Writing and Incorporating Quotes Effectively

Why use quotes? A quote is the exact wording of a statement from a source. Quotes make an essay more believable; they are evidence you can use to support your thesis. Opinions supported by quoted text are evidence of good reading and thoughtful responses.

Direct Quotes Incorporating another person's exact words into your own writing. Use direct quotations when the source material uses language that is particularly striking or notable. Do not rob such language of its power by altering it. Use direct quotations when the author you are quoting has coined a term unique to her or his research and relevant within your own paper. Use quotation marks.

Indirect Quotes Are not the author’s exact wording, but instead a paraphrasing or summarizing. Use when you need to: Summarize key incidents or details of the text. Express a fact stated by the source. Clarify a quote that is too long, confusing, or dull. Condense the idea of several direct quotes. Indirect quotes still require proper citations. You will be plagiarizing if you don’t cite. Do not change the meaning of a quote when you paraphrase or summarize. If a direct quote is very long or boring, use an indirect or partial quote instead.

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

How to Punctuate: The author’s exact words go inside the quotation marks: “I am super, duper cool.” Typically, the ending punctuation (period, exclamation point, question mark) will go inside the closing quotation marks, unless the quote is embedded within another sentence. If a question relates to the sentence and not to the original quote, place it at the end of the sentence outside the quotation marks. What kind of moron says, “I am super, duper cool”?

Punctuating 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?” (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 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” (31). Again, notice how my words lead into the quote.

Quoting a Quotation Use single quotation marks to indicate a quote inside of a quote: 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).

Quotations with Brief Insertions To clarify or modify a phrase within a quote, insert brackets around your addition. “Slowly, [Bob] reached for the meat cleaver.” 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” (11).

Integrating Quotations When you are using brief quotations, you must integrate them— Never just drop a quotation into your paper. Always introduce it and explain it with your own analysis/commentary. You must: work them smoothly into your sentences show their relevance to your ideas. Three main ways to introduce quotations:

1st Method: As Part of Your Sentence Incorporate the quotation into your sentence, punctuating it just as you would if it was not a quotation, adding quotation marks. As Bob is being beaten, he hopes he “will become unconscious but [he] can’t.” Bob appraises Mrs. Harrison derisively, stating that “she looked so complacent, sitting there in her two-hundred dollar chair […] bought with dough her husband had made overcharging poor hard-working colored people for his incompetent services, that I had a crazy impulse to needle her.”

Final Position Beginning Position Middle 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.” 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. 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." 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.

2nd Method: Attribution Introduce the quote by using an attributive tag, such as he writes, she claims, etc. To describe his childlike consciousness, Wright explains, “Each event spoke with a cryptic tongue. And the moments of living slowly revealed their coded meanings.” After going to Memphis and boarding with Mrs. Moss, Wright wonders, “Was it wise to remain here with a seventeen-year-old girl eager for marriage and a mother equally anxious to have her marry me?”

3rd Method: Introduce w/Colon Introduce the quotation by writing a full sentence and colon to introduce the sentence, which should itself be a full sentence. Bob’s description of Madge emphasizes her appearance: “She was a peroxide blonde with a large-featured, overly made-up face, and she had a large, bright-painted, fleshy mouth.” Richard Wright explains his reasons for writing: “I was striving for a level of expression that marched those of the novels I read.”

Not Integrated Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, and Ralph becomes disillusioned with the glory of being chief. “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).

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).

Block Quotations Block a quotation if it is 4 lines or longer. Indent a quotation 10 spaces (tab x2) and punctuate as follows: Wright describes how his mother’s illness affected him: My mother’s suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread. (Wright 29)

Works Cited If the author is introduced at the beginning of the sentence: According to researcher, Carl Smithton, “95% of all cats prefer love seats instead of bean bag chairs” (95). If not, Research has shown that “95% of all cats prefer love seats instead of bean bag chairs” (Smithton 95).

Titles Use quotation marks to indicate the title of a shorter work, such as an article, essay, short story, poem, song, or speech. In his essay, “Potatoes are Yummy,” Joe Smith argues that… Use italics (or underline when handwriting) for longer works, such as a book, magazine, album, play, film, or epic poem. In her novel, Potatoes are Yucky, Ann Smith argues that…

Example Ray Bradbury uses repetition to reinforce main ideas in his writing. For example, in the short story“All Summer in a Day,” Bradbury attempts to make the reader understand the magnitude of seven years worth of rain by writing that the children “glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily” (56). This quote shows that while Bradbury knows his audience is familiar with rain, the concept of seven years of constant rain is so unimaginable that it must be repeated. It also emphasizes the continuous and monotonous nature of long and steady rainfalls.