 Hi, this video will introduce you to how to successfully incorporate someone else's ideas into your work. To avoid plagiarizing, do you need to avoid using anybody else's work and just use your own thoughts? Definitely not. Writing academic research papers requires building on other people's writing and research. However, you need to let your readers know when you are building on someone else's ideas by citing them. There are several different ways you can incorporate another writer's work in your own, including paraphrasing or putting someone else's ideas into your own words, using direct quotations, and summarizing ideas. Let's say you're working on a paper about Beyonce and her influence. You do some thinking and you write a paragraph about what you already know about Beyonce based on your own thoughts and words. When you do some research and find more information about Beyonce's influence from experts who write about her, now you want to incorporate their work into your own paper. For example, in reading at last Michelle Obama, Beyonce, Race and History, you come upon a list of black artists and musicians followed by this passage, which you really thought stood out to you as relevant to your paper. Rather than directly quoting it, you might choose to paraphrase the sentiment in your own words and still give credit to the author. Let's say you then find a statement or reading check on it that you feel really captures why Beyonce is an important figure to explore in feminist studies, so you directly quote it because you feel like it needs to be said in the author's exact words. In another instance, you might choose to summarize a whole paper, such as this one by Railton and Watson, that focuses on Beyonce's performance of black femininity in music videos. Sometimes you'll use a signal phrase, such as according to, to let your reader know that you're referencing other people's research. As you can see, your paper would be a blend of your own ideas and the research and opinions of other experts in the field. Whenever you use other people's ideas and words, you need a brief, intact citation to give the reader a quick glance at who is being referenced. Then you need to include a full citation at the end of the paper and a reference or works cited list. If you have questions about how to incorporate someone else's ideas into your writing, you can ask your instructor or ask a librarian.