Reported Speech Examples or CItations
Make the name of the source a direct part of our own sentence only if the source is an
important one and you want to call attention to it:
US criminal jail sentencing of Blacks and Whites have been shown to be quite different, for
example, McChesney (2000, p. 8) claims that “Blue-collar” crimes get more strict jail sentences
than “White-collar” crime—almost always netting vastly greater amounts of money—gets
undemanding treatment by comparison.
Introduce a quotation with a colon or an introductory phrase:
As evidence McChesney (2000) describes this incident that occurred in 2000: “a Texas man
received sixteen years in prison for stealing a Snickers candy bar” (p. 8).
Set off in a “block quote” quotations of three or more lines. Use [ ] square brackets to show
every change you make to someone else’ text:
He contrasts this example with an example of “White-collar” crime:
At the same time four executives at Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd. were found guilty of
[planning] to suppress and eliminate competition in the vitamin industry, in what the [US]
Justice Department called perhaps the largest criminal antitrust conspiracy in history”
(McChesney, 2000, p. 8).
After a quote like the above try to make clear why you are quoting it:
These examples clearly show the inequality of punishment for White-collar and Blue-collar crimes.
The cost of these White-collar crimes to consumers in terms of public health is nearly
immeasurable. The four executives were fined anywhere from seventy-five thousand dollars to
350,000 dollars and they received prison terms ranging from three months all the way up to . . .
four months.
Other Hints:
 Do not begin a sentence with quoted material and end it with your own words. Begin
our sentences with your own words and end them with the quoted material.
 Use direct quotations:
 when you use the work of others as primary data,
 when you want to appeal to their authority or expertise,
 when the specific words or your source are important.
 Paraphrase your sources:
 when you can say the same thing more clearly,
 when you are more interested in content, in findings or claims, than in
how a source expresses himself.
Concise Sentences: Two Principles or Writing Tips:
1.
2.
The subjects of sentences name the cast of characters—they tell us WHO?
The verbs that go with those subjects name the crucial actions those characters are part
of—they tell us WHAT those subjects DO.
A quick method is simply to look at the first five or six words of every sentence: (1) If you find
that the verb is more than six or seven words beyond the subject in a sentence and (2) the subject
of the sentence is not one of your characters, take a hard look at that sentence; its characters and
actions probably do not align with the subjects and verbs.
Subjects and Characters:
Faculties, committees, Mayor Daley, President Bush,
Prime Minister Kouizumi, The White House, Monbu-Kagakusho, studies, a report,
The new data, This evidence etc.