Using
Quotes
Effectively
"By necessity, by proclivity,
and by delight, we all quote."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
When to Use
Quotations
• you need to support your main points or claims
• you have chosen the most important material
• you absolutely know what it means
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How to Integrate Quotes
Sprinkle your discussion with key
phrases and terms, which should
be surrounded with quotes.
Example:
Wilfred Owen (1913)
says
says that
the
that
onlysaid
prayer
said for
only the
prayer
for those
those
who
die in battle
is the
who die
in battle
is the “rapid
“rapid
rattle
guns which
rattle of
gunsofwhich
spatter
spatter
theirorisons”
hasty
out theirout
hasty
orisons.”
(Owen, 1913).
Notice the Punctuation
Use an indirect statement with "that."
FOR EXAMPLE:
Margaret Mead (1962) feels
that "the use of marriage
contracts may reduce the
divorce rate."
Blend your lead-in and quotation:
Critics view the irony in Stevens’
play as a “creation and destruction
pattern” (Knight, 2009).
Use a complete sentence lead-in. Follow
with a colon and two spaces before the
Still APA
quotation.
format!
Hamilton (1941) characterizes Hera
directly and with authority: "She was
the protector of marriage, and married
Colons
women were her particular care." mean to
exemplify!
Use an introductory
phrase or clause:
•
•
•
Lesson 5
According to Jones (1987), "Frost revives
… nineteenth-century romantics"
As the grandfather explained, "...life is a
war" (Hamilton, 1998).
Even though they had enough players,
“Benny invited Smalls to play on the
Sandlot” (Evans, 1993).
Split the quotation
fully
articulated
"A"A
"A
fully
fully
articulated
articulated
pastoral
pastoral
idea
pastoral
idea
of
America,"
of idea
America,
of America,
did not emerge
did not
until
claims Leo Marx (1942),
theemerge
end
of
until
the
eighteenth
the
end
of
the
"did not emerge until the
century"
(Marx,
1942).
eighteenth
century"
(Marx,
end of the eighteenth
1942).
century.”
Lesson 7
Use the author's name and/or his
authority to introduce quotations
from secondary sources:
Frank Kermode (1998), a
prominent critic, claims that
Hamlet "is a delaying revenger."
Punctuating
Quotations
1. Use a comma for a brief, informal, or
grammatically incomplete introduction.
Prufrock thinks, "I am no prophet-and here's no great matter.”
(Eliot, 1911)
Example:
2. Use a colon to separate your
own complete sentence lead-ins
from quotations.
Qualities of the young and old
shine through in Yeats’ (1801)
line: “A young man in the Dark
am I, But a wild old man in the
light.”
3. Use an ellipsis (. . .) to indicate
material omitted from the
quotation.
Example:
Space
before and
after ellipsis
Hamlet tells Ophelia, "you jig and amble . . .
and make your wantonness your
ignorance“ (Shakespeare, 1599).
Example:
4. Use an
ellipsis (part 2)
When omitted at the end
of your sentence, put a period with no
space in front and then follow with
three spaced periods.
Hawthorn (1844) writes that "Robin gazed with
dismay and astonishment. . . . The effect was as
if two individual devils were loose.”
Example:
5. Use an
ellipsis (part 3)
If using an ellipsis and a
parenthetical page reference at the end
of a sentence, put the fourth period
after the parentheses.
He wrote that "Robin gazed with dismay and
astonishment. . .” (Hawthorn, 1844).
Example:
6. Use an
ellipsis (part 4)
If omitting a whole
sentence, use four
dots.
Singer (1998) writes that, "His thoughts turned to
matters of business.... It was easier to think about
practical matters."
Paraphrasing: WHEN TO USE IT
1. When a quote is too confusing.
2. When you’ve used several quotes
already.
3. When using your words instead of
the resource’s will contribute to the
strength of the paper’s voice.
Must Paraphrasing be Parenthetically Cited?
YES!
YES!
Take the figurative and interpret for a reader:
“A woman drew her long black hair out tight
and fiddled whisper music on those strings.”
- T.S.Eliot, “The Waste Land”
Paraphrased:
A woman put her black hair in a ponytail and
began softly playing her violin (Eliot, 1922).
Now you try:
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
— T.S. Eliot (1922)
Consider:
• Other ways to say the same word
• Changing the order of details
• Don’t forget APA format!
Identify field-specific language or acronyms and make
it accessible to your audience:
“Pedagogues today must apply RtI across disciplines
as evaluated by the Danielson model.”
- Nichols, Fisher, and Marquez, “Teacher Jargon”
Paraphrased:
Teacher evaluations require them to consider how to
help every student at their point(s) of need.
Now you try:
Download the MP3 by toggling between
iTunes and the website or your CD drive.
Consider:
• Not everyone knows the “lingo” you do.
Make your words apply to the elderly, or
undereducated.
Use semantic (meaning) paraphrasing by using a
thesaurus or synonyms you already know.
Try it:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order
to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
- John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” (1961)
Remember:
Keep the same sentence format essentially, just
change words to other words with similar meaning.
Use syntactic paraphrasing by changing the
structure of the sentence:
Try it:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we
shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the
survival and the success of liberty.”
- John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” (1961)
Consider:
The words can remain, the structure and order needs to
change.
Use both syntactic & semantic paraphrasing
for best results and the least plagiarism:
Try it:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we
shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the
survival and the success of liberty.”
- John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” (1961)
Compare what you have seen over your last three lessons
and make sure you have differently structured sentences with
a variety of words expressing the same ideas.
Summarizing: What to remember
• Capture the main idea of the longer
passage.
• Eliminate unnecessary detail.
• Make sure it is relevant to your topic.
• Snag meaningful language. Choose
words succinctly.
• Still cite your source in APA format.
Summarizing: Practice passage 1
A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days, but which
flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, is what Chesterton called the "good bad book": that is, the
kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable
when more serious productions have perished. Obviously outstanding
books in this line are RAFFLES and the Sherlock Holmes stories, which have
kept their place when innumerable "problem novels", "human documents"
and "terrible indictments" of this or that have fallen into deserved
oblivion. (Who has worn better, Conan Doyle or Meredith?) Almost in the
same class as these I, put R. Austin Freeman's earlier stories--"The
Singing Bone" "The Eye of Osiris" and others--Ernest Bramah's MAX
CARRADOS, and, dropping the standard a bit, Guy Boothby's Tibetan
thriller, DR NIKOLA, a sort of schoolboy version of Hue's TRAVELS IN
TARTARY, which would probably make a real visit to Central Asia seem a
dismal anticlimax.
- George Orwell, “Good Bad Books” (1943)
Summarizing: Practice passage 2
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained
by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit.
There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the
young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the
human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing
because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all
things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no
room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the
heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and
doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.
Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust,
of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without
hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no
universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the
glands.
- William Faulkner, “Nobel Prize Speech” (1950)
Summarizing: Practice passage 3
I used to believe in the American dream that meant a job, a mortgage,
cable, credit, warranties, success. I wanted it and worked toward it like
everyone else, all of us separately chasing the same thing.
One year, through a series of unhappy events, it all fell apart. I found
myself homeless and alone. I had my truck and $56.
I came upon a shack in an isolated hollow, abandoned, full of broken glass and
rubbish. I found the owner and rented the place for $50 a month. I took a
bedroll, a broom, rope, a gun and cooking gear, and cleared a corner to camp
in while I worked.
The locals knew nothing about me. But slowly, they started teaching
me the art of being a neighbor. They dropped off blankets, candles, tools and
canned deer meat, and they began sticking around to chat. They started to
teach me a belief in a different American dream — not the one of individual
achievement but one of neighborliness….
What I had believed in, all those things I thought were the necessary
accouterments for a civilized life, were nonexistent in this place. Up on the
mountain, my most valuable possessions were my relationships with my
neighbors.
- Eve Birch, “The Art of Neighborliness” (2009)
The rules:
1. Use when quote is 40+ words.
2. Omit quotation marks.
3. Start the quotation on a new line, indented
1/2 inch from the left margin.
4. Maintain new margin and double-spacing
until end of quote. It should look like this:
Jones's (1998) study found the following:
Students often had difficulty using APA style,
especially when it was their first time citing sources.
This difficulty could be attributed to the fact that many
students failed to purchase a style manual or to ask
their teacher for help. (p. 199)