ENGLISH 3001: USING QUOTATIONS EFFECTIVELY
MAINTAINING A SMOOTH SENTENCE STYLE: When you use supporting quotations, keep in mind that it is rarely effective to use an entire quoted sentence that is not part of one of your own sentences. Also, even if an entire quoted sentence is part of one of your sentences, it still tends to come across as less interesting than it could (especially since this form so often appears in a “he says-plus-comma” frame). In order to make your own writing flow as smoothly and engagingly as possible, it’s usually best to use only an effective PART of a quotation as PART of one of your own sentences. So instead of boring your reader with this:
As Wilson says, “Who can imagine a world without MTV?” (232)Write something like this:
Wilson asks if anyone could imagine “a world without MTV” (232).And instead of writing this:
At one point Baxter says, “I used to think MTV hated me, too” (233).Write something like this:
At one point Baxter admits that he “used to think MTV hated [him], too” (233).(Notice also the correct usage here of page numbers and the correct placement of the ending quotation mark and period.)
PREPARING FOR AND FOLLOWING UP ON A QUOTATION: to integrate a quotation well within a paragraph, a good writer usually writes (1) one sentence to introduce the quotation, (2) a second sentence that includes the quotation, and (3) a third sentence to comment on the quotation:
ORIGINAL (from hooks): African Americans are among those students I teach from poor and working-class backgrounds who are most vocal about issues of class. They express frustration, anger, and sadness about the tensions and stress they experience trying to conform to acceptable white, middle-class behaviors in university settings while retaining the ability to “deal” at home. (182)LEAVING SOMETHING OUT OF A QUOTATION: notice the ELLIPSES (the three dots) in the above quotations. Ellipses indicate, of course, that some unnecessary words have been left out of a quotation. Note that when you quote just a word or a short phrase, no ellipsis is necessary. Also, do not use an ellipsis to indicate that you have left out the BEGINNING of a sentence; only missing words from the end or somewhere in the middle of a sentence need to be indicated with an ellipsis. Note that when you quote parts of more than one sentence, you need to use FOUR dots instead of three.SMOOTHLY INTEGRATED QUOTATION (in a report on Roger Lee): hooks explains that race is a complicating factor in the frustration that many students from working-class backgrounds feel in middle-class settings. African American students, for instance, “express frustration, anger, and sadness about the the tensions and stress they experience trying to conform to acceptable white, middle-class behaviors . . . ” (182). As an Asian American from a middle-class background, Lee feels little tension in his working environment in terms of class difference, but he does admit to some frustrations in terms of racial difference.
CHANGING OR ADDING WORDS WITHIN A QUOTATION: use brackets to indicate any changes you make to quotations while fitting them into your sentences. Here’s an example from Seely Brown’s article:
ORIGINAL: Recently I was with a young twenty-something who had actually wired a Web browser into his eyeglasses. As he talked with me, he had his left hand in his pocket to cord in keystrokes to bring up my Web page and read about me, all the while carrying on with his part of the conversation! I was astonished that he could do all this in parallel and so unobtrusively.This quotation is technically correct, but four changes within one quotation make it rather awkward. In general, if you have to change more than two items in a quotation, it’s better to find another way to write it. One way is just to paraphrase it (to paraphrase is to restate someone else’s words in your own words, without quotation marks):SOMEWHAT SMOOTHLY INTEGRATED QUOTATION: As an example of this phenomenon, Seely Brown writes that “[he] was with a young twenty-something who had actually wired a Web browser into his eyeglasses. As he talked with [Seely Brown], he had his left hand in his pocket to cord in keystrokes to bring up [Seely Brown’s] Web page and read about me, all the while carrying on with his part of the conversation! [Seely Brown] was astonished that he could do all this in parallel and so unobtrusively.”
As an example of this phenomenon, Seely Brown describes his encounter with a young man who actually had a web browser built into his eyeglasses. Much to his amazement, the young man was able to hold a conversation with Seely Brown and surf the web simultaneously.Finally, beware of overly long quotations, like the one above from Seely Brown. They “turn over the microphone to someone else” for too long, causing you to lose control of your writing. If you do quote more than three lines, be sure to indent the quotation (as a “block quote”).
If you still have any questions about how to use quotations, be sure
to ask me, either during my office hours or via e-mail.