Thursday 23 June 2011

QUOTATIONS


Quote only what is needed to illustrate your point or convey the point which a writer is making. Make sure that your quote supports your argument and does not make your argument for you. It is also essential that you integrate quotations used into your own sentences, so that the whole reads smoothly and coherently. The examples below show some ways to do this.  Writing your own sentence, followed by a sentence consisting only of quotation, results in disjointed writing which detracts from the smooth flow of your argument. The fragment you quote should make sense within the context of your own sentence. One way to check this is to read your essay aloud to yourself, listen, and make sure that your essay flows logically and coherently. 

Quote accurately from the original text. Use ellipsis marks in square brackets […] to indicate any words which you have left out.  You may have to adapt the quotation to fit the grammar of your own sentence, but you must use square brackets to enclose the altered word or words.  For example:

The original, from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall," reads: "My apple trees will never get across/ And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him."

In your essay, you might refer to this as follows:
The speaker explains that "[his] apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under [his neighbour's] pines" (25-26).

Here a pronoun ("my") has been altered; "his pines" has also been altered to avoid possible confusion.  Note the use of the present tense.

Short quotations (as in the above example) should be enclosed in quotation marks and run on in the text of your essay.  An oblique stroke (/) is used to separate lines of poetry, as above.  The figures in brackets (25-26) refer to line numbers of the poem.

Long quotations (more than three lines of poetry or four lines of prose) should be separated from the text of your essay by being indented and (in the case of a typed essay) single-spaced. Quotation marks are not needed when indentation is used:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors. (23-26)

Omissions should be indicated with an ellipsis in square brackets. This means that if you decide to leave out some of your quote, you will need to show that you have altered the original version of the quote:
Frost’s poem asserts that “[h]e is all pine and […]/ My apple trees will never […]/ eat the cones under his pines” (23-25).


All quotations must be identified. The exception is when you are discussing a short poem where quotations may easily be located without the use of line numbers.

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