In this lesson, you will learn how to determine what kind of evidence to use in an essay and when to use it, how to integrate quotations and evidence into sentences, and how and why to cite your sources. You will also learn how to apply evidence to solve problems. Specifically, this lesson will cover:
1. Evidence in Writing
Recall that evidence is comprised of the facts and details that support an argument. When you’re writing an essay, particularly an argumentative essay, each paragraph should make one main point. As you’re working to prove that point, you want to ask yourself what your readers need to know in order to believe that point.
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EXAMPLE
Maybe they’ll need hard statistics from an expert, findings from an experiment, or some historical context.
The kind of evidence you use will depend on:
- What your main point is
- What your authorial tone is
- What rhetorical appeals you’re making
Depending on what each paragraph needs, you can direct your research and choose your type of evidence accordingly.
As you likely recall, using evidence enables you to solve problems. Consider the types of evidence that you reviewed earlier in this course. How might you organize it to address the problem you’re trying to solve? In other words—What would be your main points? What would your tone be? How would you use rhetorical appeals? As you begin to think about these methods as a writer, you improve your problem solving skill.
2. Ways of Incorporating Evidence
Once you’ve found your evidence, you need to decide how to use it. There are three ways that you can present evidence:
- Summarizing
- Paraphrasing
- Quoting
2a. Summarizing
Summarizing means giving a brief overview of the main points or ideas of a piece of writing without relying on specific details or language. This would mean writing something very general about a whole piece of text.
You could summarize the entire U.S. Bill of Rights by saying something like the following:
The U.S. Bill of Rights consists of the first ten amendments to the Constitution and protects the rights and freedoms of citizens.
Notice that by summarizing, you’re giving a general overview of the whole piece without using any details or specifics.
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- Summarizing
- Giving a brief overview of the main points or ideas of a piece of writing without relying on specific details or language.
2b. Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing means restating a passage in your own words, keeping the author’s original intent and meaning.
This would mean rewriting something that a piece of writing has already said using different words entirely, usually to increase clarity. Paraphrases are therefore only of specific lines or sentences, and they must keep the author’s original meaning intact.
A way of paraphrasing the first amendment might be reading the lines in quotation marks, and then writing the following:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The first amendment protects citizens’ rights to freedom of expression through religion, speech, and press.
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- Paraphrasing
- Restating a passage in your own words, keeping the author’s original intent and meaning.
2c. Quoting
Quoting is repeating the exact words of a piece of writing using quotation marks surrounding the quotation.
This would mean writing the exact words from a piece of writing and enclosing those words in quotation marks so that it’s clear which words are yours and which come from somewhere else.
Quoting might look like this:
The first amendment claims that Congress cannot use the law to restrict “the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
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- Quoting
- Repeating the exact words of a piece of writing, using quotation marks surrounding the quotation.
3. Rules for Integrating Evidence
When integrating evidence into your sentences clearly, there are some rules for using quotations in particular that are important to know. However, these rules can apply if you’re summarizing and paraphrasing as well:
- Quotation marks always go before and after a quotation.
- You can never change the author’s original meaning by removing important context or mischaracterizing the main point.
- You can quote a whole sentence or part of a sentence, and you don’t need to show that with ellipses (three little dots) on the outside.
- You can use ellipses on the inside of a quotation to replace a portion of the quotation that you don’t want to include, as long as you don’t change the meaning.
- You can use brackets to enclose your own words within the quotation, either to add pertinent information or to allow the author’s phrasing to fit into your grammatical structure better, as long as you don’t change the meaning.
- You must always cite your source by giving credit to the original author.
- It is best to use “quote sandwiches” and surround your information with your own words. If you are using a quote to emphasize a point and prove your argument, you need to begin by stating that argument. Then, you can use the quote as support. You can finish by explaining or elaborating on the quote, and relating it back to your argument. Your words are the bread, and the quote is the filling.
- For this reason, avoid beginning or ending a paragraph with a quote. An exception to this would be your introduction or perhaps your conclusion, if you want to begin or end with a meaningful quote for impact.
4. Citing Your Sources
A citation is an indication that words, ideas, or facts came from another source. This means simply giving credit where it’s due by making sure that you include the author’s name or the title of the original text among other details in your essay.
Specifically, citation format is the way academics, journalists, etc., choose to identify their sources. Citation formats include Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), and more.
Each of these citation formats is different and asks for slightly different information in a slightly different organizational structure, so it’s more important to understand the theory behind when and where to include citations than it is to memorize all of these formats.
For guidance on the specifics about each of these citation formats, the website Purdue OWL and the book Rules for Writers are great tools. The examples in this tutorial will be given in APA format.
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- Citation
- An indication that words, ideas, or facts came from another source.
- Citation Format
- The method through which academics, journalists, etc., choose to identify their sources, including the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), and other formats.
4a. Where to Cite
In an essay, you need to cite in two places:
- In a reference page
- Inside the text
Reference pages are also called bibliographies or works cited pages. They come at the end of an essay, and they include all of the relevant information about where you can find each book, article, movie, etc. that you’re citing, usually in alphabetical order by the author’s last name.
The goal of a reference page is to provide enough information that readers can find that source if they want to read it in full.
In-text citations come inside your essay after each paraphrase, summary, or quotation. They contain just a small amount of information, usually the author’s last name, and—depending on whether you’re quoting or paraphrasing—the page number where you got that information.
The goal of an in-text citation is to provide enough information that readers can look up that text in your reference page to find all the details they need.
4b. Citations in Practice
The most important thing to remember about citation is that it is necessary to always give credit where credit is due. If you are using ideas, words, or images that someone else came up with, you need to cite that person.
Lack of appropriate citation is called plagiarism, and it can have real consequences, both legally and academically.
Each citation format requires slightly different information in a slightly different organization, so it’s important to always refer to the unique rules of each form. Remember again that Purdue OWL is a great resource for checking out each format.
For in-text citations in APA style, you need:
- The author’s last name
- The year the text was published
- The number of the page where the quotation can be found
With an electronic source, you’re going to need the name of the author and the year that the website was made or last updated. Because this is an electronic source, it might not have page numbers. You can instead count the paragraphs and include that number. You put all this information in parentheses, and separate each piece of information with a comma:
As the study shows, “over half of people surveyed claimed they would take advantage of working from home if given the chance to do so by their employer” (Emerson, 2021, para. 2).
For the reference page in APA style, you need:
- The author’s full name
- The date of the source’s publication
- The title of the source
- The full web address, if applicable
- The publisher information, if applicable
You create a reference page that comes after your essay by putting in the author’s full last name, then a comma, and then the initial of the author’s first name. You put a period after this information. Then in parentheses, you put the date, again followed by another period.
Then, using italics (if the source is a book), you put in the title of the source and another period. Finally, you write “retrieved from” and enter the full web address or the publisher information. Notice that there’s no period at the end of the citation if a web address is provided:
If you have any other citations, they will need to be added in alphabetical order, like this:
Take a closer look at the second citation because it’s a little different from the first one. This second citation is for an online periodical, which is a different kind of source. You can see that the title of the article isn’t in italics because there’s another title in italics—the title of the journal that the article comes from. There’s also a volume number for the journal.
You probably also noticed that this second citation is long enough that it takes up more than one line in this document. In a reference page, you need to use what’s called a hanging indent, which indents any line after the first.
Each different kind of source also needs slightly different information, so again, always refer to your style guide for help.
In this lesson, you learned that evidence in writing is comprised of facts and details that support an argument, and can be either personal or researched. There are three ways of incorporating evidence in your writing: Summarizing is when you give a brief overview of the main points or ideas of a piece of writing without relying on specific details or language; paraphrasing is when you restate a passage in your own words, keeping the author’s original intent and meaning; quoting is when you repeat the exact words of a piece of writing, using quotation marks surrounding the quotation. You also reviewed how using this evidence in writing improves your problem solving skill.
You also learned that some important rules for integrating evidence, as well as the importance of citing your sources. When using someone else’s ideas, you must always give credit where credit is due; plagiarism has serious legal and academic consequences. In terms of where to cite your sources, you will need both in-text citations and a reference page. While there are many different citation formats, this tutorial looked at APA citations in practice. Different sources can require different information in their citations, so always consult your style guide if you’re unsure.
Best of luck in your learning!
