1. How to avoid “quote plopping.”
Quote Integration
How to avoid “quote plopping.”

2. How to integrate quotations
There are two techniques:
Using dialogue tags
Weaving quotations into your sentences

3. Using dialogue tags
Introduce your quotes by stating who is talking and how he/she is saying it.
Examples:
Jing-mei yells
The narrator admits
Roger exclaims
The little girl’s mother asks
Millicent says

4. Proper Punctuation Be sure to properly use commas and quotation marks.
Commas follow the dialog tag:
The narrator realizes,

5. Proper Punctuation Quotation marks signal the start of a quotation.
The narrator realizes, “Pride is a…

6. Proper Punctuation
Include proper parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence.
The narrator realizes, “Pride is a terrible, wonderful thing” (Hurst 318).

7. Grammar
If the first word of the quotation starts a grammatically complete sentence, capitalize that first word
When using just part of a sentence, do not capitalize the first word

8. Capitalize
Academic writers at a large Southern university note, "The behavior, lifestyle, and values of minority students are likely to be substantially different from those of whites" (Jones 212).

9. No capitalization
Feeling overconfident for the recital Jing Mei "dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed” (Tan 38).

10. Quote Weaving You can also “weave” quotes into an existing sentence.
What the message of the quote is
Use a colon after your words to introduce quote OR
Use your own sentence structure

11. Own Structure
Feeling overconfident for the recital Jing Mei "dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed” (Tan 38).

12. Message of quote
In a practice session Mrs. Woo provides encouragement for her daughter: “Of course, you can be prodigy too. You can be the best anything” (Tan 31).

13. Own Structure
Minority students may not feel comfortable in a predominately white university because their "behavior, lifestyle, and values are likely to be substantially different from those of whites" (Jones 212).