Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarising

No matter whether you are writing an essay, dissertation, report, or thesis, you will collect a significant amount of information that you will need to refer to while you are writing. This information will help you to construct an argument and illustrate your ideas with examples.

When using information from sources written by other people you should adapt the information to suit your writing purposes. There are three ways to do this in your writing:

• Quoting directly: using the exact wording that another person has used. You should use quotation marks to enclose the direct quotation.
• Summarising: giving a short overview of something you have read, without specific details.
• Paraphrasing: expressing a section of someone else’s thinking in your own words.

In your writing at university, you will be encouraged to summarise and paraphrase more than you use direct quotations, as these show that you have thought about the ideas of another person and applied them to your context rather than simply copying them.

It is not disrespectful to adapt somebody else’s ideas within your work, as long as they are not misrepresented, and they are accurately referenced.  

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Study resource: Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarising resource

Whenever you use someone else’s ideas, you should ensure you reference these clearly to show where the information came from.

You can find further help with this in our resources on referencing.