LEO: Literacy Education Online
Using Quotations
A quotation is a reference to an authority or a citation of an authority. There are two types of quotations: direct and indirect.
1.
A direct quotation uses the exact words of an authority and must be identified in your paper with quotation marks and parenthetical documentation.
2.
An indirect quotation, or paraphrase , is a restatement of a thought expressed by someone else that is written in your own style that needs to be documented.
Know when to use quotations
 Use quotations when the specific language of a quote is important.
 Use quotations when accuracy is essential -- to indicate the writer's exact position.
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Use quotations to support your argument, rather than relying upon someone else's words.
Keep quotes to a minimum. A short phrase or sentence is more easily understood
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 than a long quotation.
Look for the "kernel" or the most important part of the quotation and extract it.
Paraphrase a quotation in your own words when possible.
Incorporating quotations into your paper
 Combine a paraphrase with a quotation.
Original: Tania Modleski suggests that "if television is considered by some to be a vast wasteland, soap operas are thought to be the least nourishing spot in the desert" (123).
Revised: In her critique of soap operas, Tania Modleski argues that some

How to Put Quotations into Essays
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 Introduce a quotation by citing the name of the authority.
Example: Thoreau believed that "a true patriot would resist a tyrannical majority"
(23).
 Describe or identify the source of information if it is available.
Example: In The Coming of Age, Simone de Beavoir contends that the decrepitude accompanying old age is "in complete conflict with the manly or womanly ideal cherished by the young and fully grown" (65).
 Use key words from the quotation and make them a grammatical part of your sentence.
Example: As William Kneale suggests, some humans have a "moral deafness" which is never punctured no matter what the moral treatment (Acton 93).
Note: Overusing quotations can result in "patchwork" writing, a jumble of miscellaneous information from various sources that is merely pieced together. Quotations should fit logically into your text.

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Short Quotations
 If your quotations are less than four lines long (which is usually the case), place them in your text and enclose them with quotation marks.
 Remember to include a parenthetical citation for each quotation used. (The style of documentation used here is MLA.)
Example: Pearl, who is Hawthorne's symbol of truth, reaches a proportionately happy conclusion, becoming "the richest heiress of her day, in the New World"
(243).
Example: Edward Zigler laments, "One finds violence, hostility, and aggression everywhere, including TV, the movies, and in many of our everyday social relations" (40).
Long Quotations
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If a quotation is more than four lines long, set it off from your text by indenting.
Introduce the quotation with a complete sentence and a colon .
Indent ten spaces, double space the lines, and do not use quotation marks.
 Do not indent the opening line unless the quote begins a new paragraph.
Example: Robert Hastrow sums up the process in the following passage, where he compares rays of light to a ball thrown up from the earth and returning because of the pull of gravity:
The tug of that enormous force prevents the ray of light from leaving the surface of the star; like the ball thrown upward from the earth, they are pulled back and cannot escape to space. All the light within the star is now trapped by gravity. From this moment on, the star is invisible. It is a black hole in space (65).

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Adding Information to a Quotation
You can add information to a quotation in order to define a word or phrase, to clarify the quotation's information, or to make a brief comment on the quotation's information. The information that you add always should be brief; reserve your major comments on the quotation's information to be placed after the quotation ends.
Show any added information by placing that added information in square brackets within the quote. If your computer or typewriter does not have square bracket keys, then draw the brackets in. You can NOT substitute parentheses for brackets, since they carry a different meaning. (Parentheses indicate that the added information is part of the direct quotation itself and not your own.)
For example:
Holmes stated that "The chair on which the body was found was covered in a formerly yellow, now a brownish, blood-stained tabaret [upholstery with satin stripes]" (5). [MLA format]
(In this case, you'd need to define "tabaret" for a general reading public.)
Or:
"He [William Dean Howells] was 'fierce to shut out' of his study the voices and faces of his family in 'pursuit of the end' which he 'sought gropingly, blindly and with very little hope but with an intense ambition, and a courage that gave way under no burden, before no obstacles'" (Kirk and Kirk xxxvi). [MLA format]
(In this case, you'd need to clarify the person to whom the "he" refers.)
Or:
"Stephen Crane's experience as a journalist [as Berryman affirms] provided the impetus for his fiction" (Walcutt 22). [MLA format]
(In this case, the writer provides a brief comment on the information to let the reader know that two major critics of Crane agree.)
Using a Quote Within a Quote
If you need to quote something that already includes a quotation in it, then place the regular "double" quotation marks at the beginning and the end of the complete quotation, and use special "single" quotation marks for the quote within the quote. It looks like this:
"Blake disposes of Menroy's definition of realism, which he calls 'naturalism in disguise'" (Zwerbe 13). [MLA format]

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Final Reminders
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Do not quote when a paraphrase will do.
Do not cite sources for information that is readily available in popular reference books: o well-known dates and events o o identities of famous personalities and politicians familiar sayings
Always provide a context for your quotations -- explain to the reader why and how the quote is relevant to the topic.
© 1995-2004 The Write Place
This page was written by Kelly A. Larson for the Write Place, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, and may be copied for educational purposes only. If you copy this document, please include our copyright notice and the name of the writer; if you revise it, please add your name to the list of writers.
URL: http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/research/usingquotes.html