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Citation Help: Chicago Citations

Paraphrase or Summarize

If you want to use an idea but not quote it, you can restate it in your own words.

Make sure what you write is not too similar to the author's wording.

For example:

Jowers asserts that guard llamas are an effective way for a shepherd to protect sheep.2

Some argue that guard llamas are an effective tool in protecting a flock of sheep.2

Either way you need to place an endnote after the paraphrase.

What to Cite?

Ideas, facts, or passages of text that you found in a source all need to be cited.

You can either

Paraphrase an idea or fact by putting it in your own words,

or

Quote a source by using the author's exact words in your paper.

Either way you must give credit to the source you found the idea in!

Quoting a Source

If you use the author's exact words, you need to put them in quotation marks, and place your footnote after the quotation marks.

For example:

He stated, "At this point the concealed enemy emerged."4

If you want to quote an entire paragraph or many sentences word for word, do a block quote. You do not need to use quotation marks in a block quote, but you do need to indent the entire quote.

Here is an example.

Beckman writes that:

There is a whisper of evidence to suggest that, of all the improbability involved, a group of Roman legionnaires ended up settling in western China after the defeat of Crassus. No artifacts or grave goods have been found, but the people in the region in question have some unusual physical characteristics that suggest partially non-Han Chinese ancestry. Many of the modern inhabitants themselves claim descent from Roman soldiers.8

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