the other hand, some psychologists argue that emotions are crucial to rational decision making. That idea is so new and so closely tied to particular researchers that you’d have to cite them.
The principle is this: cite a source for an idea not your own whenever an informed reader might think you’re implying that it is your own. Though that seems black and white, it has a big gray area in the middle. When in doubt, check with your instructor.
To be sure, what looks like plagiarism is often just honest ignorance of how to use and cite sources. Some students may have gone to school in parts of the world in which very different expectations govern using other writers’ work. Other students sincerely believe that they don’t have to cite material they have downloaded from the Internet if that material is free and publicly available. But they’re wrong. The fact that it’s public or free is irrelevant. You must cite anything you use that was created by someone else.
Many students defend themselves by claiming they didn’t intend to mislead. The problem is, we read words, not minds. So think of plagiarism not as an intended act but as a perceived one. Avoid any sign that might give your readers any reason to suspect you of it. Whenever you submit a paper with your name on it, you implicitly promise that its research, reasoning, and wording are yours—unless you specifically attribute to someone else.
Here is the best way to think about this: If the person whose work you used read your report, would she recognize any of it as hers, including paraphrases and summaries, or even general ideas or methods from her original work? If so, you must cite those borrowings.
Experienced writers regularly show their drafts to others for criticism and suggestions, and you should too. But instructors differ on how much help is appropriate and what help students should acknowledge. When you get help, ask two questions:
1. How much help is appropriate?
■ For a class paper, most instructors encourage students to get general criticism and minor editing, but not detailed rewriting or substantive suggestions.
■ For a thesis, dissertation, or work submitted for publication, writers get all the help they can from teachers, reviewers, and others so long as they don’t become virtual ghostwriters.
Between those extremes is a gray area. Ask your instructor where she draws the line, then get all the help you can on the right side of it.
2. What help must you acknowledge in your report?
■ For a class paper, you usually aren’t required to acknowledge general criticism, minor editing, or help from a school writing tutor, but you must acknowledge help that’s special or extensive. Your instructor sets the rules, so ask.
■ For a thesis, dissertation, or published work, you’re not required to acknowledge routine help, though it’s courteous and often politic to do so in a preface (see A.2.1.8 and A.2.1.9). But you must acknowledge special or extensive editing and cite in a note major ideas or phrases provided by others.
If you can’t seem to get started on a first draft or if you struggle to draft more than a few words, you may have writer’s block. Some cases arise from serious anxieties about school and its pressures; if that might be you, see a counselor. But most cases have causes you can address:
■ You may be stuck because you have no goals or have goals that are too high. If so, create a routine and set small, achievable goals. Do not be reluctant to use devices to keep yourself moving, such as a progress chart or regular meetings with a writing partner.
■ You may feel so intimidated by the size of the task that you don’t know where to begin. If so, follow our suggestions about dividing the process into small, achievable tasks; then focus on doing one small step at a time. Don’t dwell on the whole task until you’ve completed several small parts.
■ You may feel that you have to make every sentence or paragraph perfect before you move on to the next one. If so, tell yourself you’re not writing a draft but only sketching out some ideas; then grit your teeth and do some quick and dirty writing to get yourself started. Next time you can avoid some of this obsession with perfection if you write along the way as you research, reminding yourself that you aren’t writing a first draft. And in any event, we all have to compromise on perfection to get the job done.
If you have problems like these with most of your writing projects, go to the student learning center. There are people there who have worked with every kind of procrastinator and blocked writer and can give you advice tailored to your problem.
On the other hand, some cases of writer’s block may really be opportunities to let your ideas simmer in your subconscious while they combine and recombine into something new and surprising. If you’re stuck but have time (another reason to start early), do something else for a day or two. Then return to the task to see if you can get back on track.