Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [202]
5. Use square brackets to alter or add information within a quotation. Sometimes it is necessary to change the wording slightly inside a quotation to maintain fluency. Square brackets indicate that you are altering the original quotation. Brackets are also used when you insert explanatory information, such as a definition or example, within a quotation. Here are a few examples that alter the original quotations previously cited.
According to one music critic, the cultural relevance of Radiohead is evident in “the album ‘OK Computer’ … [which] pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person’s panicky embrace of it” (Ross 85).
Popular music has always “[challenged] the mores of the older generation,” according to Nick Hornby (168).
Note that both examples respect the original sense of the quotation; they have changed the wording only to integrate the quotations gracefully within the writer’s own sentence structure.
E. Preparing an Abstract
There is one more skill essential to research-based writing that we need to discuss: how to prepare an abstract. The aim of the nonevaluative summary of a source known as an abstract is to represent a source’s arguments as fairly and accurately as possible, not to critique them. Learning how to compose an abstract according to the conventions of a given discipline is a necessary skill for academic researched writing. Because abstracts differ in format and length among disciplines, you should sample some in the reference section of your library or via the Internet to provide you with models to imitate. Some abstracts, such as those in Dissertation Abstracts, are very brief—less than 250 words. Others may run as long as two pages.
Despite disciplinary differences, abstracts by and large follow a generalizable format. The abstract should begin with a clear and specific explanation of the work’s governing thesis (or argument). In this opening paragraph, you should also define the work’s purpose, and possibly include established positions that it tries to refine, qualify, or argue against. What kind of critical approach does it adopt? What are its aims? On what assumptions does it rest? Why did the author feel it necessary to write the work—that is, what does he or she believe the work offers that other sources don’t? What shortcomings or misrepresentations in other criticism does the work seek to correct? (For specifics on writing abstracts in the Natural Sciences, see Chapter 16, Introductions and Conclusions Across the Curriculum.)
You won’t be able to produce detailed answers to all of these questions in your opening paragraph, but in trying to answer some of them in your note-taking and drafting, you should find it easier to arrive at the kind of concise, substantive, and focused overview that the first paragraph of your abstract should provide. Also, be careful not to settle for bland, all-purpose generalities in this opening paragraph. And if you quote there, keep the selections short, and remember that quotations don’t speak for themselves.
In summary, your aim in the first paragraph is to define the source’s particular angle of vision and articulate its main point or points, including the definition of key terms used in its title or elsewhere in its argument.
Once you’ve set up this overview of the source’s central position(s), you should devote a paragraph or so to the source’s organization (how it divides its subject into parts) and its method (how it goes about substantiating its argument). What kind of secondary material does the source use? That is, how do its own bibliographic citations cue you to its school of thought, its point of view, its research traditions?
Your concluding paragraph should briefly recount some of the source’s conclusions (as related to, but not necessarily the same as, its thesis). In what way does it go about culminating its argument? What kind of significance does it claim for its position?