162 – You, your language and your material
paragraphs. (Even less are they impressed by blocks of text downloaded directly into an essay from the internet. Never do this, unless
the material is primary evidence you wish to discuss.) Here is one
tutor’s comment on an essay that has quoted too much: ‘You quote
fairly extensively from different secondary sources but you allow
what they say to govern the drift of your essay to the point where
you can’t hold a consistent line of your own.’ If you quote excessively,
you are allowing the words of somebody else to choke off your own
chances of coming to understand and interpret the material. Your
essay cannot then be your own best answer.
You might most frequently be tempted to quote when you feel
you have not sufficiently understood the meaning of your material and
cannot find words of your own to express the idea. When this happens
you should try to adopt the approach to reading and note-taking set
out in chapter 3, particularly that in the section ‘Interpreting a difficult
text’. Your aim, as we saw there (pp. 87–8), is to create a ‘compound’
from elements of your own language and that of the sources you are
using.
When it comes to presenting straightforward facts or general,
uncontroversial information, there is rarely if ever any justification
for quoting from your sources. describing things, events and situations you will probably have practised more than any other kind
of writing. So even though you might at times find it difficult to
work out how best to describe coherently some complex set of events
and the relationships between them, you should nevertheless resist
the temptation to quote one more or less randomly chosen author’s
account.
The best justification for quoting is the presentation of such
primary data or evidence as you then go on to analyse, for example
experimental results, the answers to survey questions, a table of raw
figures or statistics, lines from a literary work, a statement from some
primary historical document. Quoting is a way of putting before your
reader the object to be discussed, just as you might get out a family
photograph to point to when some discussion about it takes place.
The views and interpretations of the writers of secondary
sources may be used in much the same way. We quote them not to
save us the bother of rendering their ideas in our own words, or
paragraphs. (Even less are they impressed by blocks of text downloaded directly into an essay from the internet. Never do this, unless
the material is primary evidence you wish to discuss.) Here is one
tutor’s comment on an essay that has quoted too much: ‘You quote
fairly extensively from different secondary sources but you allow
what they say to govern the drift of your essay to the point where
you can’t hold a consistent line of your own.’ If you quote excessively,
you are allowing the words of somebody else to choke off your own
chances of coming to understand and interpret the material. Your
essay cannot then be your own best answer.
You might most frequently be tempted to quote when you feel
you have not sufficiently understood the meaning of your material and
cannot find words of your own to express the idea. When this happens
you should try to adopt the approach to reading and note-taking set
out in chapter 3, particularly that in the section ‘Interpreting a difficult
text’. Your aim, as we saw there (pp. 87–8), is to create a ‘compound’
from elements of your own language and that of the sources you are
using.
When it comes to presenting straightforward facts or general,
uncontroversial information, there is rarely if ever any justification
for quoting from your sources. describing things, events and situations you will probably have practised more than any other kind
of writing. So even though you might at times find it difficult to
work out how best to describe coherently some complex set of events
and the relationships between them, you should nevertheless resist
the temptation to quote one more or less randomly chosen author’s
account.
The best justification for quoting is the presentation of such
primary data or evidence as you then go on to analyse, for example
experimental results, the answers to survey questions, a table of raw
figures or statistics, lines from a literary work, a statement from some
primary historical document. Quoting is a way of putting before your
reader the object to be discussed, just as you might get out a family
photograph to point to when some discussion about it takes place.
The views and interpretations of the writers of secondary
sources may be used in much the same way. We quote them not to
save us the bother of rendering their ideas in our own words, or