1. The Arts of Paraphrasing and Quoting

2. What is paraphrasing? And tips
Paraphrasing=another word for summarizing
Basically, you’re taking the ideas of someone else and using them in your own writing, while still giving the author credit through a citation
Doesn’t need to be in quote marks
We’ve all heard the ominous rule that paraphrases need to be in “your own words”, but how can you use this rule to your advantage?
Define what the author’s saying, but use it to strengthen your own argument-They Say/I Say pp
Use exciting signal verbs-don’t start out every paraphrase with “Mr. Chuzzlewit says that….”
They Say/I Say pp

3. Different Kinds of Summarizing: Forwarding vs Countering
Joseph Harris, Rewriting: How to do things with Texts
Forwarding: “A writer forwards the views of another when he or she takes terms and concepts from some text and applies them to a reading of other texts.” (6)
Like forwarding an -you’re sharing the work of someone else in order to spread your own agenda
Borrowing one work to analyze other works or issues
Countering=pointing out the differences between a text and your own argument, or “reading against the grain of a text…thinking through the limits and problems of other views and texts.” (6)
When you disagree with someone else, which is always fun
Countering effectively can be really difficult, so we’ll go over how to do it more in a couple weeks

4. Paraphrasing example
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985):
In the past few years, we have been learning that the computer is the technology of the future. We are told that our children will fail in school and be left behind in life if they are not “computer literate.” We are told that we cannot run our businesses, or compile our shopping lists, or keep our checkbooks tidy unless we own a computer. Perhaps some of this is true. But the most important fact about computers and what they mean to our lives is that we learn about all this from television. Television has achieved the status of a “meta-medium”- an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well.
At the same time, television has achieved the status of “myth,” as Roland Barthes uses the word. He means by myth a way of understanding the world that is not problematic, that we are not fully conscious of, that seems, in a word, natural. A myth is a way of thinking so deeply embedded in our consciousness that it is invisible. That is now the way of television. We are no longer fascinated or perplexed by its machinery. We do not tell stories of its wonders. We do not confine our television sets to special rooms. (quoted in Rewriting, p. 45)

5. Quoting tips Have a balance between quotes and your own writing
Introduce quotes with signal phrases
They Say/I Say p. 46, pp
Make quotation sandwiches-introduce quote, then analyze it afterward
Only include the pieces of the quote that help you to make your argument
Use ellipses in between these quote pieces
Written in , Sir Philip Sidney’s The Defense of Poesy is a counterattack on the criticism aimed at poetry during this time. One of Sidney’s key points that reinforces the value of poetry is his assertion that it imagines a world better than reality: “Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another nature…Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done…her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden” (257). Sidney encourages poets to use their creative ability to represent a kind of alternate world that is superior to their own reality. Instead of illustrating the world around them like it appears, poets should strive to construct a “golden” world.

6. Effective quoting example
Cornel West, Race Matters (1993):
The common denominator of these views of race is that each still sees black people as a “problem people,” in the words of Dorothy I. Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, rather than as fellow American citizens with problems. Her words echo the poignant “unasked question” of W.E.B DuBois, who, in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), wrote:
They approach me in a half-hesitant way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town…Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
Nearly a century later, we confine discussion about race in America to the “problems” black people pose for whites rather than considering what this way of viewing black people reveals about us as a nation. (quoted in Rewriting pp )

7. Satirical summary
A satirical summary is when “a writer deliberately gives his or her own spin to someone else’s argument in order to reveal a glaring shortcoming in it.” (Graff, Birkenstein and Durst 37)

8. Class Activity
Break up into 3 large groups (there must be a minimum of 6 ppl in each group). Choose a political issue. After you’ve done this, I’ll break each large group up into two smaller groups.
Each smaller group will look up an article about the political issue they chose as a larger group. One of the small groups will find an article from ThinkProgress, a liberal news site ( and the other small group will find an article from The Blaze, a conservative news site (
As a group, read the article together and discuss it. Write down the answers to these questions:
What’s the main argument of the article?
Point out at least two places where the article is summarizing or quoting someone else. How does the writer manipulate these summaries or quotes in order to push his or her own agenda?
When you’re done taking notes, form back into your larger groups. Compare your articles and notes with each other.