Evaluating your source material

Remember that a good assignment is more than just a series of quotations patched together, no matter how impressive or relevant your selection of source material. You need to do something with the quotations in order to indicate your critical evaluation of the topic under discussion and the research material you have incorporated. Some of the strategies you can use include:

• a variety of weak or strong author orientation
• a thoughtful use of reporting verbs

Weak author orientation

You may choose not to include the source's name in your sentence, perhaps because it is an idea you consider relatively general, or because you want to move to a more important point. You still need to support this idea with a citation in your footnote, but the author's name is not referred to in the body of your text.

Strong author orientation

This is generally used when we want to emphasise who said something. Generally, you use this technique when the point made is very characteristic of the author, or when you want to strongly acknowledge the particular source of an idea or judgement. For instance:

Brogan and Spencer stress the importance of maintaining 'intellectual integrity' when writing for assessment tasks in your legal education.

In Jefferys v Boosey, Erle J described the subject of literary property as 'the order of words in the author's composition'.

Introducing quotes

There are a number of reporting verbs that are commonly used in academic writing to introduce quotations. For example:

adds, affirms, agrees, argues, assumes, challenges, claims, clarifies, confirms, considers, contends, describes, disagrees, discusses, explains, highlights, observes, points out, proves, refutes, says, shows, states, stresses, suggests, supports, underlines, questions

Your choice of reporting verb can indicate your evaluation of the literature or research you are using. Consider carefully every time that you lead into a quote or discuss the idea of another writer, as your choice of verb can not only enrich your own writing, but add a crucial element of good academic writing - critical evaluation of your research.

Some reporting words imply a fairly neutral evaluation:

Brogan and Spencer report that university law schools are quite similar when it comes to the type of law graduates they produce.

Brogan and Spencer point out that university law schools are quite similar when it comes to the type of law graduates they produce.

Others imply some sort of evaluation of the literature in relation to other opinions. For example, the word 'claim' or 'suggest' sets up an expectation that you, or other sources, might support or reject that opinion:

Brogan and Spencer claim that university law schools are quite similar when it comes to the type of law graduates they produce.

Verb tense

Referring or reporting verbs can be used in either the present or the past tense. It is probably best to use the present tense for recent sources or when you feel that the idea is still valid, for instance:

Ralston demonstrates the expanded research potential offered by online law databases.

The past tense suggests that the source is older, or that the ideas are perhaps out of date:

The 1999 Act dealt with four types of offences.

Walker considered the Dewey decimal system a great leap forward for library archives.

Of course, when you quote from or discuss cases, you should refer to them in the past tense. For example:

The judge decided...
The defendant argued that...

Avoiding plagiarism