WRITING AND INCORPORATING

QUOTES EFFECTIVELY

Mini-Lesson

Punctuation is IMPORTANT

To avoid confusing your readers, punctuate quotations correctly, and work them smoothly into your writing.

Punctuation shows your readers:• which words are yours• which words you have quoted

Direct/Indirect Quotations

Direct quotations involve incorporating another person's exact words into your own writing.

Indirect quotations are not exact wordings but rather rephrasings or summaries of another person's words. In this case, it is not necessary to use quotation marks. However, indirect quotations still require proper citations, and you will be commiting plagiarism if you fail to do so.

Direct/Indirect Quotations

Use direct quotations when the source material uses language that is particularly striking or notable. Do not rob such language of its power by altering it.

Use an indirect quotation (or paraphrase) when you merely need to summarize key incidents or details of the text.

Use direct quotations when the author you are quoting has coined a term unique to her or his research and relevant within your own paper.

Punctuating Brief Quotations Quoting a Sentence or Sentences:

Gene begins to reveal his internal war with Finny when he says, “What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this?” (5).

Notice how my words (Gene begins to reveal his internal war with Finny when he says) lead into the quote I have chosen to use.

Punctuating Brief Quotations Quoting a Fragment:

Jack is not able to kill the piglet during their first attempt at hunting for food “because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into the living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (31).

Again, notice how my words lead into the quote.

Quoting a Quotation

Ron said, “Dad yelled, ‘No way!’”

Golding writes, “Jack seized the conch. ‘Ralph’s right of course. There isn’t a snake-thing. But if there was a snake we’d hunt it and kill it.’” (36).

Just like Leper in A Separate Peace, my brother Shaun said, “‘You always were a savage underneath.’”

Quotations with Brief Insertions

(Using Brackets)

It is evident that Finny believes in the war before his fall from the tree because he tells Gene, “I’m wearing this [his pink shirt] as an emblem. We haven’t got a flag, we can’t float Old Glory proudly out the window. So I’m going to wear this, as an emblem” (11).

Use brackets when you are inserting your own words into a quote in order to make the meaning of the quote more clear.

How To Integrate Quotes

When you are using brief quotations, you must integrate them—

work them smoothly into your sentences

show their relevance to your ideas.

NOT Integrated

Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, and Ralph becomes disillusioned with the glory of being chief. “He found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet” (76).

Integrated

In the same way that Brinker becomes disillusioned with the war, Ralph begins to feel a sense of disillusionment toward the glory of being chief. Golding’s narrator begins to allude to Ralph’s waning enjoyment of being the leader on the island when he states, “he found himself understanding the wearisomness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s walking life was spent watching one’s feet” (76).

Methods for Inserting Brief Quotations Final Position

For several reasons, “all of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against an enemy they thought they saw across the frontier”.

Beginning Position “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the

darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy,” declares Golding’s narrator at the end of his novel.

Methods for Inserting Brief Quotations Middle Position

In the same way William Golding’s novel has been considered a “body of work that speaks to the tragedy of the human condition,” John Knowles’ A Separate Peace can be considered a work of literature that shines a light into the dark recesses of the human heart.

Interrupted

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,” proclaims King Lear, “– They kill us for their sport." This proclamation by an old king who has just realized that everything he once held dear-- territory and power– has been stripped from him by his own flesh and blood– daughters Regan and Goneril– is said to have inspired the title of William Golding’s Nobel Prize winning novel, Lord of the Flies.

Works Cited

If the author is introduced at the beginning of the sentence: According to researcher, Carl Smithton,

“95% of all cats prefer love seats instead of bean bag chairs” (page number).

If not, Research has shown that “95% of all cats

prefer love seats instead of bean bag chairs” (Smithton, 95).

Ray Bradbury uses repetition to reinforce main ideas in his writing. For example, in the short story “All Summer in a Day,” Bradbury attempts to make the reader understand the magnitude of seven years worth of rain by writing that the children “glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily” (56). This quote shows that while Bradbury knows his audience is familiar with rain, the concept of seven years of constant rain is so unimaginable that it must be repeated. It also emphasizes the continuous and monotonous nature of long and steady rainfalls.