"Did you think to
kill me? There's
no flesh and
blood within this
cloak to kill.
There is only an
idea. Ideas are
bulletproof “ (V
for Vendetta).
QUOTING
THINGS
CORRECTLY
Introduction to
Incorporating (working-in)
Quotations
A Couple of Preliminary Notes
•- Quotations are some of the most important data you
can have to support a claim. Remember to copy
wording and punctuation exactly as it appears in
the source from which you are taking it.
•- When students are told to find quotations from a book,
they sometimes think that they can only use something
that is already in quotation marks (narration). You can
actually use anything from a book, whether it be
dialogue or narration or some of both, that serves your
purposes.
Incorporating
Quotations
(Smoothly and Correctly)
Method #1
Introduce a quotation that is a
complete sentence with a
complete sentence of your
own and a colon.
Example: Katniss finds that Rue
hasn’t always eaten as well as she
would imagine she has: “’Oh,’ says
Rue with a sigh. ‘I’ve never had a
whole leg to myself before’” (143).
Example #2:
Marvin told me exactly what he
thought about my haircut: “That mullet
makes you look like you just stepped
out of the 1980’s.”
Incorporating
Quotations
(Smoothly and Correctly)
Method #2
Most of the time, you only need one
set of quotation marks around a
quotation.
When Nailer points out Nita’s wealth,
Pima responds, “Yeah, she’s rich all
right. But she’s not crew” (121).
However, if you have more than one speaker in your
quotation or you want to quote both narration and
dialogue, then you will need to have a quotation
within a quotation. To do this, put a normal set of
double quotation marks around the entire quotation
and put the inner quotation in single quotation
marks.
Example: Katniss finds that Rue hasn’t always eaten as well as
she would imagine she has: “’Oh,’ says Rue with a sigh. ‘I’ve
never had a whole leg to myself before’” (143).
Example: Katniss and Peeta would like to avoid the reaping if
they could: “’We could do it, you know,’ Gale says quietly. ‘What?’
I ask. ‘Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods’” (43).
***By the way, if you are quoting dialogue, do NOT put each new speaker in
a new paragraph as you would if you were the author writing the story.
Note: avoidance is not always a bad thing. It is
often easier for you and for the reader if you
avoid having a quotation in a quotation.
Katniss and Peeta would like to avoid the
reaping if they could: “’We could do it, you know,’
Gale says quietly. ‘What?’ I ask. ‘Leave the
district. Run off. Live in the woods’” (43).
BECOMES:
Consider the last quotation within a quotation
avoided in this way:
Katniss and Peeta would both like to avoid
the reaping if they could. This is seen when Gale
says, “We could do it, you know… Leave the
district. Run off. Live in the woods” (43).
Incorporating
Quotations
(Smoothly and Correctly)
Method #3
•Make the quotation the ending of your
own sentence without using any
punctuation between your own words and
the words you are quoting.
•Unlike method #2, you don't set these
quotations off with a verb like "says" or
"exclaims" and a comma. Instead, you work
it into your sentence.
Examples:
•The narrator lets the reader know his true motivation for helping his
brother when he confesses that “When Doodle was five years old, I
was embarrassed at having a brother of that age who couldn’t walk,
so I set out to teach him” (318). *
•He observed that Doodle seemed “all head, with a tiny body which
was red and shriveled like an old man’s” (316).
•Katniss remembers how her family had been "slowly starving to
death" (27).
•When Katniss sees her score, she thinks that "There must be a
mistake" (108).
•Pima warns Nailer that he “shouldn’t be fooled just because she
looks so sweet" (121).
Further Explanation
* Notice that in the first example the word “that” replaces a comma.
You usually have a choice, then, when you begin a sentence with a
phrase such as "that narrator says." You either can add a comma after
"says," or you can add the word "that," with no comma.