A large part of academic writing is a mixture of summarising, paraphrasing and quoting the work of others in order to build your own argument.

Summarising

When you summarise, you take only the most important points from a piece of writing and put these into your own words. The summarised text is always significantly shorter than the original text. For example, you could summarise an entire article in just a sentence or two.

Tips for summarising

Highlight important points in the original and just summarise these - omit minor details.
Always use your own words - even short phrases from the original should be included in quotation marks if they are verbatim.
Make it clear that you are summarising the work of others i.e. According to Smith ...; Smith further suggests that ..

Paraphrasing

This is similar to summarising in that you are putting things into your own words but you will be including more detail. Usually you are paraphrasing only a few sentences rather than whole articles.

Tips for paraphrasing

Read the text you are wanting to paraphrase, then close the book/turn over the paper and write it in your own words.
Consider rearranging the sentence structure and using some synonyms of key words (although just changing a few words is NOT paraphrasing).
Be aware of 'patchwriting' which is where you string together actual words from the original with your own - even short phrases from the original should be included in quotation marks if they are verbatim.

See our full page on Paraphrasing within our Referencing site for specific examples.

Quoting

Quoting the exact words of others is an important part of academic writing; it should, however, be used sparingly. If you use too many quotations within a piece of writing you lose the 'flow' of your own academic voice. It can also indicate that you do not understand the information enough to put it into your own words.

When to use a direct quotation

There are times when using an author's own words is important. Here are some examples:

When a new phrase is coined
When an old phrase is given a new meaning
When a concept is being defined
When the words have historic signficance
When the words are particularly well crafted and engaging
When it is important to give exact words as meanings can be ambiguous
When you need corroboration of a point you are making and an author's own words can lend more support to your argument.
When you're sure there is no better way to say it (if your own words can make the same point use those not a quotation)

Tips for quoting

If less than 20 words, put all the quoted words in double quotation marks and keep them within the main body of the text.
If more than 20 words, do not put in quotation marks and instead place the text in its own paragraph which should be indented by 1cm from each side and in single line spacing.
If you want to omit words from the middle of a quotation use an ellipses (...) to indicate where you have removed words.
If you need to add extra words into a quotation to make it make sense out of context, put these in square brackets i.e. [extra].
Always give the page number that you took the quotation from (unless it is from a website and no pages numbers are given).
If the author has made what appears to be a grammatical or spelling mistake in their writing put (sic) after the text to indicate you are aware of the error. (sic means 'as written').
If the author has emphasised words or if you wish to emphasise some of their words by putting them in italics or bold text make clear whether this was in the original or added by including (emphasis original) or (emphasis added) after the text.