======= Date Modified 14 Aug 2012 23:53:32 =======
I'm not sure if I'm doing this correctly; lets say that I have this paper talking about X. Although X does overlap with my research work, I'm only interested with a tiny amount of what they are mentioning, and that tiny amount of material is not the real theme of X; lets call it a.1. The real topic of X would be X.1, X.2, X.3, etc

Can I cite a.1 and mention something like this,
"According to [X], a.1 ... "

Would this be ok? I'm worried that some people will say; "NO! X did not say that, the whole idea of the paper is X1, X2 and X3. You have to look at the paper as bla bla bla".

Would I face such things? :-(

======= Date Modified 15 Aug 2012 02:09:33 =======
======= Date Modified 15 Aug 2012 02:09:14 =======
I am the master of taking quotations out of context and using them for my evil deeds. As long as you have a general idea about the overall argument of the article that a.1 comes, and the quotation is minutely linked to the argument of that article, then you're fine. Once you discover the wonders of the mid-sentence ellipsis that magically makes any quotation totally back up your point, there will be no stopping you.

agree with LD - I'll cite if they have 1 sentence that says something vaguely similar to what I wanted. I might choose not to say "according to..." though, I might just say "a.1 is awesome (X, 2012)"