Integrating and Documenting Sources

In the seventh chapter of the Bedford Book of Genres, “Integrating and Documenting Sources”, the authors explain all the must-knows about the correct way of utilizing sources and when to do so. Having read this chapter will be extremely helpful for my second and third project. Before reading this, I was not very aware of the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing. Instead, I used the terms interchangeably. Now I know that paraphrasing uses all the details and arguments provided by the original author, while summarizing only finds the main ideas of a piece of writing. When obtaining information from a source, in addition, I would usually quote what I wanted to reference. Chapter seven justified that using paraphrasing and/or summarizing is sometimes a much better alternative, which I will now take into consideration. Lastly, the information in this chapter will help me avoid plagiarizing. As the authors say, many writers plagiarize unintentionally; I have probably done so myself at some point in the past. More than anything, I have always had problems with what information is considered general knowledge or not. After reading this, however, I will definitely be more careful when using external information, and how I use it. I will use this chapter for future reference in my writings.