SUGGESTIONS FOR INCORPORATING QUOTATIONS
P. Wright – Las Cruces HS
 Sample passage
The best proof that a work of literature does what you
say it does is textual evidence: words and sentences you
can cite from the poem, the story, or the 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:
“Richard Cory”– Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.
1. 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.
Examples:
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 a handsome king, he was “clean favored, and imperially slim.”
2. Avoid having two quotations in a row. Your own commentary should bridge the two.
Examples:
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 also he was “richer than a king.”
3. Work the quotation comfortably into your sentence structure.
Examples:
Ineffective: “Darkened by the gloomiest of trees” shows just how frightening the forest looked.
Effective: The forest, “darkened by the gloomiest or trees,” was a frightening place.
SUGGESTIONS FOR INCOPORATING QUOTATIONS (CONTINUED)
4. Longer quotations (more than two lines of verse or four lines or prose) should be set off from your
paragraph to display form: single-spaced and centered without quotation marks.
Example:
Dickinson 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?
Note: For shorter papers, such as we will write this year, no long quotations are needed.
5. Separate lines of poetry running within your sentence with a virgule or slash, and preserve the
capitalization or words at the beginning of the line.
Example:
The speaker notes that the bruised heart of the mourner wonders “was it He, that bore, / And Yesterday, or Centuries
before?”
6. Punctuate the quotation to conform to the needs of your sentence structure as long as you do
not alter the meaning of the lines.
Example:
[original lines of poem]
[altered punctuation required by sentence structure]
He was a gentleman from sole to
crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
Richard Cory, “Clean favored and imperially slim,” was from head to toe a gentleman.
7. Be sure to name the source of the quotation correctly. In non-narrative poetry it is correct to say,
“The speaker says…,”not “the poet says.”
8. In prose say, “The narrator says…”when quoting passages of narration not “The author
says….”Identify characters as you quote them.
Example:
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.”
9. When quoting dialogue between characters in a play, set off the dialogue and begin a new line
as you quote each character. Place the characters name in front of his line.
Example:
Later in the play Hamlet confronts his mother:
Hamlet: Now, Mother, what’s the matter?
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.