Some Pointers on Using Quotations
When you quote, do so carefully, checking your quotations to make sure they are exactly as they
were in the source. Put any addition to the quotation in brackets [thus]; if you delete, use ellipses…three
spaced dots (not…but…). If you end a sentence with ellipsis so that you need a period also, you will need
four dots…. Notice that when you use four dots, you do not put a space before the first. Ellipsis is
necessary primarily to show that something is left out in the middle of a quotation. Normally it should not
be used at the beginning or end of a quotation as we expect something to come before and after the
quotation. Use ellipsis on either side of a quotation only to keep from misleading the reader. If the reader
would think you have quoted an entire sentence when you have not and the omission is significant, use
ellipsis to inform your reader that the sentence is not complete. Otherwise, do not precede or follow a
quotation with ellipsis.
A quotation should not be dumped into your paper as a free-standing entity—each quotation must
be part of one of your sentences. The most common way of introducing a quotation is with a tag, that is, a
subject and a verb denoting the action of speaking and writing. Among the possible verbs you may use in
this position are says, notes, acknowledges, claims, exclaims, argues, maintains, questions, describes,
theorizes, insists, adds, comments, believes, points out, notices, assumes, writes, posits, proposes,
supposes, thinks, names, guesses, implies, concludes, ends. Examples of tags would be Hawthorne notes,
Melville believes, Thoreau maintains, etc. The tag is followed by a comma, and the quotation serves as a
direct object of the tag verb. The quotation must be a complete sentence, either grammatically or
functionally, and it begins with a capital letter. If your quotation does not begin with a capital letter in the
original, you may change the case of the first letter by substituting the capital letter in brackets.
A quotation may also be introduced by a partial sentence, or by a complete sentence. (Note that
she says is a tag, but she says that is a partial sentence.) After a partial sentence, use whatever punctuation
mark would be correct if there were no quotation marks. (In many cases, this means that there is no
additional punctuation.) A complete sentence introducing a quotation is followed by a colon, and the
quotation begins with a capital letter. Here are some examples:
Ways to Insert an Outside Source
Tag: Hawthorne’s narrator adds, “On they went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in
frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man’s heart.”
Tag, with capital letter added: Hawthorne’s narrator concludes, “[T]hey went, in counterfeited
pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man’s heart.”
Partial sentence: The narrator says the throng moved on “in counterfeited pomp, in senseless
uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man’s heart.”
Complete sentence: The narrator condemns the crowd in a final summation of its behavior: “On
they went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old
man’s heart.”
The above quotation might also be put into your own words:
Summary—Hawthorne’s narrator condemns the crowd tarring and feathering Major Molineux
by saying it acted insanely in destroying the major.
Paraphrase—Hawthorne’s narrator condemns the crowd as it continues down the street
humiliating the major in false ceremony, unreasonable clamor, and insane fun.
When you quote poetry, you must show the line division. Two lines of poetry are divided by a
slash mark (with a space on either side): “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, / And a small cabin
build there, of clay and wattles made.” You will need to keep the capitalization at the beginning of the
Some Pointers on Using Quotations
second line. Longer quotations are indented one inch from the left margin, with each line of poetry
beginning a new line. This indentation takes the place of quotation marks:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
When the quotation is four or more lines of prose, it too is set off by indenting from the left hand margin.
Name the author in your tag and then follow each quotation with the page number of the source in
parentheses. When referring to a primary source in your textbook, you need not give a page number for
summary of bits of the story. You do need to give credit for both direct and indirect quotations of
secondary sources by identifying the author and the page number. If you quote more than one work by the
same author, you must identify the work quoted, usually by an abbreviation or short title, either in the tag
or in the parenthetical attribution. After short quotations, the final period is placed after the parentheses;
after long, indented quotations, the final period comes before the parenthetical attribution. Additional
examples are shown below.
Here is a brief passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden:
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on
the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and
took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the
influence of the slightest due that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the
neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is
already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. (638)
Note that Thoreau does not appear in the parentheses at the end because introduction tells us the passage
is from Thoreau. When the quotation is indented from the main text, the last period comes before the
parentheses. (Otherwise, the parenthetical attribution would seem to be part of the quotation.)
Summarizing the passage given above: In order to summarize without plagiarizing, read a few
lines, turn the book on its face, and put the ideas in your own words. If you try to put the ideas in your
own words while looking at the book, you will probably copy sentence structures at least. Exchanging a
few words for synonyms will leave you too close to the original. Don’t look at your source while you are
putting it in your own words. Here is an acceptable summary of the above passage:
Thoreau compares the difference a bit of rain or dew makes on grass to the difference thinking
happy thoughts makes in our sense of well-being. He says that because we grieve over our past
wrongdoing we act as if it is winter when spring has come; we need to forgive ourselves the sins of the
past and live in the present (638).
Note that the page number is still given, as the idea comes from Thoreau. His name is not in the
parentheses because it is given at the beginning of the passage. There are no quotation marks because
Thoreau’s idea is given but not in his words. When the quotation is not indented, the period comes after
the parentheses.
If you do not name the author in introducing the quotation, then you must do so in the parenthetical
attribution. Note that there is no comma between author and page number:
Here are some beautiful lines: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to
dawn. The sun is but a morning star” (Thoreau 648).
It is usually better style to name the author in the introduction to the quotation.