Quotations

Quotations can never stand alone. You need to embed them seamlessly into your own writing. To do this, remember the following “formula”:

Your words + Quotation = A Complete Sentence (citation).

Atticus tells his children it’s “a sin to kill a mockingbird” (103).

When you are citing an expert/authority:

Authority’s name + Strong verb + Quotation = A Complete Sentence

In his speech at the 9/11 Museum dedication, President Obama declared that “nothing can change who we are as Americans” (Baker and Farrell).

If your quote is fewer than four typed lines of text:

Put quotation marks around the quotation, and include and in-text citation after it.

If your quote is more than four typed lines of text: Put the quoted material in a free-standing block of text and DO NOT use quotation marks. Use an in-text citation as usual.

If you need to change a word inside a quotation: you enclose that [word] with square brackets. This would be done to ensure consistency between the grammatical construction of your words and those of the quotation.

If you remove words from the quotation: use the ellipse (three periods) to indicate that words have been removed. DO NOT do this just to avoid writing out the quotation. The quotation must be able to stand on it’s own. For example, the following is a quotation from a short story:

“I am not telling you to do anything,” he said softly, “only asking you to.”

When writing about this, the writer does not need the he said softly section of the quote, so he can remove it using the ellipse.

His father simply states “I’m not telling you to do anything…only asking you” (MacLeod 188).

Click on the document below to see what this looks like.