2022 AML1000 Using Paraphrased Quotations

1. USING PARAPHRASED
QUOTATIONS
A Guide to Selecting, Integrating, and Citing in APA Style (7th ed.)

2. Step 1: Choose a Passage that Supports
Your Position
Just like when using quotations, the
most important part of the process is
finding a passage that effectively
supports your position, idea, or
statement.
Depending on the assignment, you
may need one, two, or several sources
to support your ideas. Sometimes these
sources have many lines that you want
to use. This is a good time to
paraphrase.

3. Step 1:
Choose a
Passage that
Supports Your
Position
(continued)
Say, for example, that I want to make the point that
Desiree’s racial heritage is unknown in Kate Chopin’s
“Desiree’s Baby.”
My first step is to reread the story, looking for the
passage that supports my claim.
What I am looking for is in Volume 2 of your textbook
near the bottom of page 416:
“Some people thought she might have strayed there
of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age.
The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely
left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered
wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that
Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation.”

4. Step 2: Read the Passage Until You Fully
Understand What Is Being Said
Active reading can also help during this step. Try underlining or highlighting the passage, circling
any words that are unclear to you, and making notes in the margins.
When paraphrasing source material into your writing, you must understand the original idea
before you begin to put the idea into your own words. This may involve reading the passage
more than once.

5. Step 3:
Summarize
the Ideas in
Your Own
Words It may help to remove the source from your view while
writing the paraphrase. Flip over the article, close the book,
or minimize the window in which the source appears.
A common misconception is that when paraphrasing, you
only have to change every third or fifth word of a source.
This is plagiarism, as you cannot copy any words nor the
sentence structure from a source. You must completely put
the idea into your own words.

6. Step 3: Summarize the Ideas in Your
Own Words (continued)
“The prevailing belief was that she had
been purposely left by a party of
Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon,
late in the day, had crossed the ferry
that Coton Mais kept, just below the
plantation.”
People speculated that Desiree had
been abandoned by travelers passing
through the area.

7. Step 4: Add
an In-Text
Citation
In-text citations for our textbook are as follows:
(author last name, original year of
publication/date of textbook publication, p. #
on which the quote appears)
(Chopin, 1894/2023, p. 416).

8. Step 5: Follow Up Your Quote with a
Sentence
Remind Your Reader of
Original Point:
• Desiree’s racial heritage is
never revealed in the story.
Paraphrased Quote and
Citation:
• People speculated that
Desiree had been abandoned
by travelers passing through
the area (Chopin, 1894/2023,
p. 416).
Follow-Up Sentence:
• People wondered but did
not definitively know
exactly where Desiree had
come from, so her racial
background remained a
mystery.

9. Step 6: Put it
All Together
Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the story.
People speculated that Desiree had been
abandoned by travelers passing through the area
(Chopin, 1894/2023, p. 416). People wondered but
did not definitively know exactly where Desiree had
come from, so her racial background remained a
mystery.

10. Step 7: Include a Reference Citation
Reference citations for our textbook are as follows:
Author, A.A., & B.B. (Year of textbook publication). Title. In A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.),
Title of book (edition, Vol. #, inclusive page numbers). Publisher. (original year of
publication)
Chopin, K. (2023). Desiree’s baby. In R.S. Levine, G. Avilez, M.A. Elliott, S.M. Gustafson,
A. Hungerford, & L. Siraganian (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of American literature
(Shorter 10th ed., Vol. 2. pp. 416-420). Norton. (Original work published 1894)

11. The Finished Product
Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the story. People speculated that Desiree had been
abandoned by travelers passing through the area (Chopin, 1894/2023, p. 416). People wondered
but did not definitively know exactly where Desiree had come from, so her racial background
remained a mystery.
Chopin, K. (2023). Desiree’s baby. In R.S. Levine, G. Avilez, M.A. Elliott, S.M. Gustafson,
A. Hungerford, & L. Siraganian (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of American literature
(Shorter 10th ed., Vol. 2. pp. 416-420). Norton. (Original work published 1894)