1. Using Quotes
Basic Guidelines

2. Why Quote?
To offer evidence to support, corroborate, add credibility, or offer counterpoint to your arguments, or discussion,
To highlight specific words or phrases that are unique or particularly important.
See notes below for elaboration.
Quotes are meant to support and enhance your writing, not replace it. Ideally, you should be able to remove all direct quotes and have the paper still make sense, if not, then the quotes are used to write the paper.
You use direct quotes to corroborate your information. And by doing so you create an original paper. Because you chose the quote, you must also provide a context for the quote. You then are adding to the substance of the discussion, not merely relating someone else's data.
Partial quotes are not to be used to write the paper or pass general information. A partial quote completes a thought with a phrase or a few words which cannot be paraphrased without losing the intent, and is so uniquely phrased, that one must cite the source. And the phrase does not lend itself to a traditional use of a direct quote. Partial quotes are in fact quite rare.

3. Choosing a Quote
Make sure it comes from a reliable or credible source.
Make sure you understand both the original statement and the context.
Understand how it fits into your thesis.
If you like a quote but it doesn’t quite fit, don’t use it.
Save it for another time.
See notes below.
Here are three examples on using quotes. For example, quotes add credibility. If you wrote: The president assured the people he would fight to the last man. In his speech the president said: “I will fight to the last man.” That would be redundant. And this would not be a good quote.
However, note the following two uses.
The president addressed the Congress pointing out that he took personal responsibility for the action. In defense of the decision, the president stated flatly: “Sometimes when one sits behind the desk, there are no clear answers. I have an obligation to make the best decision I can with what information I have. It is my obligation and my duty to the people.”
Or,
The president addressed the Congress pointing out that he took personal responsibility for the action. Former President Bill Clinton gave credence to the President Bush's words when, after the speech, Clinton pointed out: “Whether one agrees or disagrees with the president, at times it is only the president and his conscious. It is his call and it is the president that was elected to make that call.”
This quote is used to corroborate an idea.
This should give you an idea of using a quote for credibility and one for corroboration.

4. Introduce Your Quote
When you use quotations in your papers, they should be introduced and integrated into a sentence of your own. Use variety in introducing your quotes and relate the introduction to the idea or argument the quote is supporting. Examples are:
Specifically, Dr. Fred Jones argued: “quote.”
Arnold Toynbe agreed stating that:
Speaking in front of Iraqi war veterans, the president reinforced that position, iterating that:
Never ever use a quote without a tie to the paper. If you can’t remove the quote, including its lead-in, and the paragraph it is supporting does not make sense without the quote, then the quote is used incorrectly.

5. Vary your Sentence Structure
Chomsky claims that: “…..”
While Chomsky arguesthat” “……”; in reality……
In ____, Almond further states, “…”

6. Vary your word choice
There are many useful words you can use to introduce the quote:
Argues, Acknowledges, States, Claims, Asserts Writes, Posits, Notes, Adds, Observes, Remarks, States, Alleges, Explains, Informs
Use the one that is most appropriate for each particular quote

7. Discuss the Quote
Make sure you explain to the reader how the quotation relates to your argument. Do not just repeat it. Draw the connection for your reader. Do not assume that the connection is self-explanatory
What does the quote imply?
What is right or wrong about the statement?
Why is the information provided in the quote important?
What assumptions underlie the quote?

8. Provide the Proper Context
Never take someone’s words out of context.
Lifting a phrase in such a way as to confuse the author’s intent is dishonest.
For example:
Original statement from Almond:
Almond argues that: “For the followers of Marx up to the present day there continues to be a negative tension between capitalism, however reformed, and democracy.”
You cannot say:
Almonds argues that: “ there continues to be a negative tension between capitalism, however reformed, and democracy.”
By taking out the first part, you are changing the meaning of the statement.
You must use the words of the author to include any misspellings, as they sometimes occur. However, you can add [sic] in brackets, or in the footnote write after the citation, misspelling of X in the original.
If there is a pronoun in the quote, you must replace the pronoun with the correct antecedent for clarity. For example, take the quote: “They are feckless cowards.” The author my be writing about terrorists, but you have been writing about Hamas, but you are making the correlation. Hamas is a collective noun and takes the singular, so for clarity, you replace they with [Terrorists]. Brackets means you, the current author are replacing a word for clarity. But be careful that you are using the proper antecedent.

9. Punctuation
You need to use a colon or a comma after most introductory words
As Fred Smith argues, “…”
You need to use a colon after that, or when that is implied.
Fred Smith warns us that: “…”
Use an ellipsis (…) if you leave out any words from the middle of the quote. You don’t need ellipses if you are beginning a partial quote from the middle of the sentence or ending the quote from a partial sentence.

10. Punctuation, Con’t.
The comma and period always go inside the closing quotation mark when there is no parenthetical reference.
According to Kumagai’s , “Only rarely did the students show signs of stress.”
The period goes outside of the quotation mark when using a parenthetical reference.
It is true that “on a unilateral basis, country after country has amended its domestic legislation in order to provide for the trial and punishment of air hijackers” (von Glahn 1981, 293).

11. Block Quotes
A quote of three or more lines, approximately 45 words, must be
Single spaced
indented
With a blank line before and after
Without quotation marks
Needs a lead-in like any other quote

12. Do Not Overuse Quotations
The bulk of your paper should be your analysis
Your quote should support your argument, not replace it.
No more than 20 perent of your paper should be quotes. Not every paragraph will need a quote, but there may be times when several paragraphs in a row might have a quote.
Do not put two quotes in a row.
Never begin a paragraph with a quote, nor begin a paper with a quote.
There are professors and writers who think it is quite clever to have a quote before the introduction. This does not, in fact, grab the reader’s attention. It may seem to, but it can detract from your own introductory paragraph(s), and usually wastes a really good quote that would have been better used to support ideas within the paper itself.

13. Don’t be Afraid to Paraphrase!
Paraphrasing is simply restating, in your own words, what the author said, and crediting the author appropriately.
You can find paraphrasing practice with sample responses at:
If you are paraphrasing from a single source, then you must document the source. If it is only a sentence then the note goes at the end of the sentence. If the source is for the entire paragraph, just put the note at the end. But be careful. Don’t write the paper one paraphrased source after another. Most of the paper should be based on your own words from multiple corroborated sources, then you will know when an idea or argument is from a single source, or when you can add a quote from a source to highlight ideas.

14. Things to Avoid
Don’t have the quote write the paper or pass general information.
Avoid using the trite phrase: “according to.” This usually means that one is using the quote to pass general information.
Don’t use newspaper style quotes where the tie-in follows the quote.