QUOTATION IN ACADEMIC PAPERS Quotation means using someone else’s

words within your own writing. You must give that other writer or speaker credit for those words or you are committing plagiarism (stealing someone else’s intellectual output).

REASONS FOR QUOTING You might quote because someone else has

phrased an idea exceptionally accurately or cleverly, and you want to preserve that phrasing.

You might quote because you are using an idea or fact, but you got that fact from someone else, and you need to reveal that to your reader.

You might quote because you are presenting an interpretation of someone else’s words or ideas, and the only way you can really prove your interpretation is to show how you got clues for it from that person’s writing itself. You have to quote a chunk of writing in order to analyze it.

RULES FOR QUOTING

Know why you want to use the quote. Don’t just stuff it in there because your instructor said you need to use quotes. Be clear about the point you want the quote to make.

RULES FOR QUOTING You can quote chunks of almost any size:

one or two words, parts of sentences, whole sentences, or groups of sentences.

BUT Quote only what you need. Extra material

is confusing and distracting. You may think you’re doing yourself a favor by taking up extra space, but it’s just the opposite.

RULES FOR QUOTING Say you want to quote pretty much an

entire paragraph, but you know that that would be too much. You can cut out repetitive or unnecessary material from the middle of a passage to make it tighter. However, if you cut out some words, the material on both ends needs to fit together and make sense when read together.

Also, use ellipses (. . . ) to indicate the cut.

RULES FOR QUOTING You usually can not quote the same piece of text

twice. You can use it once and later refer back to it in passing, but do not try to quote the passage a second time as if it were a new piece of evidence.

You do not have to use quotes from a text in the order in which they appear in the original text. In other words, you don’t have to give a quote from page 7 before a quote from page 102 just to follow their page order. The order of your paper will dictate which parts of the text you need to use and when you need to use them.

RULES FOR QUOTING Do not call quotes “quotes” in your own

paper. Refer to the quote as a “passage,” a “statement,” an “excerpt,” or something less blunt than “quote.”

Don’t change the wording or verb tense of a quotation.

Don’t put quotation marks around words just because they are slang or commonly said expressions. That’s not quoting, and it is not a correct use of quotation marks.

RULES FOR QUOTING Whenever possible, integrate the quote

into a sentence that introduces it. Avoid presenting a quote as a sentence all on its own.

INTEGRATING QUOTED MATERIAL You can blend the quote into a larger

sentence.

The future champion could, as he put it, “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”

The prisoners escaped “by squeezing through a tiny window eighteen feet above the floor of their cell.”

INTEGRATING QUOTED MATERIAL You can formally introduce the quote.

This means write a full sentence of introduction, followed by a colon and then the quote.

Morrow views personal ads as an art form: “The personal ad is like a haiku of self-celebration, a brief solo played on one’s own horn.”

INTEGRATING QUOTED MATERIAL You can use an expression such as he

said. This is known as a tag line.

Without batting an eye, the student said, “I knew I would get an A.”

“You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country,” said Robert Frost.

INTEGRATING QUOTED MATERIAL You can identify the original speaker or writer of

the quote in a little interruption, but it has to be done smoothly.

“Of course she didn’t know he was a murderer when she married him,” said the sheriff, “but she did stay with him after she found out.”

“I was a flop as a reporter,” admitted E.B. White. “Every piece had to be a masterpiece—and before you knew it, Tuesday was Wednesday.”