The Use of Quotations in Writing

Why use quotations?

• Imagine you are a lawyer and your essay is your way of convincing a jury (your teacher ) of your argument.

• A lawyer might be interesting, persuasive, and thought-provoking, but without EVIDENCE a jury is never going to be sure that what the lawyer is saying is true.

• Quotes and examples work like evidence in a court case – they convince your audience that what you’re writing is accurate.

Why Use Quotations?

• Quotes are used to support your own ideas; they should not take the place of your ideas nor should they be used to simply tell the story.

• Quotes are a useful way of exploring how theme, character and language are used in a play or novel or particular part of it.

How to use quotes

• You should always provide some kind of context for the quotation and comment on what is interesting about it.

• A quote CANNOT stand alone. It must have context and analysis.

• Do NOT assume that your quote proves your point. You must explain HOW it does.

How to use quotations

• Following are extracts from three students’ essays. Each student is using the same quotation from the play, The Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller in an essay about the main character, Willy. Read the extracts and think about which is the most successful and why.

Sample One

• 1. We realize early on in the play that Willy is tired, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!”

Sample Two

• 2. Willy tries to present himself as a successful salesman but is eventually reduced to pleading with his boss to be allowed to keep his job, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!”

Sample Three

• 3. The contrast between how Willy imagines himself to be as a successful salesman and the harsh reality of his life of debt and disappointment becomes increasingly clear in The Death of a Salesman. In Act Two, when Willy has been fired from a job which was bringing him neither money nor happiness, Willy pleads with his boss telling him, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!” Willy is comparing himself to a piece of fruit because he has finally realized he is expendable. Through the way Willy is used up by the company for whom he works, the play illustrates the way in which, in a capitalist system, human beings are often discarded when they are no longer financially useful. This is Willy’s tragedy.

How to Choose a Quote

• Quotes can come from any part of the book. It does not have to be someone speaking. You can choose words from the narration

• Quotes should be SHORT (no more than a sentence or two).

• You do not have to take the entire quote. Just take the part that best proves your point and fits into your sentence

How to Choose a Quote

• Think about the point you want to make. • Narrow down to a scene that could help you

prove your point.• Re-read that scene to find a quote that could

help you prove your point.

How to Choose a Quote--Example

• Point—both societies use drugs to subdue their people, though the drugs appear differently in each society

– Sub point—Soma is delicious and loved. – Sub point—Gin is terrible and consumed for lack

of anything better. – Both are done to numb reality.

How to Choose a Quote--example

• Soma is delicious– Find the quote about soma being in drinks,

icecream, and other tasty treats• Gin is terrible– Find the quote about how terrible gin is—Winston

talking in the cafeteria?– Find the quote about how wonderful wine is when

they meet with Obrien

Do not introduce a quotation in the following way:

• A. This is seen in the following quotation, “such ties swear me to his side as if he were my father”(Sophocles 134).

INSTEAD: The following is an acceptable way to use this quotation:

• Thus, Oedipus unknowingly revealed his closeness to his father by saying “such ties swear me to his side as if he were my father” (134).

Don’t do this!

• In this quotation “A man I never saw” Oedipus confirms his ignorance of the identity of Laius (32).

INSTEAD do it this way:

•By saying that the man he killed is “’a man I never saw,’” Oedipus confirms his ignorance of the identity of Laius (32).

Never merely insert the quotation without transition.

• Oedipus does not realize that he is the murderer. “I speak, of course, as stranger to the story and stranger to the crime”(ln 164).

INSTEAD

• Not realizing that he is the murderer, Oedipus says, “I speak, of course, as stranger to the story and as stranger to the crime” (ln 164).

DO NOT SAY:

• When Winston and Julia are being captured, the Thought Police smash the glass paperweight. “Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it into the hearthstone” (223).

INSTEAD:

• When Winston and Julia are being captured, the Thought Police pick up “the glass paperweight from the table and [smash] it to pieces on the hearthstone” (223). • (note—then you must explain why

this is important)

Remember!

•Do not follow a quotation with the statement “This quotation proves/means….”• Instead, simply elaborate

on your point

Use of an ellipsis

• An ellipsis is an intentional omission of words from quoted material.

• If you decide that it is unnecessary to reproduce all the words of the author whom you are quoting, use three periods to indicate an omission in between sections.

• You do not have to start with an ellipsis if you start in the middle of a sentence

Example:

• During the third chapter, Simon was exploring a beautiful tropical thicket and, “bent down and wormed his way into the center of the mat. The creepers … pulled together behind him. When he was secure in the middle he was in a little cabin screened off from the open space by a few leaves” (56).

*Note:

•Quotations within quotations are indicated by the use of single quotations marks.

Example:

• Mustapha Mond continually proves his understanding of the world and how it is changed. He argues that even though there were great thinkers before, “‘one of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this’” (232). He recognizes that great thinkers of old could never have truly predicted a world like the one they live in.

Use of indentation for long quotations

• Quotations of more than four lines are indented on both sides (set in) from the usual one inch margin. A colon is used for punctuation before the quotation and no quotation marks are used. • * Note: don’t use more than one of

these types of quotes in your paper.

Example:

• Materialism is just a small aspect of Holden’s reasons for hating school which he complains is:

full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor all day….