Quoting Myself

As I have progressed through school and have been asked to write increasingly complex and long research papers, I have had to learn how to integrate and document my sources into my writing in an effective and non-disruptive manner. I have found that the easiest way for me to do this has usually been to use a lead in citation such as “In Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss says…”. I think this is because when I was growing up I was given two options to cite sources, either a lead in citation or a parenthetical citation. I felt that parenthetical citations, at least initially, gave my readers more information and meshed with my writing in a smoother manner. Through reading Chapter 7 of the Bedford Book of Genres, I learned how useful paraphrasing and summarizing could be in solving my problems. My issue with simply quoting sources had always been that sometimes they didn’t fit exactly into my writing with mismatches in tense, general tone, and unneeded information. As the Bedford Book of Genres says, “You may decide not to quote because you don’t want too many competing voices in your piece.” This phrase sums up why I feel that paraphrasing and summarizing can be very useful to me going forward.