Contextualizing Quotes, Paraphrases, and Summaries

Making connections between your ideas and supporting evidence is a key part of the writing process. Any time you include information from another source, whether it be a summary, paraphrase, or direct quote, be sure to guide your reader. This will help your audience to better engage with and understand your writing. It will also prevent your ideas from being misconstrued.

Let’s think about this in terms of essay writing. You already know that your thesis will have multiple parts and that each part will require supporting evidence (in the form of quotes, paraphrases, or summaries). This is where the following process for adding supporting evidence can be of value.

Check out this source from Lauren’s the Write Way (2016) for an overview of the quote sandwich.

Now let’s practice contextualizing the following quote:

“How much is society entitled to penalize smokers for their decisions because—in society’s view—those decisions are unhealthy?” (Samuelson, 1998, p. 47).

This quote needs an introduction and explanation in order for the reader to understand its significance. An in-text citation is given, but the reader needs more information to make sense of the quote.

Here, the quote is integrated into a sample student piece of writing from Thoughtful
Learning (2020).

(Portions of this section have been adapted from the Thoughtful Learning article

“Should Smoking Be Banned in Public Restaurants?” (2020) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)

While the argument rages over the effects of smoking on public health, the question that remains is this: “How much is society entitled to penalize smokers for their decisions because—in society’s view—those decisions are unhealthy?” (Samuelson, 1998, p. 47). Smoking tobacco is not an illegal act, yet the 25 percent of Americans who do smoke are often treated as if they were criminals. They are incessantly nagged, blamed for numerous illnesses and unpleasantries, and made to feel guilty by self-righteous nonsmokers (Bork, 1997, pp. 28-30). (“Should Smoking Be Banned in Public Restaurants?,” 2020)

The quote from Samuelson is integrated because it contextualizes and supports the author’s main point—the effects of smoking on public health. Another paraphrase is used (from Bork, 1997) to provide further supporting evidence.

When integrating evidence, you may want to use signal phrases. Using signal phrases helps add variety to the way you introduce and integrate summaries, paraphrases, and direct quotes (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.).

Here are some examples of signal phrases:

  • According to Samuelson…
  • Samuelson claims that…
  • Bork argues that…
  • Bork implies… (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.)

According to Samuelson (1998), “How much is society entitled to penalize smokers for their decisions because—in society’s view—those decisions are unhealthy?” (p. 47).

For more information on signal and lead-in phrases from Purdue Online Writing Lab (n.d.), view the source.