Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Attribution -- Paraphrases Are Not Quotes

Many of you stumbled on this example:

"People think we make $3 million or $5 million a year." They don't realize most athletes make only $500,000, the ballplayer said.

What some of you did was change the second part of that statement into a quote. But it was not a quote. It was a paraphrase. Turning it into a quote was inaccurate. What you should have done was package a quote and paraphrase together, along something like these lines:

"People think we make $3 million or $5 million a year" and don't realize most athletes make only $500,000, the ballplayer said.
Be sure not to confuse quotes with paraphrases.

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