108 English Composition Handout 2



108 English Composition Handout 2

Here are some rules for the use of direct and indirect quotations.

a. Reporting verbs can appear before, in the middle of, or after borrowed information. The reporting phrase according to usually appears before or after but not in the middle.

1. One young bicyclist says, "To win in world-class competition, you have to take drugs" (Jones).

2. "To win in world-class competition," says one young bicyclist, "you have to take drugs" (Jones).

3. According to one young bicyclist, athletes have to take drugs to win (Jones).

4. Athletes have to take drugs to win, according to one young bicyclist (Jones).

b. Reporting verbs can be used either with or without the subordinator as.

1. As one writer says when discussing the case of an Olympic medallist who unknowingly took a banned drug, "The human body, of course, doesn't distinguish intentional use from inadvertent exposure. Neither does the IOC [International Olympic Committee]" (Kidder, par. 5).

2. One writer says when discussing the case of an Olympic medallist who unknowingly took a banned drug, "The human body, of course, doesn't distinguish intentional use from inadvertent exposure. Neither does the

IOC [International Olympic Committee]" (Kidder, par. 5).

c. Reporting verbs can be in any tense. However, be aware that a past tense reporting verb may cause changes in verbs, pronouns, and time expressions in an indirect quotation. (See Sequence of Tenses Rules on page 48.)

1. Some critics claim/have claimed that the International Olympic Committee has been lax on enforcement of drug bans ("2000 Olympics," par. 6).

2. Some critics claimed that the International Olympic Committee had been lax on enforcement of drug bans ("2000 Olympics," par. 6).

d. Including the source of the borrowed information with the reporting expression gives authority to your writing because it lets your reader know immediately that your information is from a credible source.

1. The institute of Global Ethics warns, "The Olympics could well become just another money-drenched media promotion in which contestants will be motivated less by athletic glory than by lucrative future contracts" (Kidder,par. 7).

Follow these general rules for punctuating direct quotations.

Rule 1.: Put quotation marks around information that you copy word for word from a source. Do not use quotation marks with paraphrases, summaries, or indirect quotations.

Rule 2:. Normally, place commas (and periods) before the first mark and also before the second mark in a pair of quotation marks.

1.. According to Sports Illustrated, "Eliminating drug use from Olympic sports would be no small challenge."

2. "Eliminating drug use from Olympic sports would be no small challenge," according to Sports Illustrated.

There are two important exceptions:

Rule 3 : If you insert only a few quoted words into your own sentence, don't use commas.

3.Charles Yesalis believes that "a large percentage" of athletes who have set new records have done so with the

help of performance-enhancing drugs(qtd. in Herper, par. 6 ).

Rule 4: When you add an in-text citation after a quotation, put the period after the closing parenthesis mark.

4. The Institute of Global Ethics warns, "The Olympics could well become just another money-drenched media promotion in which contestants will be motivated less by athletic glory than by lucrative future contracts"

(Kidder, par. 7).

Capitalize the first word of the quotation as well as the first word of the sentence.

Dr. Donald Catlin, director of a drug-testing lab eat UCLA, stated, "The sophisticated athlete who wants to take drugs has switched to things we can't test for" (qtd. in Bamberger and Yaeger 62).

If you break a quoted sentence into two parts, enclose both parts in quotation marks and separate the parts with commas. Capitalize only the first word of the sentence.

"The sophisticated athlete who wants to take drugs," stated Dr. Donald Catlin, director of a drug-testing lab at UCLA, "has switched to things we can't test for" (qtd. in Bamberger and Yaeger 62).

If you omit words, use an ellipsis (three spaced periods).

According to a 1997 article in Sports Illustrated, "The use of steroids has spread to almost every sport, from major league baseball to college basketball to high school football" (Bamberger and Yaeger 62).

If you add words, put square brackets around the words you have added.

One athlete declared, "The testers know that the [drug] gurus are smarter than they are" (qtd. in Bamberger and Yaeger 62).

Use single quotation marks to enclose a quotation within a quotation.

A young athlete openly admitted, "My ethical inner voice tells me, 'Don't use drugs,' but my competitive inner voice says, 'You can't win if you don't'"(Jones).

Direct Quotations

If your quotation is four lines or longer, do not use quotation marks. Introduce this type of quotation with a colon and indent it one inch from the left-hand margin.

A national news agency reported these shocking survey results:

Several years ago [when] 198 athletes were asked if they would take a performance-enhancing drug if they knew they would NOT be caught and they would win, 195 said they would take the drug. The second question revealed a more frightening scenario. The athletes were asked if they would take a drug that would ensure they would win every competition for five years and wouldn't get caught, but the side effects would kill them-more than HALF said they would take the drug ("2000 Olympics," par. 12).

Exercise :Add punctuation to the following direct quotations, and change the capitalization if necessary.

1. Dr. Yixuan Ma, a well-known astrophysicist who has been studying black holes, said they are the most interesting phenomena we astrophysicists have ever studied.

2. As she explained in black holes the laws of nature do not seem to apply.

3. A black hole is a tiny point with the mass 25 times the mass of our sun explained Ma's associate, Chun-Yi Suo Black holes are created by the death of a very large star she stated.

4. It is an invisible vacuum cleaner in space she added with tremendous gravitational pull.

5. According to Dr. Su, if a person falls into a black hole, he will eventually be crushed due to the tremendous gravitational forces.

6. Time will slow down for him as he approaches the point of no return she said and when he reaches the point of no return, time will stand still for him.

. Drugs and the Olympic Games

It seems apparent that if athletes want to win, they must consider using drugs. Dr. Michael Karsten, a Dutch physician who said he had prescribed anabolic steroids to hundreds of world-class athletes, stated that if [athletes] were especially gifted, [they] might win once, but from his experience [they] couldn't continue to win without drugs. He asserted that the field was-just too filled with drug users (qtd. in Bamberger and Yaeger 62). 1n fact, some people claim that record-breaking performances of Olympic athletes may be directly due to drugs. Charles Yesalis, a Pennsylvania State University professor who has studied the use of drug-s in sports believes that "a large percentage" of athletes who have set new records have done so with the help of performance enhancing drugs. He claims that a lot of experts, at least in private, feel that way (qtd. in Herper, par. 6).

Rule : Changing Direct Quotation to indirect Quotation:

1. Omit the quotation marks.

2. Add the subordinator that. (You may omit that if the meaning is clear without it.)

3. Change the verb tense if necessary. Follow the sequence of tenses rules.

4. Change pronouns (and time expressions if necessary) to keep the sense of the original.

In indirect quotations, the speaker's or writer's words are reported indirectly, without quotation marks. For this reason, indirect quotations are sometimes called reported speech. Indirect quotations are introduced by the same reporting verbs used for direct quotations, and the word that is often added for clarity. The tense of verbs in indirect quotations is affected by the tense of the reporting verb.

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