Web
Handouts:
Integrating and Using Quotations Properly
|
Integrating
Quotations (and Using Proper Punctuation)
You should never have a quotation standing alone
as a complete sentence, or, worse yet, as an incomplete
sentence, in your writing. IVCC's Style Book
explains this concept well with a good analogy. The Style
Book compares quotations with helium balloons. We
all know what happens when you let go of a helium
balloon: it flies away. In a way, the same thing happens
when you present a quotation that is standing all by
itself in your writing, a quotation that is not
"held down" by one of your own sentences. The
quotation will seem disconnected from your own thoughts
and from the flow of your sentences. Ways to integrate
quotations properly into your own sentences are explained
below. Please note the punctuation: it is correct.
There are at least four
ways to integrate quotations.
1. Introduce the
quotation with a complete sentence and a colon.
Example: In "Where I
Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau states
directly his purpose for going into the woods:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived."
Example: Thoreau's
philosophy might be summed up best by his repeated
request for people to ignore the insignificant details of
life: "Our life is frittered away
by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more
than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his
ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity!"
Example: Thoreau ends his
essay with a metaphor: "Time is but
the stream I go a-fishing in."
This is an easy rule to
remember: if you use a complete sentence to introduce a
quotation, you need a colon after the sentence. Using a
comma in this situation will most likely create a comma
splice, one of the serious sentence-boundary errors. Be
careful not to confuse a colon (:) with
a semicolon (;).
2. Use an
introductory or explanatory phrase, but not a complete
sentence, separated from the quotation with a comma.
Example: In "Where I
Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau states
directly his purpose for going into the woods when he
says, "I went to the woods because
I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived."
Example: "We do not
ride on the railroad; it rides upon us," Thoreau
says as he suggests the consequences of making ourselves
slaves to "progress."
Example: Thoreau asks,
"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of
life?"
Example: According to
Thoreau, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides
upon us."
You should use a comma to
separate your own words from the quotation when your
introductory or explanatory phrase ends with a verb such
as "says," "said,"
"thinks," "believes,"
"pondered," "recalls,"
"questions," and "asks" (and many
more). You should also use a comma when you introduce a
quotation with a phrase such as "According to
Thoreau."
3. Make the
quotation a part of your own sentence without any
punctuation between your own words and the words you are
quoting.
Example: In "Where I
Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau states
directly his purpose for going into the woods when he
says that "I went
to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I
came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Example: Thoreau argues
that "shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest
truths, while reality is fabulous."
Example: According to
Thoreau, people are too often "thrown off the track
by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the
rails."
Notice that the word
"that" is used in two of the examples above,
and when it is used as it is in the examples,
"that" replaces the comma which would be
necessary without "that" in the sentence. You
usually have a choice, then, when you begin a sentence
with a phrase such as "Thoreau says." You
either can add a comma after "says," or you can
add the word "that," with no comma.
4. Use very short
quotations--only a few words--as part of your own
sentence.
Example: In "Where I
Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau states that
his retreat to the woods around Walden Pond was motivated
by his desire "to live deliberately" and to
face only "the essential facts of life."
Example: Thoreau argues
that people blindly accept "shams and
delusions" as the "soundest truths," while
regarding reality as "fabulous."
Example: Although Thoreau
"drink[s] at" the stream of Time, he can
"detect how shallow it is."
When you integrate
quotations in this way, you do not use any special
punctuation. Instead, you should punctuate the sentence
just as you would if all of the words were your own.
All of the methods above
for integrating quotations are correct, but you should
avoid relying too much on just one method. You should
instead use a variety of methods.
Notice the
Punctuation!
Notice that there are only two punctuation marks
that are used to introduce quotations: the comma and the
colon.
Notice as well the
punctuation of the sentences above in relation to the
quotations. Commas and periods go inside the final
quotation mark ("like this."). For whatever
reason, this is the way we do it in America. In England,
though, the commas and periods go outside of the final
punctuation mark. (I just thought you'd like to know.)
Semicolons and colons go
outside of the final quotation mark ("like
this";).
Question marks and
exclamation points go outside of the final quotation mark
if the punctuation mark is part of your sentence--your
question or your exclamation ("like this"?).
Those marks go inside of the final quotation mark if they
are a part of the original--the writer's question or
exclamation ("like this!").
Be Accurate
with Quotations, and Indicate Changes
You should never change the words in a quotation
without indicating the changes. The quotation marks you
use around words indicate to readers that everything
within those quotations marks appears in your writing exactly
the same as it appears in the source you are quoting. To
give you an idea of how important it is to copy
quotations correctly, what do you think you would do if
you are quoting a writer's words and you notice that
there is an error in the writing, a typographical error,
for instance? You copy the error! In your own reading,
you may have seen [sic] within quotations; this
expression is a Latin word meaning "thus
found." If you find an error in words you are
quoting, you copy the error followed by [sic], which is
telling readers, "I didn't make the error. The error
is in the original." The need to use [sic] seldom
comes up in ENG 1001 or ENG 1002 courses, but it does
suggest how important it is to copy someone else's words
correctly. Before you submit a final draft of a paper,
you should double check all quotations to make sure they
are accurate. Above, I state that you should never make
changes to quotations "without indicating the
changes." Actually, there is one exception and two
ways in which you can make changes as long as you
indicate the changes properly, explained below.
Removing Final
Punctuation from a Quotation
Without indicating the change, you can and should
remove the final punctuation from a quotation if
the final punctuation does not make sense within
your sentence and if the punctuation conveys no
meaning in the original. In general, commas and
periods do not convey any meaning, so they
usually can be removed from a quotation if
they appear after the last word you quote.
Exclamation points and questions marks, though, do
convey meaning, so they should not be removed
from quotations. Note the examples below:
Incorrect: Annie Dillard
says that Hollins Pond is "through
the woods by the quarry and across the
highway,".
Correct: Annie Dillard says
that Hollins Pond is "through the
woods by the quarry and across the
highway."
Incorrect: Dillard says that
she "might learn something of the
mindlessness," of
the weasel.
Correct: Dillard says that
she "might learn something of the
mindlessness" of the weasel.
|
Indicating Additions to
Quotations with Brackets
You can use brackets within quotations to
indicate material you have added to a quotation,
but you should use brackets only when the meaning
of the original might be unclear, most often
because of a pronoun in the quotation with an
unclear antecedent. Note the example below:
In
this example, the antecedent of "he"
may be unclear to readers, so it's fine to use
brackets to clarify the antecedent, as indicated
below:
You
should use brackets sparingly since the overuse
of brackets may cause readers to wonder why you
are making so many changes to the words you
quote. If the brackets are not necessary to
clarify the meaning, don't use them. For example,
in the example above, I most likely would not
need to use brackets to clarify the antecedent of
"he" if I used the word
"weasel" just a sentence or two before
the sentence in which I use the quotation. In
this situation, readers should have no problem
understanding what "he" refers to in
the quoted words.
Another
situation in which changes indicated with
brackets might be necessary is when a pronoun or
pronouns within a quotation you use could cause
confusion for your readers. Can you recognize the
possible confusion for readers if you used the
quotation below?
The
problem above is with the pronouns "me"
and "we." Typically, when a writer uses
the pronoun "me," the writer is
referring to himself or herself, and the use of
"we" typically refers to the writer
along with one of more other individuals. To
eliminate the possibility of confusion, then, the
writer might make the following changes to the
quotation, indicated with brackets:
The
example above is correct, but, again, writers
should use brackets sparingly, and I would say
that two changes with brackets to one short
quotation is moving toward heavy use of brackets.
Is
there any way that the writer could clarify the
antecedents of the pronouns in the quotation
above without making changes to the quotation?
Could the writer clarify the pronouns in the
quotations by making changes to his or her own
words in the sentence to eliminate the need to
make changes to the quotation? Yes, as the
example below demonstrates.
The
example above might be a bit wordy, and further
revision to the sentence might help the writer
find a way to accomplish the same end with fewer
words, but the revision at least eliminates the
writer's need to make two changes to a short
quotation.
Whenever
possible, writers should make changes to their
own sentences to accommodate quotations, and they
should avoid making too many bracketed changes to
quotations.
Occasionally,
writers will also use brackets to indicate
changes in the verb tense of a word in the
original or changes to a verb in terms of its
agreement with its subject. It's fine to do this
occasionally if you do not change the meaning of
the original, and there is the possibility of
changing the meaning of the original if you start
making these kinds of changes. However, notice
how the verb in the first example below does not
agree with the subject used in the writer's own
sentence, so the word in the quotation should be
changed.
Dillard concludes her essay
by saying that she "think it would
be well, and proper, and obedient, and
pure, to grasp your one necessity and not
let it go, to dangle from it limp
wherever it take you."
She
"think" is an error, a lack of
subject/verb agreement. To eliminate this error,
the writer could use brackets to change the tense
of "think."
Dillard concludes her essay
by saying that she "think[s] it
would be well, and proper, and obedient,
and pure, to grasp your one necessity and
not let it go, to dangle from it limp
wherever it take you."
Make
sure you remember what brackets are and what
brackets are not: [ ] are
brackets; ( ) are parentheses,
not brackets; { } are, well, I'm
not sure what they are called!
|
Indicating
Deletions from Quotations with Ellipses
An ellipsis is three periods, separated from
one another with a space (. . .),
and an ellipsis is used to indicate that material
has been deleted from a quotation. It's all right
to delete material from a quotation, as long as
the deleted material is not vital to the meaning
of the quotation and as long as the quoted words
convey the same meaning as they do in the source.
Note the example below:
The
ellipsis is used well in this example. The
deleted material is "either splitting the
jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain
at the base of the skull." Deleting the
specifics of how the weasel kills its prey, as in
the example above, does not change the meaning of
the quoted words.
When
you use an ellipsis, realize that, in terms of
the grammar of the sentence, the ellipsis points
are "invisible." In other words, the
ellipsis is read in the same way that someone
would read a single space between words.
Therefore, you must make sure that the words
before and after the ellipsis points make sense
together, both logically and grammatically.
When
should you use an ellipsis at the end or the
beginning of a quotation? The simple answer is
"seldom," but there are specific
situations in which you should use an ellipsis in
this way.
You
should use an ellipsis if the words you quote, as
they appear in your essay, constitute a complete
sentence, but, in the original, the words you
quote are only part of a longer sentence.
Because
this concept often is not easy (for me) to
explain, I will use a very simple example to
demonstrate the idea.
Let's
say the original is "I am here, and I am
ready."
Here's
how I could quote the sentence or part of it.
He said, "I am here,
and I am ready." (no ellipsis)
He said, ". . . I am
ready." (ellipsis before the quoted
words because the quotation appears as a
complete sentence in my writing, but the
sentence I quote is actually part of a
longer sentence, with the words that I
deleted from the original in front of the
words I quote.)
He said, "I am here. .
. ." (ellipsis after the words I
quote because the quoted words constitute
a complete sentence as I present them,
but the sentence actually extends beyond
the words I quote in the original
passage. Why four "periods"
instead of three, and why is one of the
periods right against the last word?
Well, in this case, I am using an
ellipsis (three periods) and a period for
my own sentence (one period). The period
for my sentence joins the ellipsis points
within the quotation marks.
|
Important
Miscellaneous Information
- Avoid long
quotations. When you use long quotations, you are
giving up space in your essay to someone else,
almost as if a guest speaker has entered your
paper and is temporarily pushing you aside. Don't
let that speaker take away the spotlight from
your own writing. Besides, long quotations often
contain material that is not necessary for the
writer to make his or her point. It's almost
always more effective to use shorter quotations,
which help highlight the exact words that you
feel are most important, the same important words
that can be obscured if they are presented as
part of a long quotation.
- If you must use long
quotations, though, you should offset and indent
quotation of more than three lines. The entire
quotation should be indented 10 spaces from the
left (usually two tabs); the right margins do not
change from what they are in the rest of your
paper. Do not put quotation marks around
indented quotes. The indenting alone indicates to
readers that the words are being quoted. Indented
quotations should be double spaced.
- Always use single
quotation marks to indicate a quotation within a
quotation, as when you quote the words of a
character who is speaking or when a quotation
contains one or more words that are in quotation
marks in the original, as in the following
example: Thoreau complains that "hardly
a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but
when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, 'What's
the news?' as if the rest of
mankind had stood his sentinels."
In Thoreau's essay "What's the news?"
appears in quotation marks, so, when I quote the
sentence in which these words appear, I put my
own quotation marks around the entire sentence
and turn the quotation marks that are in the
original into single quotation marks.
- Avoid beginning a
paragraph with a quotation. This is because
paragraphs usually begin with topic sentences,
and beginning a paragraph with a quotation may
limits what the writer should talk about in the
paragraph to only the quoted words. However, it's
sometimes effective to begin an introduction with
a thought-provoking quotation.
- Avoid ending a
paragraph with a quotation. This is because
quotations, especially when they are used as
supporting evidence, often require some
explanation from the writer. Ending a paragraph
with a quotation does not allow for this
explanation. In addition, a quotation at the end
of a paragraph often does not serve as an
effective transitional sentence into the next
paragraph.
- Never quote out of
context. In other words, be careful not to
present quoted words in a way that gives the
words a different meaning than what they convey
in the original. An example of quoting out of
context would be the following: Concerning the
weasel, Dillard says that she "knows what he
thinks." I have copied all of the words
accurately, but I have still changed Dillard's
meaning completely. In the essay, Dillard asks,
"Who knows what he thinks?"
Back to Web Handouts
|
