Thanks to Nancy Steele and Jeff Peterson for creating this sheet!

Embedding Quotations

---Provide context for the quotation

       ---Embed the quotation in the idea or point that the q illustrates (in other words, don’t

           simply restate what the q says)

                 ---Add a sentence following the q that is more specific—that further

                    explains the significance of the q (but, if you can, without saying “this quotation

                    shows”)

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Sample:   The residents don’t know whether Boori Ma’s claims of having lived a luxurious life are truth or fiction.  Mr. Chatterjee’s analogy, equating her stories with her having a mouth “full of ashes” (72), conveys both possibilities. On the one hand, the image of remnants or residue suggests that Boori Ma must have once had possessions capable of being destroyed.  But the image also suggests that Boori Ma’s tales appear to be flimsy, insubstantial; like the texture of ashes, they are ungrounded in reality.

·       The residents don’t know whether Boori Ma’s claims of having lived a luxurious life are truth or fiction. 

·       Mr. Chatterjee’s analogy, equating her stories with her having a mouth “full of ashes” (72), conveys both possibilities.

·       On the one hand, the image of remnants or residue suggests that Boori Ma must have once had possessions capable of being destroyed. 

·       But the image also suggests that Boori Ma’s tales appear to be flimsy, insubstantial; like the texture of ashes, they are ungrounded in reality.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

According to Dr. Peterson, “unless you’re using parenthetical citation form, you should always place periods and commas inside quotation marks.”[1]

 

“Whenever you cite page numbers in parentheses,”[2] he counsels, “you should place the period or comma outside the quotation itself, right after the parenthesis—as in the example above and in this sentence” (45).[3]