Framing summarized source material in your paragraphs...

When you write a summary of one of your sources, you need to use proper in-text citation or else you are committing plagiarism. Here is an example of a framing technique used to introduce and end your summary. You frame the summarized material between a signal phrase and the parenthetical in-text citation. I'll write this example in APA style.

you:                     Far fewer women enter computer programming as a career than men. Visit any
signal          computer  sciences department and the disparity will be obvious. According to 
phrase:        Laura Sydell's NPR report (2013) "Blazing the Trail for Female Programmers," 
summary:    female programmers make up only 20% of their field. However, women entrepreneurs
                  who head computer companies are attempting to change the situation. They say that 
                  it is crucial to insist on a diverse hiring pool when dealing with recruiting firms. 
                  Interest in the field is growing among women, too, as evidenced by high enrollment in 
                  workshops like Rails Bridge. An added incentive is that the field can be ideal for 
citation:       women who are raising families and need flexible scheduling (Sydell, 2013). Thus, 
you:            there are many reasons why the gender imbalance in computer programming may 
                  change in the future.   

Why use library databases instead of just googling?

While it is possible to find legitimate sources of research through googling or using other web search engines, the truth is that doing so doesn't make the student's life easier! Yes, at first it is more comfortable to google because it's a familiar tool whereas library databases are foreign countries. However, when it comes to finding legitimate sources and then documenting them on a works cited page, random internet searching becomes a student's worst nightmare.

First, most students don't know what makes a source legitimate; they will use anything that looks good and says what they want to hear. But anyone can post stuff on the web that sounds legit. Here's a question: Would you ask a stranger on the street what to feed your newborn? No way. But if you want more information on global warming, too often you might just look at the first ten entries on a search engine and call that fact. The point of using library databases for legitimate research is that the articles' authors have somebody holding them accountable; a newpaper or magazine has a reputation to uphold, and better yet, a scholarly journal's article is peer reviewed by other experts in the author's field. So, if you use a source from a library database, you know your teacher will be fine with it.

Second, most library databases give you the correct citation for the source! WOW! The database will have a "cite this" or "citation" link next to your article. Set it on MLA or APA or whatever citation method is required, click, and BLAM! it gives you the citation. Then you can highlight it, copy it (press control + C), go to your works cited page, paste it (control + V), and you've saved yourself a ton of headache. If you googled your sources, citing them correctly is difficult because you must find the author if it has one, the title, the website title, the sponsor, and the date posted. There is no consistency of documentation on the web and most students have no idea how to document sources anyway, so they botch their works cited page and run the risk of flunking the class due to plagiarism.

Tackling MLA citation

So...you've been told to use MLA citation including in-text citation and a works cited page. My suggestion is to first create your works cited page, listing all the sources that you expect to quote or summarize in your paper. Doing the works cited page first makes doing in-text citation easy. In any case, a works cited page will take time to create, so don't think you can put it together at the last minute. When you find sources, be sure to print them or bookmark them on your laptop; you will need to be able to find them again because often you think you know what type of source you have, when actually you're guessing and have guessed wrongly. A librarian, tutor, or writing teacher can help you identify exactly what kind of source you've chosen to use, and how to document it. To create the works cited entries, I like to google Purdue OWL MLA for their user-friendly guide that has clear examples. Also, see my suggestion to research on library databases which often give you the correct citation for the sources you choose.

The secret to in-text citation

Most papers written for English classes or the humanities require MLA citation. That means you'll have to create a works cited page as well as in-text citation for the sources you used. You may already know that in-text citation means putting some words inside parentheses after sentences in your paper that have used a source for information. But here is where people get creative. They don't know what goes in the parentheses, so the fortunate ones put the web address or part of the title, hoping that will be OK. The unfortunate folks don't put anything and then can't remember where the quote or summary came from! By all means, please put anything temporarily into those parentheses that reminds you of the source. This will save you time and effort because you won't have to hunt desperately later. However, if you want to put the correct thing inside the parentheses, here's the secret. Create your works cited page first, listing all your sources in correct MLA style. Then, whatever the first word is in that source's entry (the word that will hit the left margin, since all other lines for that entry will be indented), that's the word that goes in the in-text parentheses, plus a page number for the quote/summary if it has one. Also, keep any punctuation consistent. An author's last name will simply look like (Prill 36), but if there is no author and the first word is an article's title, then keep the quotes around it like ("Secret" 36) and drop any "The" or "A" that begins it.