60 4.3 Speaking Freely and ethically
decide to use any of the following in your speech, you must give credit to the
source:
• Direct quotations, even if they are only brief phrases
• Opinions, assertions, or ideas of others, even if you paraphrase them rather
than quote them verbatim
• Statistics
• Any nonoriginal visual materials, including graphs, tables, and pictures
To be able to acknowledge your sources, you must first practice careful and
systematic note-taking. Indicate with quotation marks any phrases or sentences
that you photocopy, copy by hand, or electronically cut and past verbatim from
a source, and be sure to record the author, title, publisher or Web site, publica-
tion date, and page numbers for all sources from which you take quotations,
ideas, statistics, or visual materials.
CitE SoUrCES CorrECtLy In addition to keeping careful records of your
sources, you must know how to cite sources for your audience, both orally and
in writing. Perhaps you have heard a speaker say, “Quote,” while holding up
both hands with index and middle fingers curved to indicate quotation marks.
Such air quotes are an artificial and distracting way to cite a source. As shown in
the How To box, an oral citation can be integrated more smoothly into a speech.
You can also provide a written citation for a source. In fact, your public-
speaking instructor may ask you to provide a bibliography of sources along
with the outline or other written materials he or she requires for each speech.
Instructors who require a bibliography will usually specify the format in which
they want the citations; if they do not, you can use a style guide such as those
published by the MLA (Modern Language Association) or the APA (American
Psychological Association), both of which are available online as well as in tradi-
tional print format. On the next page is an example of a written citation in MLA
format for the source cited orally in the earlier example. Notice that the citationIncorporate an Oral Citation into Your Speech
On a 2013 Web page titled “Bed Bugs,” the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
outlines three problems caused by bedbug
infestations:“property loss, expense, and inconve-
nience.”HOW TO
Provide the date.
Specify the type of resource.
Give the title.
Provide the author or source.
Pause briefly to signal that you are about to
begin quoting.
Quote the source.Pause again to indicate that you are ending
the quoted passage.