USING QUOTATIONS A guide to improving quote use in essays.

Why use quotations?  To demonstrate familiarity with a text.  To emphasize a point you wish to make. Most Importantly:  To provide direct evidence supporting your claim.

The Quotation Sandwich  No matter what kind of quote you use, there is a single rule you should always follow: all quotes must be put into a sandwich.  What this means is that before you begin your quote, you need to introduce it (the first part of the sandwich). Introducing it lets the reader know what is coming and why it is important to consider.  Then you get the quote itself. Quote and cite as normal. This is the ‘meat’ of the quote.  Finally, you have to spend some time explaining your quote and helping your reader understand what was useful about it, finishing the sandwich. This means that you should ALMOST NEVER end a paragraph with a quotation.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Quoting can be done in a number of ways, but in all cases it can be done well or poorly. Here’s some tips to help you do it well.  Good quotes:  Are properly cited.  Are directly relevant to the material discussed.  Do not contain (much) extraneous/unnecessary material.  Follow the quote sandwich rules.  Bad Quotes:  Lack proper citation.  Are irrelevant to the current material or only a little relevant.  Contain a lot of material that isn’t discussed or mentioned.  Lack either an appropriate intro or analysis before & after them.

What kinds of Quotes Are There?  Block Quotes – Big sections of text.  ‘Full’ Quotes – A full line of text.  ‘Integrated’ Quotes – Partial lines inside your own sentences.

Block Quote Rules  When you choose to block quote, you suggest that everything you quote is important. If you don’t end up using most of what you quote, you are cheating the reader—only do it if you intend to use nearly everything you quote.  Block quotes are set off from the rest of the text, single-spaced, and indented with a single tab throughout. Often they are introduced with a colon.  They use a single citation in a style of your choice. Just remember to be consistent.  If you use lineated text (poetry or some plays), you need to maintain the lineation.

Block Quote Example …the relationship between Othello and Desdemona is made more clear by his initial reaction to her upon their meeting in Cyprus: It gives me wonder great as my content To see you here before me. O my soul’s joy, If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have wakened death (p. 163, lines ) Several metaphors present themselves here, and despite Othello’s immediate happiness as evidenced by his wonder and joy, we jump directly into storms and death. This… You can see here how the material before and after is double-spaced, but the block quote is set off with indentations and follows the lineation of the play. The following analysis picks up on everything in the quote.

Using Ellipses to Edit Quotes  Often when quoting there is a lot of useful stuff you want to use but a lot of junk between the parts that you need.  In those cases, you can cut out some of the material using an ellipsis—the three periods in a row: …  As an example, we could cut the following quote down to something more manageable:  “I put on my clothes, summer clothes, it’s still summer; it seems to have stopped at summer. July, its breathless days and sauna nights, hard to sleep. I make a point of keeping track” (p. 227)  “I put on my clothes…it’s still summer…July, its breathless days and sauna nights…I make a point of keeping track” (p. 227).  Here a lot of the redundancy or repetition is cut out, indicating that the repeated phrases will not be the central focus of the quote. Instead, there is a focus on the clothes, the feeling of the time, and the need to know it.

‘Full’ Quote Rules  Again, whatever you quote is expected to be used. Use a full quote only if you intend to handle most if not all of the material you use.  ‘Full’ quotes can be part of sentences, set off with commas, or can be set off with a colon at the end of a sentence if necessary.  They take a single citation in a style of your choosing, just remember to be consistent. Remember that you close the quote, but put the punctuation after the parentheses.  When dealing with lineated texts, use a slash to separate the lines.

‘Full’ Quote Example …as Iago continues to manipulate Othello, who grows more and more frustrated. Iago dances around the issue, causing Othello to grow concerned and frustrated: “Good name in man and woman, my dear lord, / Is the immediate jewel of their souls” (p. 198, lines ). Iago brings up the “name” of a person, referring to the honor of their good name, and ties this to the soul, making a claim that there is a tie between a honor and the afterlife—that whatever he is hiding, it wrecks honor and may also be a great sin… Here you can see the full quote inside the text. There is a slash separating the lines from the originally lineation, and the quote is introduced, quoted, and then analyzed. The quote is being used thoroughly, and more is coming.

‘Integrated’ Quote Rules  This is often the best way to quote a text, since it uses just the parts of the text that you need.  Integrate the quote right into your sentence—use quotes and a citation, but just fit it right in as best you can.  If you need to alter a statement to fit the grammar and syntax of a sentence you are writing, you can use brackets to add words or alter them—just maintain the original spirit of the text.

‘Integrated’ Quote Example …color metaphors. Atwood uses the color red regularly, and not just for outfits; in a trip to the Wall, Offred notices the color of the blood there, a “red [which] is the same but there is no connection” (p. 44). The ‘same’-ness is with that of Serena Joy’s tulips—and Offred’s dress, though she does not mention this. Offred’s insistence that there is no connection may be a case of protesting too much, as the blood on the wall and the tulips are both reminiscent of life. Perhaps a life caged and controlled, but life nonetheless, and as that caging and controlling is something she hates, she may be resisting the connections because she doesn’t wish to see herself reflected in them… Here the quote works directly into the sentence, with the introduction opening the spot and a long analysis following it. The quote has a citation following immediately, and the entire thing fits into the syntax of the original sentence.

Final Thoughts on Quotes  Quotes are a necessary part of the analysis process. Use them!  However, randomly using quotes doesn’t help your paper. Use them wisely!  Always remember the quotation sandwich, and make sure that whatever you choose to include is useful and necessary for your paper.