Incorporating Quotations
The best proof that a work of literature does
what you say it does, is textual evidence:
words and sentences you can quote from the
poem, story, or play you are discussing. If you
say that a character in a story is evil, can you
quote a passage in which he clearly says or
does something evil or a passage in which a
reliable character or narrator talks of his evil?
The best support you have as you discuss a
literary work is the text of the work itself.
As you incorporate textual evidence
into your discussion through the use
of quotations, there are some rules
you should keep in mind.
Do not overuse quotations. The style of
your writing will be better if you incorporate
quoted phrases into your own sentence
structure rather than writing a sentence and
then quoting a sentence or poetic line.
Ineffective: Richard Cory was very polite. “He was
a gentleman from sole to crown.” Also he was
good-looking, even regal-looking --- “clean favored,
and imperially slim.”
Effective: Richard Cory was polite, “a gentleman
from sole to crown.” Like handsome king he was
“clean favored, and imperially slim.”
Avoid having two quotations in a row. Your
own commentary should bridge the two.
Ineffective: Richard Cory had everything going for
him. “He was a gentleman from sole to crown.”
“And he was rich --- yes, richer than a king.”
Effective: Richard Cory had everything going for
him. Not only was he a “gentleman from sole to
crown,” but he was also “richer than a king.”
Longer quotations (more than two lines of
verse or four lines of prose) should be set
off from your paragraph in display form:
single-spaced and centered without
quotation marks.
Dickenson describes the numbness that comes with
the shock of the loss of a loved one:
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions was it he, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
Separate lines of poetry running within your
sentence with a slash (/), and preserve the
capitalization of words at the beginning of
the line.
The speaker notes that the bruised heart of the
mourner wonders “was it He, that bore, / And
Yesterday, or Centuries before?”
Adapt the quotation to conform to the needs
of your sentence structure, as long as you do
not alter the meaning of the lines.
Original lines of poetry
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
Alterations of punctuation and capitalization required
by the student’s sentence structure
Richard Cory, “clean favored, and imperially slim,” was
from head to toe a gentleman.
If for clarity or sentence structure, you must alter a
quotation, place the alteration in brackets.
Original lines
With Heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm
against the devil.
Alterations for clarity and consistency in sentence structure
Goodman Brown claims that “with Heaven above and Faith
below, [he] will yet stand firm against the devil.”
Goodman Brown hoped that “with Heaven above and Faith
below, [he would] yet stand firm against the devil.”
If you omit material in order to be succinct,
mark the omission by three periods (called
ellipsis) with a space between each (. . .).
Note: There is no need to use these
routinely at the beginning and end of your
quotations. It is understood that you are
lifting passages from a longer work.
Montresor tells us that when it came to “painting
and gemmary, Fortunato . . . was a quack.”
Be sure to name the source of the quotation
correctly
1. In nonnarrative poetry (poetry in which
characters do not appear in a plot), it is correct to
say “The speaker says” NOT “The poet says.”
2. When quoting passages of narratio, it is correct
to say “The narrator says” NOT “The author says.”
3. Identify characters as you quote them
In Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing,” God
answers the people in their graves with “Ha, ha.
It will be warmer when / I blow the trumpet.”
4.
When quoting dialogue between characters in a
play, set it off and begin a new line as you quote
each character. Place the character’s name in
front of his line.
Later in the play Hamlet confronts his mother:
Hamlet: Now, Mother, what’s the matter
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father
much offended.
When to use quotes
Use a quotation to support a major point in
your paragraph:
In the last act of the play Hamlet accepts his
world, and we discover a different man: “There’s a
special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be
now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The
readiness is all.”
He [Lincoln] took a fatalistic view of a possible
assassination, however, when he said, “No use
worrying. What is to be must be. If anyone is really
determined to kill me, I shall be killed.”
Use a quotation to clarify a major point in
your paragraph.
A clue to Auden’s attitude toward the
speaker’s values comes in the last two lines of the
poem through the connotation of “free” and
“happy” and the suggested ambiguity of “absurd”
and “wrong.” Was he free? Was he happy? The
question is absurd; had anything been wrong, we
should certainly have heard.