Quoting Tips
A Bridgewater College Writing Center Handout
Use
quotations when:
·
you
plan to discuss the author's words;
·
you
want to use expert testimony to support your argument;
·
you
want to make use of another writer's phrasing because it is more appropriate
than anything you could say.
·
Quote
sparingly.
·
Be
scrupulously accurate.
·
Don't
distort the author's meaning by taking scraps of text that support your point but
don't accurately or fully represent the author's view.
·
Don't use another author's
words to make your point. Make your point in your own words and relate the quotation to your
point.
·
Introduce
the quotation. Use phrasing like "According to Smith" or "Medical
researcher Donald Smith observes, . . ." as well as relating the quotation
to your point.
·
Comment
on the quotation after it. In most cases, do not end a paragraph with a
quotation.
·
If
you are quoting two sentences from the same paragraph or the same page,
deleting some sentences between them, use ellipsis, which looks like this—
. . .
—to separate the two sentences (in addition to the
period denoting the end of the sentence), unless you want to discuss each
sentence as part of a separate point. You may also delete words within a
sentence, if they are irrelevant to your point, and substitute ellipsis, if you are not distorting the author's
meaning by doing so.
Note: The 6th edition of the MLA Handbook notes that “Some
instructors prefer that square brackets be placed around ellipsis points
inserted into quotations . . .” (117).
·
If
you use only a phrase from your source, integrate it into your sentence.
·
If
you need to change phrasing to integrate a quotation into your sentence, for
example, changing "claiming" to "claims" or "he"
to "George Brown," make the change and enclose the changed wording in
square brackets:
According to Maguire, "Johnson [claims] . .
.".
Smith argues that "[George Brown] represents .
. .".
·
If
there is a mistake, for example a misspelling or a missing word, in the
material you are quoting, copy the author's words accurately, but add the word sic in square brackets immediately
following the mistake. The word sic means "thus," so what is
implied is, "Yes, I know this is wrong, but this is the way I found it in
the quotation."
"It is not apporpriate [sic] to . . . " (Cleary 85).
·
If
there are quotation marks within the portion of the text you are quoting, so
that you must indicate a quotation within a quotation, use single quotation marks
around the material that appears within quotation marks in the original:
Original:
Mr. Smith commented that it was "a very fine afternoon" and
invited Maggie to accompany him to the churchyard.
Quoted in a paper:
"Mr. Smith commented that it was 'a very fine afternoon' and
invited Maggie to accompany him to the churchyard" (Boyd 15).
·
Place
parenthetical documentation after the quotation marks that close the quotation,
but place the period after the parenthetical documentation. This way you make the documentation part of
the sentence that includes the quotation.
"Plato was concerned with the relationship
between what is eternal and immutable, on the one hand, and what 'flows,' on
the other" (Gaarder 82).
·
Indent
long quotations (over 4 lines in MLA Style, over 40 words in APA). When you indent a quotation, do not use
quotation marks. Place the
parenthetical citation after the final period of the quotation when you indent.
Bridgewater College
Writing Center