Chapter 7 Reading Response- Taylor Wilhelmy

Chapter 7 focuses on integrating sources into your work through citations, paraphrasing and summarizing. The chapter opens talking about in-text citations. While reading, I learned that, if the source doesn't have page numbers, then you use 000. I have always just put a 1 because the source was 1 page long. I never thought to really look into if I was doing this right. Also, I never thought about using a quote to keep the author's tone. I always just looked at the quotes and decided if it was worth quoting based on what I needed for support in my paper. The next part of the chapter talked about paraphrasing. I learned that, when paraphrasing, you should put the source away and write from your memory. I never thought about doing this because I always just think about the main point of the source and I try to capture it in my own words. I also learned that you should paraphrase when the audience of your piece is different from that of the authors. Normally, if the author's quote doesn't quite fit, I just quote the source but I use brackets to change it to fit my writing. The chapter then moved into summarizing. I learned that summarizing a source should be significantly shorter than the original. I have never thought about this before because I tend to write a lot more than I need too so I never think about the length. I also learned that you need to make sure you are just capturing the main points and not adding your own opinions. I don't even think about putting my own opinions in my work so I never thought of looking over it to make sure my opinion isn't there. The final main point the authors really try to hit home is how to avoid plagiarism. Including this section I feel like is very important because most people don't understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. By including this section, the author wants readers to have examples of how to correctly incorporate material which allows readers to correctly see what to do. At the end of the chapter, they included sections on how to cite in MLA and APA. I feel like this is very helpful because it shows examples done correctly and I am able to compare my work to these and I can make sure that I have done everything correctly so I can avoid plagiarism.