Notes

Placing Evidence in the Text
Authors use quotations, paraphrases, and summaries as vehicles to get original information into a text as evidence. Authors use each type of evidence for specific reasons, and they carefully decide which kind of evidence to use in each case.

Quotations are the exact words found in a work. Authors directly quote a source when they feel that the original words are so succinct or so stylistically unique that it is important for them to keep the words intact.
Paraphrases are restatements of part of the original work. When authors paraphrase something, they use their own words and writing style but retain the meaning and length of the original information. Authors paraphrase when they want to incorporate the source material into their own texts seamlessly. The paraphrase is roughly the same length as the original segment because the details as well as the central idea are included.
Summaries are statements about the central ideas of the larger work. Authors summarize something when they want to retain only the central ideas of the source and to use their own words and writing style.
Understanding the kinds of evidence that support central ideas is important when you are reading and writing informational texts. An important writing skill is how to distinguish between information that is or is not valuable to your text’s central idea or claim.

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Central Ideas in Informational Text

Why Include Evidence?
No matter what kind of media authors use, they want their readers to believe their central ideas and perhaps be convinced to think differently about or to act upon what they are presenting. Providing readers with profound or engaging central ideas is a great start, but central ideas by themselves just do not carry enough power.

Evidence gives additional power to the point authors are making or to the claim being argued. If authors do not include evidence, the central idea or point remains too abstract or general, and readers cannot act upon or believe this central idea or point. Look at this example of evidence from “Video Games in the Age of Cell Phones.” The central idea the author is supporting is that mobile games make a lot of money.

The puzzle game Candy Crush Saga, which is essentially just a candy-themed knockoff of the old warhorse Bejeweled, takes in $922,968 every day, on average, according to the app-data site Think Gaming.

Before reading the evidence, each reader likely has an individual notion of how much “a lot of money” is. The author has provided readers with much clearer evidence—the actual dollar amount—as support for this central idea. That dollar figure has come from the source Think Gaming, which the author defines as an app-data website.

Evidence: Types, Sources, and Reasons
Just because authors provide evidence in their informational texts does not automatically guarantee that the evidence is high quality. As a reader of informational texts, you are the one responsible for locating the evidence in a text and for evaluating it before you believe and act upon the claim that the evidence is attempting to support.

What Are Types of and Sources for Evidence?
Types of evidence are many and varied. Look at the categories:

Example: from history, from current events, from pop culture
Testimony, opinion: from an expert, from an eyewitness
Anecdote (small story): from history, from a person
Facts, statistics, data: from reputable, unbiased sources
What do the different types look like in a text? Read this excerpt from “Video Games in the Age of Cell Phones.”

More than 100,000 new iPhone and iPad games were uploaded to Apple’s App Store last year—upwards of 500 a day, by some estimates. There were puzzle games, role-playing games, strategy games, shoot-’em-ups, sports games, quizzes, war games, word games. Some were good. Some were bad. Some were truly terrible. The vast majority of them went unnoticed and sold poorly if at all.

Notice the data, a type of evidence, in the form of numbers that the author supplies as well as the examples, another type of evidence, of the different kinds of games that were uploaded.

Now look at another excerpt from the same article:

Mobile games aren’t like the older generation. A blockbuster triple-A console game like, say, a Call of Duty or an Assassin’s Creed can take dozens of people years to create, on a budget of $100 million or more. But mobile games are so much smaller and less complex, you can make one by yourself, for peanuts, in your bedroom. Doodle Jump was created by two brothers, Igor and Marko Pusenjak, over three months in 2009; as of 2013, the last time Apple released figures, it was the third most downloaded paid app of all time. Tiny Wings was coded by a self-taught German programmer, and it hit No. 1 in 88 countries.

This excerpt includes a good amount of data, and it includes two major examples. Doodle Jump and Tiny Wings are examples of how easy it is to create a mobile game.

Finally, look at another excerpt from the same article. In this anecdote, which is another kind of evidence, the author is talking about himself.

Speaking personally, the pleasure of playing Two Dots has been a significant impediment to the task of actually writing about Two Dots. I’m currently on Level 322.

Authors of informational texts search within a number of sources when looking for support for their ideas or claims. Places to locate evidence are as varied as the types. Examples are university studies, experts, news magazines, websites, history, interviews, eyewitnesses, and a person’s own memory.

What Are Reasons for Using One Type of Evidence over Another?
No one type of evidence is fundamentally better than another, and so authors use one type of evidence rather than another for various reasons. Authors decide on what types of evidence to use after considering the topic, the audience for it, and the purpose or reason for writing about it.

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Writing an Objective Summary: Introduction

Evidence: Relevance, Sufficiency, and Validity
No matter what the type of, source for, or reason for the evidence, consider these three important criteria when evaluating evidence:

Relevance: Is the evidence the author uses directly connected or closely related to the point or claim it is supposed to support?
When something is relevant, that means it is pertinent or applicable to the matter at hand. For evidence to be relevant, it must relate directly to and be appropriate for the central idea it supports.
Sufficiency: Is there adequate evidence to support the claim or point being made?
When something is sufficient, that means there is an adequate amount. For evidence to be sufficient, there must be enough of it to cover completely the idea or point it supports.
Validity: Does the evidence the author uses have sound reasoning as its foundation?
The validity of evidence is often an issue in the context of research studies. When a university group or scholarly organization is conducting a research study, the conclusion that it reaches is said to be valid if it is connected to what the group or organization set out to study, or if it actually measures what it set out to measure. Sometimes, a study’s conclusion or results may not reflect a solid connection to the study itself. While the conclusion may be interesting, it is not considered valid. Additionally, the credibility of the institution that is conducting the study needs to be considered, as does the purpose for the study and its primary audience.