Writing & Incorporating Quotes Effectively Mini-Lesson

Punctuation Is Important To avoid confusing your readers, punctuate quotations correctly, and work them smoothly into your writing. Punctuation shows your readers: which words are yours which words you have quoted

Punctuating Brief Quotations Quoting a Sentence or Sentences: Gene begins to reveal his internal war with Finny when he says, “What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this?” (Knowles 5). Notice how my words (Gene begins to reveal his internal war with Finny when he says) lead into the quote I have chosen to use.

Punctuating Brief Quotations Quoting a Fragment: Jack is not able to kill the piglet during their first attempt at hunting for food “because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into the living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (Golding 31). Again, notice how my words lead into the quote.

Quoting A Quotation Ron said, “Dad yelled, ‘No way!’” Golding writes, “Jack seized the conch. ‘Ralph’s right of course. There isn’t a snake-thing. But if there was a snake we’d hunt it and kill it’” (36). Just like Leper in A Separate Peace, my brother Shaun said, “‘You always were a savage underneath’” (Knowles 22) .

Quotations with Omissions (Using ellipses) According to Gene, the faculty at Devon treated the boys differently during the summer session because “we reminded them of what peace was like… of lives which were not bound up with destruction” (Knowles 10).

Quotations with Brief Insertions (Using brackets) It is evident that Finny believes in the war before his fall from the tree because he tells Gene, “I’m wearing this [his pink shirt] as an emblem. We haven’t got a flag, we can’t float Old Glory proudly out the window. So I’m going to wear this, as an emblem” (Knowles 11). Use brackets when you are inserting your own words into a quote in order to make the meaning of the quote more clear.

How To Integrate Quotations When you are using brief quotations, you must integrate them – work them smoothly into your sentences and show their relevance to your ideas.

Not Integrated Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, and Ralph becomes disillusioned with the glory of being chief. “He found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet” (Golding 76).

Integrated In the same way that Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, Ralph begins to feel a sense of disillusionment toward the glory of being chief. Golding’s narrator begins to allude to Ralph’s waning enjoyment of being the leader on the island when he states, “He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet” (76).

Methods For Inserting Brief Quotations Final Position For several reasons, “all of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against an enemy they thought they saw across the frontier…” (Knowles 123). Beginning Position “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy,” declares Golding’s narrator at the end of his novel (202).

Methods For Inserting Brief Quotations Middle Position In the same way William Golding’s novel has been considered a “body of work that speaks to the tragedy of the human condition,” John Knowles’ A Separate Peace can be considered a work of literature that shines a light into the dark recesses of the human heart.

Interrupted “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,” proclaims King Lear, “– They kill us for their sport" (King Lear IV.i.40-44). This proclamation by an old king who has just realized that everything he once held dear-- territory and power– has been stripped from him by his own flesh and blood– daughters Regan and Goneril– is said to have inspired the title of William Golding’s Nobel Prize winning novel, Lord of the Flies.