Using Textual Evidence

Whether you are writing a research paper or an essay, you will need to give textual evidence to support what you are writing. Textual evidence can be a summary, a paraphrase, or a direct quotation. When doing this, you must always identify the source of your information.

• Summarizing is taking a longer section of text and putting it into your own words in a much shorter form, highlighting the main points of what you read.

• Paraphrasing is taking a shorter section of text and re-wording it so that it is in your own words. It may be shorter than the original.

• Specific details are an exact word or words that you took from the source that are somewhat unique to that source or are used to make your point. 

• Quotations are an exact wording taken directly, word-for-word, from the text. This can be a longer section, but is usually no more than three or four lines.

No matter which way you use the source information, it must be cited! If an idea is not your own, or is not something that is widely known, you should tell the reader where the idea - summary, paraphrase, or quote - came from. Below is some information about how to include the evidence in your work. Information about how to do citations can be found here.

Use reputable sources! If you are using external sources (that is, not just referring to a work you have studied or read in class), it is important to make sure that the sources you use for your evidence are reliable. Using information that AI gives to you is not reputable! Go to the source and look at that. Is it an online journal article? An online news article? Are those particular sources considered reliable? Are there peer-reviewed articles that you can find on your subject? Here is a useful reference for evaluating your sources.

Whenever you use a direct quote, you need to put the words in quotation marks. 

You should have some phrases before or after your textual evidence that explain the relevance of the evidence to the point you are trying to make in your paragraph or in your essay as a whole.

Quotations should be introduced within your text with a lead-in or signal phrase. The phrase may tell the reader who said the quote or it may demonstrate why you are using this quote.

Here are some of the different ways that quotes can be included in your text:

1. Set off with a comma just as you do with dialogue.
   The reader senses that Miss Temple is concerned for Helen when she asks, "Have you coughed much to-day?" (72).

2. Built into the words of your sentence as if the quoted words are part of your sentence.
   Hurston describes Janie as feeling “far away from things and lonely” to show that Janie is still unhappy (46).

3. Set off with a colon if the introductory line is a complete, stand-alone sentence.
   Jane begins to notice the special attention that Miss Temple is giving Helen: “[I]t was Helen her eye followed to the door; it was for her she a second time breathed a sad sigh” (74).

Below is an example of paraphrased textual evidence that still needs a citation:

Miss Temple's concern for Helen's health is apparent when she asks Helen how she feels and in the way she pays special attention to Helen (72).