All You Need to Know about Quotations

All You Need to Know about Quotations

* adapted from University of Richmond Writing Center Website

Use a Quotation:

• to emphasize a point you've made.
• to provide an example.
• to show an author's intention.
• to show how historical figures spoke or thought.

Short Quotations:

• use quotation marks.
• in parentheses at the end of the sentence, include citation (last name page # or just page # if author has already been stated)
• make sentences smoothly flow from your words to those quoted, as in these examples that follow MLA format:
• As Coach Clark explained, "We lost the game because we were overconfident and failed to take the other team's defense seriously enough" (32).
• The coach notes that "most of the guys on State's team have much less experience than our players, but they certainly have talent and a desire to win" (33).

*Note how the writer sets up the quotations with "explained" and "notes that."

Long Quotation (also know as Block Quotation): -For quotations of more than four typed lines, indent ten spaces from the left margin, and double-space within the quotation. End the last sentence before the quotation with a colon, which indicates the continuation of your sentence and replaces the "set up" shown above for short quotations.

How to Alter Quotations or Use Parts of Quotations:

• Indicate alterations with square brackets. For example, if you need to supply a character's name where a quotation has a personal pronoun, or a pronoun for a noun. Here's an example using the MLA system:

"Rome had several 'mad emperors.' [Nero] was the maddest of them all" (Smith 32).

The original might have read, "He was the maddest of them all," but you need to specify

Nero since you're not using more lines from your source. Also note that for quotations within

quotations, we go from double to single quotation marks ('mad emperors' above).

• Indicate breaks in quoting with ellipsis points. In general, however, use a blank space, three points, then another space when you omit material in the middle of a sentence, and four when skipping between sentences. If you break at the end of a sentence and then move to another, include the final punctuation mark from the first sentence.

"Rome had several mad emperors. [Nero] was the maddest of them all. . . . Legend has it . . . he played his harp while the city went up in flames" (Smith 32)

"What, then, was the origin of the Nero's legendary concert? . . . Historians have provided several interpretations of the genesis of this event" (Smith 33).

Effectively Incorporating Quotations

• Introduce the quotation, usually with its author's name or the source from which it came, to give the reader adequate notice of the relevance and importance of the quotation.

Example:

The men in Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat," are courageous; they want to live. As critic William Bysshe Stein points out, however, "the idealistic virtues of bravery, fortitude, and integrity possess no meaning in a universe that denies the importance of man" (151). The ideals of their native environment, then, mean little when confronted with the harshness of the open ocean. These men finally realize that it is possible they will die.

* In this passage, the quotation is well-introduced. The author of the quotation is identified, as is the quotation's relation to the previous statement. From the introduction, the reader can detect the contrast between the quotation and the first sentence of the paragraph.

• Introduce quotes by giving reader necessary context and by using an appropriate signal phrase. Here are some examples: According to Jane Doe, "..." As Jane Doe goes on to explain, "..." Characterized by John Doe, the society is "..." As one critic points out, "..." John Doe believes that "..." Jane Doe claims that "..."

• Also, when referring to the author, please use full or last name, not first name, even if you’re friends with the author and know him/her on a first name basis.

Quotation Marks with Titles

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/04/

Use quotations marks for titles of short or minor works

• Songs
• Short Stories
• Essays
• Short Poems
• One Act Plays
• Other literary works shorter than a three act play or complete book
• Titles of sections from longer works
• Chapters in books
• Articles in newspapers, magazines, or journals
• Episodes of television and radio series

Underlining or italics are used for the titles of long pieces or works that contain smaller sections (novels, full-length books, websites, anthologies, magazines, newspapers, films, etc.).