TIPS ON QUOTING
Please note: Although all of the examples below are single spaced to save space, you should double
space your entire paper including the quoted material.
General Guidelines
1. DON'T start a paragraph with a quotation.
2. DON'T have two quotations together without words of yours in between:
Bennet often did the unexpected: "Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr.
Bingley" (54). "Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and
caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife
understand his character" (53).
3.
DON'T have a quotation all alone by itself in a sentence:
The Bennets did not have much of a marriage. "Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts,
sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been
insufficient to make his wife understand his character" (53). (also illustrated above)
4. DO make every quotation appear in a grammatically correct sentence you have written so that the
quotation supports, elaborates on, explains, and develops your words and does not substitute for
your words:
Austen makes clear how hard Mr. Bennet was for his wife to figure out: "Mr. Bennet was so odd a
mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and
twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character" (53). OR
Austen writes, "Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and
caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife
understand his character" (53). OR
Austen makes clear that "Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve,
and caprice" that his wife could not figure him out (53). (Moving the page reference to the end of the
sentence makes reading easier and is faithful to the sense of the original quotation, the last part of
which is, in effect, paraphrased.)
Incorporating Quotations into your Text
Any sentence you write containing a quotation should read from first to last like a good English sentence.
You may, therefore, need to adjust quotations to get them to fit with your words; such adjustments are
acceptable as long as you let your readers know what you have done.
1. When leaving out words in the middle of a quotation, use an ellipsis--three spaced periods, or four,
with no space before the first, if you leave out more than a sentence--to indicate the omission of the
words.
Of the marriage, Austen writes, "Mr. Bennet was so odd . . . that the experience of three and twenty
years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to
develope. . . . The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and
news" (53). (Two sentences are omitted between develope and The business.)
2. Put the three spaced periods (an ellipsis) at the end of the quotation when the quotation appears to
be a complete sentence in the original but isn't. The most recent edition of the MLA Handbook does
not require the use of an ellipsis at the beginning of a quotation, even if the quotation begins in the
middle of a sentence from the original text.
Austen says of Mrs. Bennet, "she fancied herself nervous" (53). Nevertheless, she was not
completely self-absorbed, for "[t]he business of her life was to get her daughters married . . ." (53).
(Since the second quotation is a complete clause, married looks as if it could be the end of a
sentence, but it is not; the brackets indicate changes in the case of the t to make it fit the grammar
required in the sentence.)
3. You may add words or phrases to quotations long as you put them in square brackets:
The Bennets were a mismatched pair in that "three and twenty years had been insufficient to make
his wife understand his [Mr. Bennet's] character" (53).
4. All of the examples above involve "run-in" quotations, but if a quotation is four lines or more, it should
be set off. For "set-off" quotations, start a new line, double space, and indent ten spaces on the left
margin (note that the quotation is also double spaced). Quotation marks are omitted because the
indenting shows where the quotation starts and stops:
The Bennets are clearly mismatched in temperament and understanding of each other:
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that
the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand
his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean
understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. (53)
This mismatched pair, the first married couple in the novel, illustrates the importance of finding the
right mate.
Positioning Parenthetical Page References
In the set-off quotation above, the parenthetical reference follows all punctuation; in run-in quotations, the
parenthetical reference follows the quotation marks but precedes the period, comma, colon, semicolon, or
other punctuation required of your sentence. If the quotation ends with a question mark or exclamation
point, these should be retained within the quotation marks and a final period should be put after the
parenthetical reference:
In his usual style, Mr. Bennet teases his wife and daughters by asking, "Do you consider the forms of
introduction, and the stress that is laid on them, as nonsense?" (55). He knows they do not believe such
a thing.