1.
Chapter 11:
Composing with Multiple Sources
The twentieth-century rhetorician and philosopher Kenneth Burke likened all of human
discourse (by whatever means it takes place: textually, visually, or multimodally) to an
“unending conversation.” He wrote,
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long
preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated
for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had
already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to
retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you
decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar.
Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns
himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent,
depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is
interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the
discussion still vigorously in progress. (Philosophy of Literary Form, 110-11).
Burke’s “conversational parlor” provides an excellent metaphor for the work of research that
needs to be done when defining and responding to rhetorical problems. Following this
metaphor, we might think of the composing process as having three basic steps:
1. Identify the conversation. (See Chapter XX to learn how to formulate rhetorical problems.)
2. “Listen” to the conversation for awhile – that is, conduct extensive research on the rhetorical
problem, and pay close attention to the content (i.e., the topics and various lines of argument -
see Chapter XX, identifying stasis questions), the rhetorical stakeholders, and the genre,
medium, and mode(s) by which the conversation takes place.
3. Put in your “oar”– that is, join the conversation by responding to one or more of those who
have been there before you.
This chapter focuses on the nitty-gritty of step 2: learning how to actively “listen” to the
conversation (otherwise known as “research”), and how to make decisions about when and
how to incorporate that research into your response to the conversation. You’ll learn the
recursive process of doing research: this includes formulating research questions, generating
initial keywords for research, identifying initial sources to help clarify your own position,
establishing a system to keep track of your sources, evaluating the relative rhetorical weight of
sources, generating more specific keywords as your position on the issue becomes clearer, and

2.
so on. You’ll also learn to appropriately incorporate sources into your compositions, both to
bolster your ethos and to signal the conversation(s) in which you’re taking part.
The Recursive Steps of the Research Process
Composers do research for two equally important reasons: to discover the conversation and to
clarify their position. While many beginning composers treat research as a “one and done”
linear procedure, experienced researchers know that research and composing is a continuous,
recursive process involving multiple steps.
1. Brainstorm initial research questions.
Effective research starts from sincere questioning – that is, you shouldn’t already know what
you want to argue before you begin the research process. Too often, beginning composers fall
into the trap of only looking for sources that support what they already believe. This is a
dishonest approach, since it avoids a true process of inquiry. As philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche said in his essay “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense,” “When someone
hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as
well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding.” In other words, trying to find
only what you think or know is already there won’t help anyone very much. So instead of, say,
looking for sources that can give you “quotes” to support your already-formed position on wolf
population management, you might approach it by asking questions that you don’t already
know the answer to: maybe “what are different theories about the benefits of wolf
reintroduction?”, or “What are the costs and benefits of wolf reintroduction to various
populations in the West?”
Even if you do have strong opinions about a topic, it’s best to approach the research process
with a sincere, open mind that seeks to really understand an issue or topic. Initial research
questions are best if they’re simple and open-ended. Once you start generating and reading
through sources, your question will become more refined and specific.
Let’s say that for a video editorial assignment, you want to investigate the differences between
online and face-to-face education. The president of your university has just announced that she
wants to increase enrollment by 25%, and with limited physical facilities, most campus
administrators and faculty agree that the most logical way to achieve this goal is to increase the
number of online courses and degrees. Though you’ve taken a few online courses (with mixed
results), you’re uneasy about the implications of this move by the university, and want to
understand more about the effectiveness of online learning before weighing in on the issue.
Some initial questions about online education (generated with the stasis questions – see
Chapter XX [on rhetorical arguments] might look something like this:
• What are the trends in online learning? What percentage of all college and university
courses are offered online, and is this number growing, shrinking, or has it leveled off?

3.
What kinds of courses are offered online? How have online courses changed? Are
students with online degrees able to get jobs at the same rates as students who have
gotten traditional degrees?
• What are some of the reasons that online learning has become more prevalent, if that’s
indeed the case? Why do universities want to include more online courses? (that is, are
they more cost-effective, and if so, why?) What are the implications for the university as
a whole?
• What do experts say about the quality of online courses vs. face-to-face courses? Are
some kinds of online courses more effective than others?
• Given the answers to the questions above, should your university move to more online
courses and degrees? If so, why, how, and what kind of courses and degrees?
2. From these questions, generate keywords that will help you conduct a search.
It’s best to search with specifically worded phrases rather than whole questions. Search engines
ignore little words (of, in, and, but), so you can also leave those out of your search phrases.
Some good phrases with which to start for our questions about online learning might be
“online learning trends,” “prevalence online learning,” and “effectiveness online learning.”
Once you’ve come up with some initial keywords, consider coming up with synonyms to help
catch sources that you may have missed:
online learning effectiveness
distance education
online education
e-learning
virtual classroom
Web-based courses
quality
success
value
3. Conduct an initial search.
It’s a good idea to begin your search with Google (though not a good idea to end there, for
reasons discussed below). For one thing, Google can sometimes help you with the search by
recommending search terms based on what you type into the search bar. These results – the
top search queries – can give you a better sense for how others are thinking about the issue,
and lead you to more refined keywords.
The top results for a Google search on the keywords “trends in online education” bring up
some potentially useful results, but from sites that need to be more thoroughly vetted (see the
next step) before they can be used as reliable sources. An identical search on Lexis Nexis, a
database available through most university libraries, initially produced a number of irrelevant
results (though one result did provide a new term that could serve as another search term: “e-
learning” - see yellow arrow in Figure X). Lexis Nexis makes it possible to refine the search
results, so I clicked on “Colleges and Universities” and got more relevant results.
Comment [1]: include a big bracket
beside this: stasis of fact/definition
Comment [2]: stasis of cause
Comment [3]: stasis of evaluation
Comment [4]: stasis of policy (proposal)

4.
While often Lexis Nexis and other subscription academic databases like it provide more
reliable results than general Web search engines, it’s important to conduct your initial search
across a number of different sites, and to continue to follow up on them. (See Figures X and X
below.)
Figure X. Top Google results for “effectiveness of online education.”
Figure X: Top Lexis Nexis results for “effectiveness of online education”; since they were of mixed
usefulness, the search could be refined using the tools at the left.

5.
Figure X: Refined Lexis Nexis results for “effectiveness of online education,” with the “Distance
Learning” filter applied.
4. Vet your sources.
Research is a skill and an art, not a science. That is, while it would be great if there were hard
and fast rules about what counts as a “good” source (“You can only use peer-reviewed
scholarly articles!”) and what should be avoided at all costs (“Never use Wikipedia!”), a more
rhetorical view of research says “It depends.” What it depends on are things like the rhetorical
aim of your project, what you’re trying to show and prove, and to whom. The following table
will help you ascertain what kinds of sources you should be looking for and how you want to
use them.
If you want to… Then use:
Get in-depth, individual perspectives on an issue… Interviews, oral histories, first-person accounts, memoirs.
Find out what a broad swath of the population (perhaps
organized by specific beliefs or demographics) feels or
thinks about a topic…
Surveys, polls.
Present statistics about specific demographics and
populations…
Government documents, public records.
• Reconstruct an original history of a specific
idea, topic, or event;
• Reconstruct an era through its popular culture;
• Show the continuity or change in thinking about
a given topic or idea…
Archival documents (letters, maps, photographs, oral
histories), old periodicals.
• Establish the timeline of a series of events; Newspaper articles.
Comment [5]: This might be more
usable as a flow chart.
Comment [6]: the gray rows are
primary sources, the white are
secondary (indicate this with brackets in
the margins)

6.
• Find reliable facts;
• Do an overview, comparison, or rhetorical
analysis of how the media responded to an
event…
Create a catalog of different points of view or “takes” on
a topic, or find anecdotes or quotes from people
affected by an event…
Magazine feature articles.
• Get partisan takes on issues or ideas;
• Establish a sense of the range of opinions on a
topic;
• Find out how non-experts discuss a topic or
idea…
Blogs.
• Read up on the background or general
overview of a topic, concept, or process;
• Gain a sense for the established or common
knowledge about a topic…
Wikipedia or encyclopedia articles.
• Gain specialized knowledge on a topic and
understand the sorts of questions at issue in a
topic;
• Provide an authoritative take on a topic or
issue;
• Cite original research on a topic…
Scholarly (peer reviewed) articles.
• Find the history or background of an idea,
process, or event;
• Provide an in-depth understanding of a debate
(scholarly books and articles are the result of
high-level debates as well, so keep in mind that
these aren’t a neutral source – there may be
competing interpretations of a position)…
Biographies, histories (books).
Explain the etymology of a word… Dictionary (especially the Oxford English Dictionary,
available online through most university libraries).
Your initial research question (and the more refined versions that come after you begin
searching for and reading sources to answer that question) will help you decide which of these
sources would be appropriate and credible for the audience. While you wouldn’t want to cite
Joe Blow’s Big Website of Guns as an authoritative source on gun control policy, for instance, it
could be great as a way to show how non-experts or everyday gun enthusiasts talk about guns.
In short, think rhetorically about the sources you find, and how they might be seen by your
intended audience. For each source, think about the following questions (based on the
journalistic questions: who what when where how):

7.
• Who created the source? What is their background, and how are they credentialed to
speak about the source? What is at stake for them in the topic – that is, what do they
stand to gain or lose in the way they talk about the topic? How might these investments
or biases mesh with how your audience might see the subject? Again, if the source has
a clear bias, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the source in your composition – only
that you’ll need to introduce it by pointing out the bias so that your audience knows
that you understand the position of the source’s creator.
• What is the source about? Is the source’s content relevant for your audience and
purpose?
• When was the source created? If timeliness is important to your topic, was the source
created recently enough to be relevant? For example, if you’re discussing the history of
online education, then it’s fine to talk about a source from 1999; but if you’re making a
point about the most recent trends in online education, then even a source from 2007
would be of questionable relevance.
• Where did the source appear? Refer to Table X above to figure out how the type of
publication dictates the source’s purpose and content.
• How is the source relevant to your own topic, purpose, and audience?
5. Take notes and keep track of your sources.
Having some method to keep track of the information in your sources is necessary for several
reasons:
• It helps you maintain your sanity. It keeps you from being overwhelmed by the amount
of information you find, and it allows you to easily locate sources.
• A system (like tagging or adding keywords to sources) helps you begin seeing topical
and argumentative patterns in sources. This will help you synthesize the information
you find.
• It helps you avoid unintentional plagiarism. Not keeping good track of sources has
been the cause of a number of recent high-profile plagiarism cases. To avoid
embarrassment, be careful about taking notes (especially when you’re writing down
direct quotations from the source), and true paraphrasing. See pp XX-XX below for
more on how to paraphrase and quote sources.
The analog (but still very effective!) way to keep track of your sources is with good old-
fashioned 3x5 notecards. You need to develop whatever system works best for you, but the
important thing is to be consistent so that you can easily locate your information and organize
your sources. Here’s one possible organizational system:
• On the front side of the notecard, you’ll write the citation (in whatever format is
required for the project) and a very brief summary of the source (e.g. “The author X
[briefly describe the author’s relation to the topic] argues
/summarizes/concludes/compares/[whatever] that…..”).

8.
• On the back side of the notecard, write down any relevant direct quotations (keep
these as short as possible), and a quick note to yourself about how the source might be
useful to you.
After you’ve created all your notecards, go back through, reread them, and add keywords to
the front of the notecard. You can develop your own system of keywords, based on topic,
theme, approach, position, or anything else you decide – the point is that adding the same
keyword to multiple cards will reveal links between them. By doing so, you’ve already begun
organizing your ideas about the research question at hand.
For the digital version of source management, you would use some venue that allows you to
create multiple items and to “tag” them (i.e., mark them with keywords). Three such tools
would be blogs (you can make one post per source), the free online note-keeping system
Evernote (you can make one note per source), and citation software like EndNote (though this
is not free). These digital tools will allow you to not only do the same things as you can do with
notecards (create a citation, write a brief summary, mark down key quotes, and indicate how
the source will be useful to you), but they also allow you to add keywords, or “tags” with which
you can later search your collection of sources.
6. Write “zero” or “thinking drafts” to understand or clarify what you think and know about a
topic.
A “zero draft” or “thinking draft” is a low-stakes draft in which you try to answer your initial
research question after you’ve done the hard work of logging and thinking about all your
sources. To write a “thinking draft,” clear your desk of everything but a notepad and a pen. Set
a timer for 20-30 minutes. Start the timer, begin writing, and continue writing until the timer
goes off. By the end of your quick writing session, you should have a clearer grasp of the
conversation about your topic or question, and (hopefully) a better sense of what you want to
say about it.
7. Search and draft again (and again).
This is where research gets recursive: finding, reading, and taking notes on your initial results
will help you understand more clearly what you’re looking for. If you find a good scholarly
article on the topic, you can use its bibliography to lead you to more sources, which will further
help you clarify your emerging argument. You’ll have a second (and probably a third) round of
research using more refined search terms, and this process will continue throughout your
research and composing process.
Incorporating Sources into Your Compositions

9.
For many who are new to academic discourse, formal systems of citation like those of the
Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Psychological Association (APA), the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and others might seem like a persnickety
exercise in dealing with frustrating minutiae. As you pore through books and websites trying to
figure out how to cite a source using MLA format, you might well be thinking, “who cares
whether the comma goes inside or outside the parenthesis? Who lives or dies by this stuff?”
So it’s worth pausing to think about why scholars use these citation systems, as well as the
reasoning behind the practices.
Generally speaking, scholars use citation systems for the following reasons:
• To situate the concept, method, framework, or approach used by the authors within a
wider disciplinary context.
• To signal belonging to an academic community (insider knowledge).
• To signal the validity of the ideas.
• To provide readers with the ability to read further into the topic if they want.
• To generate a scholarly conversation about an issue, or to encourage the production of
more knowledge.
These functions (and therefore the citation formats) differ according to how the discipline
creates knowledge. For instance, humanities discipline like English literature typically focus on
textual interpretation. Thus, the predominant citation format for this discipline – MLA style –
uses parentheses with the author’s name and the page number after the quotation, like this:
(Nicotra 52). This allows readers the ability to track down the edition being cited and to do
their own interpretation of the work in question if they desire. Other scholarly citation
conventions, like footnotes, allow a parallel conversation to happen alongside the text – in fact,
some academic texts are so rife with footnotes that they threaten to overwhelm the main text.
Common Scholarly Format and Citation Styles: MLA, APA, Chicago
The Internet has dozens of citation and format guides for each scholarly citation style, so it
would be redundant to replicate those in great detail here. However, below are brief
descriptions of some styles that you may encounter during your time as a student, along with a
table comparing formats and citation styles for the most commonly used sources. Below that is
a list of the best websites for various citation and formatting styles.
MLA Style
The style guide for the Modern Language Association (MLA) is most frequently used for
disciplines in the humanities, especially language and literature. Because it’s so user-friendly,
it’s also the academic citation style most frequently taught to students – this might be the only
style you’ve ever been exposed to. Unlike citation styles of some other disciplines, the
structure of MLA format emphasizes the original author’s ownership over the text. That’s why,

10.
as composition scholar Susan Mueller points out, the MLA Handbook for Students devotes so
much time to explaining how to avoid plagiarism. It’s also why in-text citation in MLA format
includes the author’s last name and the page number or something else to indicate exactly
where the passage you’re quoting or paraphrasing comes from.
General MLA Guidelines. ddd
MLA Page Setup. ddd
Chicago/Turabian Style
Chicago style (also named Turabian, after Kate Turabian, who wrote a handbook that made
Chicago style easier and more user-friendly) is another style typically used in the humanities:
philosophy, art history, music, rhetoric, and theology. It uses two styles: notes-bibliography
style and author-date style (which one you use is typically dependent on what your instructor
wants; or, if you’re writing for a scholarly publication, what the publication wants. For note-
bibliography style, when you cite an author, you insert a footnote with the full citation of the
source and also a bibliography entry for that author. For author-date style, you include the
author’s last name,
APA Style
The style guide for the American Psychological Association (APA) is used most frequently in the
social sciences: psychology, sociology, and anthropology. APA is aimed at professional
(academic) social scientists – students are welcome to use it, of course, but unlike the MLA,
there’s no separate APA handbook for students. Since the APA style was created at a time
when experimental psychology dominated, it is geared toward scientific reports, which have a
much more rigid, prescribed format. This is sometimes called IMRAD format (for Introduction,
Methodology, Results, [and] Discussion). In such a format, the use of first-person (“I”) is
discouraged, transitions between sections are relatively unimportant (since they’re prescribed),
and the dates of articles are much more important, since they indicate how recently the
research of the article being cited was conducted. Science is expected to build on past
research and advance knowledge, and this is reflected in the use of author and date in APA in-
text citation style.
Citation Styles for Commonly Used Sources at a Glance
MLA Chicago
(In-text listed first, then
bibliography entry)
APA
Article in a Print
Journal
Sullivan, Shannon.
“Reconfiguring Gender
with John Dewey: Habit,
Bodies, and Cultural
Change.” Hypatia 15:1
(2000), 23-42. Print.
Notes-Bibliography:
1. Shannon Sullivan,
“Reconfiguring Gender
with John Dewey: Habit,
Bodies, and Cultural
Change,” Hypatia 15, no.
Sullivan, S. (2000).
“Reconfiguring Gender
with John Dewey: Habit,
Bodies, and Cultural
Change.” Hypatia, 15:1,
23-42.
Comment [7]: Mueller, Susan.
“Documentation Styles and Discipline-
Specific Values.” Writing Lab Newsletter
29:6 (2005), 6-9.
Comment [8]: Leverenz, Carrie
Shively. “Citing Cybersources: A
Challenge to Disciplinary Values” (189),
qutd in Mueller 7.

11.
1 (June 2000): 26.
Sullivan, Shannon
“Reconfiguring Gender
with John Dewey: Habit,
Bodies, and Cultural
Change.” Hypatia 15, no.
1 (June 2000): 23-42.
Author-Date:
(Sullivan 2000, 26)
Sullivan, Shannon. 2000.
“Reconfiguring Gender
with John Dewey: Habit,
Bodies, and Cultural
Change.” Hypatia 15, no.
1 (June): 23-42.
Article in an Online
Journal
Kelly, Ashley Rose and
Kate Maddalena.
“Harnessing Agency for
Efficacy: ‘Foldit’ and
Citizen Science.” POROI
11:1 (2015), 1-20. Web.
Notes-Bibliography:
1. Ashley Rose Kelly and
Kate Maddalena,
“Harnessing Agency for
Efficacy: ‘Foldit’ and
Citizen Science,” POROI
11:1 (2015): 15, accessed
October 12, 2015,
http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/vie
wcontent.cgi?article
=1184&context=poroi.
Author-Date: c
Article Accessed
through a Database
DePalma, Michael-John
and Kara Poe Alexander.
“A Bag Full of Snakes:
Negotiating the
Challenges of Multimodal
Composition.” Computers
and Composition 37
(2015), 182-200. Science
Direct. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Article in a Magazine Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Article in a
Newspaper
Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c

12.
Book, one author Rabinow, Paul. Making
PCR: A Story of
Biotechnology. Chicago:
The University of Chicago
Press, 1996. Print.
Notes-Bibliography:
1. Paul Rabinow, Making
PCR: A Story of
Biotechnology (Chicago:
The University of Chicago
Press, 1996), 64.
Rabinow, Paul. Making
PCR: A Story of
Biotechnology. Chicago:
The University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
Author-Date:
(Rabinow 1996, 134)
Rabinow, P. 1996. Making
PCR: A Story of
Biotechnology. Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press.
Rabinow, P. (1996).
Making PCR: A Story of
Biotechnology. Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press.
Book, two authors Holcomb, Chris and
Jimmie Killingsworth.
Performing Prose: The
Study and Practice of Style
in Composition.
Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press,
2010. Print.
Notes-Bibliography:
1. Chris Holcomb and
Jimmie Killingsworth,
Performing Prose: The
Study and Practice of Style
in Composition
(Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press
2010), 15.
Holcomb, Chris and
Jimmie Killingsworth.
Performing Prose: The
Study and Practice of Style
in Composition.
Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press,
2010.
Author-Date:
(Holcomb and Killingworth
2010, 52)
Holcomb, Chris and
Jimmie Killingsworth.
2010. Performing Prose:
The Study and Practice of
Style in Composition.
Carbondale, IL: Southern
Holcomb, C. &
Killingsworth, J. (2010).
Performing Prose: The
Study and Practice of Style
in Composition.
Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press.

13.
Illinois University Press.
Book, three or more
authors
Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Chapter in an edited
book
Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Website Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Website, page Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Blog Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Blog, page Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Video Notes-Bibliography:
1.
Author-Date: c
Informal Citation in Written, Visual, and Multimodal Compositions
Many compositions aimed at the general public (i.e., a non-academic audience) rely on
informal citation – that is, they provide enough information that readers, if they wanted to
follow up on the topic or check the veracity of the story, could locate the source reasonably
easily (in the case of Web-based compositions, simply by clicking on the provided links).
Web-Based Citation (linking). The most effective way to lead readers to sources on the Web is
by one of the Web’s most basic functions, hypertext. That is, a writer can “cite” a source on the

14.
Web simply by linking to it. In the Wikipedia page on “Intellectual Property” (Figure X, below),
you can probably guess that the blue links in the entry are definitions of the terms – in fact, all
of them link up to other Wikipedia pages, which themselves are full of links. The “Blogging and
Intellectual Property Law” blog post (on the site legalzoom) (Figure X below) uses the link for
more traditional citation purposes – the author is quoting from the United States Copyright
Office and contains a link to the page from which she’s quoting.
[Insert screenshot image: Wikipedia page on “Intellectual Property”]
[Insert screenshot image: legalzoom post, “Blogging and Intellectual Property Law”]

15.
Infographics. Because they can be extended vertically, infographics conventionally include
citations of the sources used to create the infographic, typically at the very bottom of the page.
Depending on the infographic creator and the audience and purpose of the infographic, these
can be more or less formal (i.e., in a specific citation format); infographics aimed at an audience
of scientists might have more of an imperative to cite formally, whereas infographics meant to
entertain or instruct the general public might use less formal citations, as the “A Traveller’s
Guide to Tap Water” infographic source list, shown in Figure X. The list, which appears at the
very bottom of the infographic, includes brief identifying phrases and a link to the related site.
[Insert screen shot: Source list from the “A Traveller’s Guide to Tap Water” infographic]
Paraphrasing and Quoting
So then when is it more appropriate to paraphrase (put the content of someone else’s ideas
into your own language), than to quote someone’s words as they said/wrote them? The basic
rule of thumb is to think about what point you’re making, and whether it’s best illustrated or
supported with an explanation, or whether it matters how someone has said something.
Use paraphrase when…
• The content you want to incorporate into your composition is more factual or data
based (you don’t need to directly quote someone else’s presentation of statistics, for
instance).
• You want to maintain the flow of your own piece. Too many “undigested” quotes
makes a piece feel choppy. Plus, it creates the impression of laziness on the composer’s
part: “well, I’ll just let someone else go ahead and say this.”
• You want to incorporate only information that’s relevant to the topic of your
composition (you can also mix paraphrase and quoting).

16.
Use direct quotations when…
• It’s important that you capture how someone has said something – if you’re introducing
a contentious idea, for instance.
o But Professor Smedley argues that trees are not actually a species separate from
humans. “It’s time for us to open our eyes and embrace our green leafy
brothers,” he said in a recent press release.
• Someone phrases an idea in a really interesting or unique way.
o “A foolish consistency,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson memorably said in his essay
“Self-Reliance,” “is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
• It’s a difficult concept, and you’re planning to analyze it immediately following.
o But one of the most central concepts in Heidegger’s thinking is that of
Zuhandenheit, or “ready-to-hand.”
• You want to introduce a unique or important word or phrase.
o Wolverines, or what the Blackfeet Indians called “skunk bears,” live in several
states across the northwestern U.S.
Usually, incorporating sources involves a mix of quoting and paraphrasing: for instance, you
might quote a somewhat complicated or difficult passage, and then explain it “in other words.”
Or you can paraphrase part of what the author is saying and quote only the important bits.
Example:
Dr. John Bonbon, the curator of the new exhibit “Kangaroos in Glass,” first conceived
of the idea when he realized that the world associated kangaroos with dirty creatures
who bound through the forest or get into “kangaroo boxing matches,” which are filmed
and uploaded to YouTube by curious bystanders. It was his intention to highlight
kangaroo’s more elegant characteristics. “These animals are really quite graceful, even
delicate,” he explains in the exhibit brochure. “I wanted to show that they’re more than
just silly, goofy creatures with pouches and big tails.” The exhibit features life-sized
sculptures of kangaroos composed in transparent materials from glass to glycerin.
Remember that you don’t need to quote entire paragraphs or even sentences – in fact, in
general you should aim to quote as little of the text as possible in order to convey your point.
In other words, for most compositions, you have a responsibility to your readers/viewers/etc. to
control the flow of the piece, so your voice should be dominant.
Also remember that when you incorporate both paraphrase and direct quotes, you can’t just
plop them in your composition willy-nilly. The reader is using your voice as a guide, so if
suddenly someone else starts talking with no introduction, it can be abrupt and rather jarring
(not to mention confusing – the reader will ask “who’s talking here?”). To smoothly incorporate
quotations, use signal phrases. A list of the most common is included below:

17.
• In her article “….”, X argues that…[this can be followed by either a direct quote or a
paraphrase]. You can replace “argues” (depending on what the passage is doing) with
any of these words: comments, writes, says, puts it,
• According to X, “…”
• X articulates the issue as…
Exercise/For Discussion
Read the following (made up) passages. Then use them to practice paraphrasing and quoting:
Passage A, Passage B
a. Imagine that you need to tell your neighbor what it says. Read the first passage carefully,
while your neighbor reads the other one. You can jot down a brief paraphrase, using only your
own words. Then tell your neighbor what the passage says. Afterwards, you and your neighbor
should check the passage to see if you were able to paraphrase accurately and in your own
words. Then listen as your neighbor does the same thing.
b. Imagine that you’re writing a research paper critiquing ideas like those contained in either
Passage A or Passage B above. Write a single paragraph doing this, using a mix of paraphrase
and direct quote (You can make up any position you like – the important thing is to practice
using the source.)
c. Using the signal phrases on pp XX above, write four sentences that incorporate partial direct
quotes.
Avoid Plagiarism of all Sorts
“Plagia-phrasing” or Mosaic Plagiarism
Incorporating Sources into Visual and Multimodal Compositions
Creative Commons Licenses
Assignment: Write a “Critical Conversation” Essay
Task
Using at least 20 sources, write an essay on your topic that summarizes and synthesizes the
current variety of understanding, uses, and feelings about your topic. The audience for the
essay will be your instructor and classmates.
Assignment Goals
• To gain facility in interacting with (i.e., taking notes on, keeping track of, and
organizing) many different sources on a topic.
• To practice identifying the key arguments and points of written texts.

18.
• To gain a much deeper understanding of the public dimensions of your topic: why and
how it’s significant to people other than yourself.
• To practice logically organizing ideas, using topic sentences and smooth transitions.
Preparatory Steps
1. See pp XX-XX earlier in this chapter to help you generate initial research questions and
keywords, and to keep track of the sources you find.
2. Begin grouping your sources into different lines of thinking about your topic. You might use
these questions to help you do this:
What is the basic history or background on the topic?
Who talks about this thing, and who is it important to?
What are the common themes that characterize discussions of the topic?
What sorts of arguments have been made about it?
What is at stake in the topic – that is, how do people understand its cultural significance?
Why/how is it important?
You can use a graphic matrix to organize your sources and thinking on the topic:
-include example of graphic matrix organizer
Writing the Essay
Each exploratory essay will shape up a little differently depending on the topic, but just keep in
mind that you’re developing for yourself, in a formal way, an understanding of the scope of this
topic beyond your own personal interest in it. So a typical writing structure might look
something like this:
1. The introduction will set the context and “hook” the reader by introducing your topic,
making a case for why this topic is worth exploring, and stating your research question(s) (i.e.,
what you wanted to discover as a result of doing the research and why you are interested in the
topic – a good research question for this paper would be “What is the broader cultural
significance of X topic, and what are some typical themes and arguments that characterize
discussions of it?”). Your introduction should also help forecast what’s in the paper: you can
provide an overview of the types of sources you cite in the body of the paper, and outline the
structure of your paper.
2. The body of the paper will answer your research questions. It logically leads the reader
through the questions above (though perhaps not in that particular order). Though you’ll be
citing a great many sources, the body of your paper won’t be organized by individual source,
but by patterns of theme and/or question (use the questions above as a guide).
3. The conclusion will situate your own personal feelings on the topic within the broader
context that you established in your paper.