Secondary sources include monographic studies, book chapters, journal articles, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, dictionaries and textbooks. They also include sources that, conventionally, have not been considered acceptable for an academic project such as a final project in a bachelor’s or master’s degree; this includes sources such as SparkNotes, blog posts (unless these come from a reliable source that discusses a topic in an academic manner) and Wikipedia, rightly or wrongly. You should always consult your tutor or supervisor before making use of this material.

Just as with primary sources, you should try to follow these guidelines in the humanities:

• Avoid lengthy citation, which will distract from your own text and make it appear less important. Again, summarizing is more effective if you need to refer to a substantial amount of text.
  
  
• Ensure the grammatical coherence of the citation that you use, if it is incorporated into your sentence.  
  
  
• Fully indicate any modification that you make to the cited source.
  
  
• Provide complete bibliographical reference.
  
  
• Ensure that all citations are correctly formatted.
  
  
• Except for sources that are of major and ongoing importance to your field, ensure that your sources are as contemporary as possible. (See Writing critically and consult your tutor or supervisor.)

As we have seen, using secondary sources is an essential procedure in a discussion. It allows you to express your ideas in the context of a broader critical debate and is a fundamental part of assessing and analysing the material that you will use in forwarding your own ideas.

But you need to make sure that your use of these sources does not cause your own point of view to disappear. This material supports your writing; it does not replace it. Remember that your discussion is being written in accordance with your final project question, which is the dominant idea. Secondary material is supplementary to this and, however important it is to contextualize your opinions in light of other work, you should avoid giving excessive space to this material. Ultimately, it is your work that needs highlighting most.  

Additionally, using secondary sources requires you to establish a balance in the material used. If you are citing sources that directly support your main ideas, you need to counter this by citing sources that present distinct opinions. If you discuss and analyse one source in depth, you need to do the same for the other sources you use.  

Above all, you need to avoid as much as possible the dependency on a single critical source or, indeed, on only a few. This would weaken your own critical writing and would also give the impression that you have not sufficiently researched the literature.  

On the other hand, the relevant, well-selected and balanced use, analysis and interpretation of secondary sources will not only provide support to your own ideas, it will also help to give your readers the idea that your writing makes a contribution to the ongoing debate within your field of study. As a result, it will ensure that your views are given fuller attention and respect.