Effective Direct Quotations

Notes on Fairness

• Do not abbreviate quotations if doing so misrepresents their author's original meaning. For example, if you cited the quotation above as a fact rather than a legend about Nero, you'd be misrepresenting the original author's intention. Check the context!

• Double-check the original. A direct quotation must exactly follow the wording of the original, except where you use ellipsis points or square brackets (see above).

Short Quotations

• Use quotation marks.

• 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." These examples come from journalism, but what about the tense of the verbs in academic writing? See this page for more help on that issue.

Long Quotations

Check with your instructor for the system of documentation you should be using (MLA, Chicago, APA, etc). Note that some professors recommend that you single-space within long quotations. Do not use quotation marks at the start of end of long quotations.

• For MLA: --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. Need more specifics? Consult the Purdue OWL's MLA Guidelines

• For Chicago/Turabian: --For quotations that run two or more sentences and four or more typed lines, indent four spaces from the left margin and single-space within the quotation (Kate Turabian's guide to Chicago Manual of Style calls these "block quotations"). Need more specifics? Consult Purdue OWL's Chicago Manual of Style Guidelines

• For APA: --For quotations longer than 40 words, indent the quotation five spaces, and double-space within the quotation. Need more specifics? Consult The Purdue OWL's APA Guidelines

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 change from double to single quotation marks ('mad emperors' above).

• Indicate breaks in quoting with ellipsis points. This is an obscure area of grammar that drives both students and professors crazy, because the rules vary somewhat between systems of documentation (consult the MLA, APA, or Chicago guides at Purdue or the library for details). Even some of the printed handbooks have different rules for this type of punctuation! 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).
  Note that the four ellipsis points after the second sentence show that we've skipped to a different part of the same passage, whereas the three ellipsis points show that the sentence beginning "Legend" has been abbreviated.

Effectively Incorporating Quotations

When integrating direct quotations into a paper it is important to move smoothly from the source information to your own thoughts. If quotations are simply dropped into a paper without significant warning, a reader may become confused as to the appropriateness and relevance of that particular quotation.

Therefore, it is necessary to 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. Here's a passage from an essay written to analyze five of Stephen Crane's short stories in relation to a uniting theme. The quotation lacks adequate introduction:

The men in Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat," are courageous; they want to live. "The idealistic virtues of bravery, fortitude, and integrity possess no meaning in a universe that denies the importance of man" (Stein 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.

While the writer addresses the importance of the quotation, this discussion comes after it is "dropped into the paper." A better use of this particular quotation follows:

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 gets 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.

Achieving Variety when Introducing Quotations

While it is necessary to introduce direct quotations in order to qualify them in relation to the rest of a paper, it is also necessary to introduce these quotations using a varied wording. It becomes monotonous if all the quotations in a paper are introduced with stock phrases: "this critic states" or "another critic says." A paper is much more interesting and cohesive if the introductory phrases, or "signal phrases," are varied.

Here are some possible signal phrases:

• 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 "..."

• In the words of John Doe, "..."

Note that there exist fine shades of meaning between phrases such as "contend" and "argue" and large differences between ones such as "claim" and "demonstrate." Ask yourself questions as to whether the source material is making a claim, asserting a belief, stating a fact, etc. Then choose a verb that is appropriate for the source material's purpose.

A list of possible verbs for use in the introduction of quotations follows. Double-check meanings before using them!

acknowledges, adds, admits, affirms, agrees, argues, asserts, believes, claims, comments, compares, confirms, contends, declares, demonstrates, denies, disputes, emphasizes, endorses, grants, illustrates, implies, insists, notes, observes, points out, reasons, refutes, rejects, reports, responds, states, suggests, thinks, underlines, writes.

Close Reading and Analyzing your Quotations

From: Writing Tips by Professor Elizabeth Outka, University of Richmond Dept. of English

Paragraphs need support from the novel, short story, essay, or poem you're discussing, and this support usually comes in the form of quotations. You may quote words, phrases, or images as evidence, discussing in detail how these quotations support your specific point. At times, of course, you'll want to quote longer sections of the text to discuss. Such quotations should be indented. If you're taking the time and giving the space for a block quotation, however, you must spend considerable time analyzing it. As a general rule, you should spend at least as much time discussing a long quotation as you do quoting it. This means you should pull out specific words, phrases, and images to discuss, analyzing the content and the style of the passage in detail. If you find you have little to say about a long quotation - don't quote it!

Say, for example, you're writing an essay on Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier. You might have a paragraph that analyzes the following quotation in detail:

I could send my mind creeping from room to room like a purring cat, rubbing itself against all the brittle beautiful things that we had either recovered from antiquity or dug from the obscure pits of modern craftsmanship, basking in the colour that flowed from all our solemnly chosen fabrics with such pure intensity that it seemed to shed warmth like sunshine. Even now, when spending seemed a little disgraceful, I could think of that beauty with nothing but pride. I was sure that we were preserved from the reproach of luxury because we had made a fine place for Chris, our little part of the world that was, so far as surfaces could make it so, good enough for his amazing goodness. (6)

After introducing your central topic for the paragraph, and then introducing and quoting the passage and explaining its context in the chapter, your discussion might run roughly as follows:

From the first sentence, Jenny presents both a lovely surface and the darker elements that might lie beneath. On the one hand, she notes the beauty of the surroundings, carefully managed to present a dignified and luxurious atmosphere. The intense colors and fabrics have been carefully (and almost religiously) chosen, and the effects are "like sunshine," the beautiful objects creating a warm domestic enclave where a cat might rest contented. All this loveliness is furthermore in service to Chris, whose "amazing goodness" deserves nothing short of the best. And yet, on the other hand, amid all this beauty, Jenny introduces more sinister notes. The cat may be "purring" but it is also "creeping"; the things may be lovely, but they are also "brittle" and pulled up from "obscure pits." The sentence structure reflects the way these darker elements have been enfolded and masked within the opulent surroundings of the house; the wandering sentences seem to steal over the darker elements. This tension between the. . .