Integrating Quotations & Citing Sources

What kinds of quotations are there? Direct Quotes Indirect Quotes

Direct Quotes: A direct quote is putting the exact words that someone else has written into your own work. You show a direct quotation in quotation marks.

Indirect Quotes: Also known as paraphrasing. Offers an account of what another person has said/written in your own words. Generally longer than a summary, it is a parallel to the original text. No quotation marks used, but citation is required.

What ways are direct quotes inserted in essays? Integrated Block

Integrated Quotations: The words of an author are directly woven with your own words in order to support your argument. For Example: Nurse Ratched’s dogged determination to bring McMurphy down is most evident in the monetary balances of the patients that she posts as proof of McMurphy’s profits, although “it must have taken [her] hours of work digging into records” to amass the damning report (220).

Block Quotations: This style of quotation is rarely used in literary essays of 4 or fewer pages. If the section of text you intend to directly quote is approximately 4 lines or longer, it should be set apart from the rest of the text by indenting all lines on both the right and left side. You do not use quotation marks in this style of direct quotation, as the indentation serves that purpose.

When do you use a quote? Use quotations to support your analysis of the text Most literary essay paragraphs will contain 2 – 3 integrated quotations Use only the necessary words in your quotation, even if it is only a few words; less is more.

There are 3 methods for quotation: Brief introduction Colon Integrated

Brief Introduction: Introduce the quote with a short phrase followed by the quotation. For example: The narrator tells the reader about the severity of the fog machine’s influence by saying, “[t]heres long spells – three days, years – when you can’t see a thing” (Kesey 104).

Colon: This is the least sophisticated of the acceptable ways to insert a quote in an essay. A complete sentence introducing the quote must come before the colon. For example: Miss Pilbow chooses to blame her defect, the birthmark, on the defective people she is required to work with: “- and she figures it’s on account of working evenings among a whole wardful of people like me” (143 – 144).

Integrated: The most sophisticated method is to integrate the quote into your own sentence. When you read the sentence containing the quote aloud, you should not be able to tell where the quote begins or ends. For example: The ward in which the patients live is portrayed as “a factory for the Combine” (Kesey 40).

Situating your quotes: The quote that you select should directly support the point that you are making in that paragraph. Choose the method that you will use for inserting the quote: colon, brief introduction, or integrated. Follow the quote up with an explanation showing how the quote supports your topic.

As the primary agent for the Combine within the ward, Nurse Ratched is ever vigilant for any abnormality in her patients’ behaviour. She is portrayed as a watchful figure, sitting “in [a] web of wires like a watchful robot”; a creature of habit and routine who becomes very upset if anything interrupts the “smooth, accurate, precision-made machine” that is her ward (Kesey 30). Like a mechanical spider, waiting for her prey to make the wrong move, the Nurse observes her patients and waits for them to be trapped in her web where she can drain their individuality at her leisure.

Proper Formatting: If your quote is properly integrated it should not require an ellipsis (…) at its beginning or end. Your integrated quote should be grammatically correct; therefore, you may need to change or add a word within the quote. Any added or altered words should be enclosed in [square brackets]. If you are quoting 2 consecutive sentences without a break, they should all be contained within the same quotation marks.

In-text citations are enclosed in parenthesis and are placed outside of the quotation marks but inside the sentence punctuation. If only quoting 1 text in your essay, you only need to refer to the author in your first in-text citation (Kesey 9) and in subsequent in-text citations you only need to include the page number (9). If quoting multiple texts (as in a synthesis or research essay) you should refer to the author in every in text citation. If using 2 works by the same author, use a portion of the title in place of the author name in each in- text citation (Cuckoo’s Nest 9).

If you have referred to the author or text title that you are using to cite the quotes within your sentence, then you may exclude it from the in-text citation: Kesey uses the imagery of fog to depict the isolating effect of mental illness and the manner in which the patients may “lose [themselves] in the fog sometimes” (42). The imagery of fog is used to depict the isolating effect of mental illness and the manner in which the patients may “lose [themselves] in the fog sometimes” (Kesey 42).

Placing the Punctuation: Any punctuation within the quote should be placed as it is in the text. The exception to this rule is if you are quoting the end of a sentence. In this case, do not place the period within the quotation marks; place it after the (page citation). Nurse Ratched in a temper is described as being “big as a truck, trailing that wicker bag behind in her exhaust like a semi behind a Jimmy Diesel” (30).

? - ! Exclamation points, question marks, and dashes at the end of the quoted text should be placed inside the quotation marks, even if your sentence itself continues after the quotation. For example: Baby Bear is horrified that “someone has been eating [his] porridge!” and he has nothing to eat.

Multiple quotes from 1 page: If you use multiple short quotes, consecutively, from the same page in one sentence or in one paragraph, you should only use one citation at the end of the sentence or paragraph.

As the primary agent for the Combine within the ward, Nurse Ratched is ever vigilant for any abnormality in her patients’ behaviour. She is portrayed as a watchful figure, sitting “in [a] web of wires like a watchful robot”; a creature of habit and routine who becomes very upset if anything interrupts the “smooth, accurate, precision-made machine” that is her ward (Kesey 30). Like a mechanical spider, waiting for her prey to make the wrong move, the Nurse observes her patients and waits for them to be trapped in her web where she can drain their individuality at her leisure.

Quotations within a Quotation: If you are quoting a section of text that contains words that are within quotations in the original text, use single quotation marks for the quotes within your quote.

What else do I cite? Summary of the text should be cited to allow the reader of your essay to easily find and verify the accuracy of your summary. Nurse Ratched renews her attempt to reduce McMurphy in the eyes of the other patients by calculating the amount of money that each patient has lost to McMurphy and informing them of that when McMurphy is not present to defend himself. She manipulates the situation and the emotions of the men until many of them begin to doubt McMurphy’s friendship and motives (220).

Practice: Nurse Pilbow’s giant mark is a signal to the world announcing her imperfections, and she blames her predicament on the other broken people around her, unable to admit that the Combine is just as ashamed of her as it is of her patients: “She figures it’s on account of working in a whole ward full of people like the Chief. (143 – 144)”

Self-Editing Look through your own essay and find one quotation that could be integrated more smoothly into your essay. Work with a partner to rewrite that quotation using the techniques that we have learned here.

Assignment: due Monday Each paragraph of a literary essay should contain 2 -3 integrated quotes that support your topic. Select one of your essay’s body paragraphs to rewrite containing: 3 integrated quotations to support your topic Clear explanation of how those quotes support your topic. Proper formatting of the quote and citation.