4.A Attribution, Citation, and Acknowledging Others' Work (CLE-1.N)

A writer who names sources isn't borrowing strength from someone else, they're showing they've read widely enough to place their own thesis among real voices. Attribution tells a reader exactly which claims are the writer's own thinking and which ones come from elsewhere, so the writer's original move, the synthesis itself, stands out clearly instead of getting mistaken for someone else's finding.

Attribution works by tracing a piece of text back to its owner no matter how much of the original language survives. A direct quotation keeps the source's exact words, in quotation marks, credited by name. A paraphrase keeps the source's idea or finding but puts it entirely in the writer's own words and sentence structure, still credited. A summary compresses a whole argument or report down to a line or two, still credited. All three owe credit because what's borrowed is the idea or data, not the specific words carrying it.

This is why attribution sits right next to the synthesis skill of placing a thesis among sources: a writer mapping agreement and disagreement between Source A, B, and C has to mark, sentence by sentence, which claims belong to which node in that conversation. Blending attribution smoothly into a sentence, rather than dumping it in a clunky aside, lets the writer keep control of their own voice while still being honest about where each piece of evidence came from.