How do you quote, set off, or paraphrase when citing text evidence?

Citing text evidence in plain words

Text evidence means words taken from the text you are writing about. You bring them into a paragraph in one of three ways, and each way carries a citation.

• Quotation. The author's exact words, inside quotation marks. Use it when the wording itself is the point, and keep it short.
• Block quotation. A long quotation set off on its own as an indented block, with no quotation marks around it. Style guides set their own length, so follow yours.
• Paraphrase. The idea in your own words, with a citation at the end. Use it when you want to explain a line instead of repeating it.

All three need the in-text citation: the author and the page, in parentheses, in the general form (Author page). Without it a reader has to guess where the words came from.

Choosing the evidence is a step of its own. Good evidence is relevant to the claim, specific enough to show it, taken from the text, and followed by your own sentence explaining it.

ETS lists using appropriate information when citing text evidence from literary or informational texts among the topics for the Reading & Writing subtest (5758).

Why a paraeducator uses this in class

You often read a student's draft first, and that is where an answer with no evidence behind it shows up. The three ways turn that into steps, and they give you two things to check later: a paraphrase that stayed so close to the original that it is a quotation with the marks left off, and a quotation that arrived with no citation behind it and nothing that says what it proves.

Worked example

Tessa's claim is that the repair booth charged nothing. Here is a short piece by Marian Oyelaran that supports it:

1. Choose the evidence first. The claim is about money, so the sentence about payment is the one that supports it, not the list of repairs.
2. Quote it. The words that carry the claim are these: "He turned down payment for every job" (Oyelaran 14). Add a sentence of your own after it: the booth gave away its work.
3. Or paraphrase it. To restate the idea without copying the wording: Nobody paid for any of the repairs that day (Oyelaran 14). A paraphrase still needs the citation, because the idea still belongs to the author.
4. Or block it. When the passage is too long to fit inside a sentence of your own, set the whole quotation off as an indented block with no quotation marks, and put the citation at the end of the block.

   Alan Bridge, a retired mill worker, ran the repair booth and fixed a kettle, a wheelchair and a child's clarinet before lunch. He turned down payment for every job and said the fair was the one place where asking for help did not cost anybody anything. (Oyelaran 14)

5. Cite the page the words are really on. The two sentences above sit on page 14. Restate a sentence from the next page and that page is the one you cite.

Practice questions

Continue learning

• Credible sources: find something worth citing.
• Paragraph development: where the citation sits.
• Editing and proofreading: where a close paraphrase shows up.

Try it on a full practice test

Once the three ways feel familiar, work through the free ParaPathways practice test.

Our study book covers every skill on both subtests, in English and Spanish.