How to Introduce Quotations



How to Introduce Quotations

If you introduce your quotation with a complete sentence, that sentence should end with a colon (:).

Example:

Robert Ross, in Timothy Findley’s The Wars, is often unsure of how to interpret his wounded companion’s words: “Harris said the strangest things—lying on his pillows staring at the ceiling” (95).

If you introduce the quotation using a sentence fragment, end it with (a) a comma or (b) no punctuation, depending on the structure of your sentence and of the quotation.

Examples:

For Robert, “Harris said the strangest things—lying on his pillows staring at the ceiling” (95).

OR

Robert thinks Harris “said the strangest things—lying on his pillows staring at the ceiling” (95).

Do not use a semi-colon (;) to introduce a quotation.

Quoting More than One Work by the Same Author

If you quote more than one work by a single author, include an abbreviated form of the title with the page or line number. The point is to make it easy for your reader to find the source in the works-cited list.

Example:

The young Stacey Cameron leaves Manitoba for the west coast after a “business course in Winnipeg, then saving every nickel to come out here” (Fire-Dwellers 33). Hagar Shipley, however, is a married woman with a son when she leaves: “I packed our things, John’s and mine, in perfect outward calm, putting them in the black trunk that still bore the name Miss H. Currie” (Stone Angel 140).

Quoting from Different Books by Different Authors

If you quote from different works by different authors, indicate so either by using the authors’ names in your sentences or by placing the name before the page number in the parentheses. Note that there is only a space—no punctuation—between the author’s name and the page number.

Example:

Jane Austen is said to have fainted at the sudden news of the move to Bath (Honan 155), but a letter to Cassandra in early January shows Austen “more & more reconciled to the idea” of leaving Steventon (Austen 68).

Punctuation of Quotations

Use double quotation marks to enclose the entire quotation unless it is set off and indented (see below for instructions about indenting quotations). If the material you quote includes within it a quotation or a title in quotation marks, indicate this with single quotation marks.

Example:

It is important to note that “fifty years after Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, India, ‘the Jewel in the Crown’ (Disraeli’s phrase), was cut in two to become . . . India and Pakistan” (Stallworthy 2018).

Final Punctuation

Final punctuation belongs to your sentence, not the quotation, and is placed after the parentheses containing the page reference, not inside the quotation marks.

Example:

Robert watched Harris “lying on his pillows staring at the ceiling” (95).

An exception is made when the quoted passage ends with a question mark or exclamation point. Note that a period appears also after the parentheses.

Example:           

Bates reflects about “the greatest terror of war: what you didn’t know of the men who told you what to do—where to go and when. What if they were mad—or stupid?” (119).

Altering Quotations

Omitting Words, Phrases, or Sentences

No quotation should be so altered as to change its original meaning. When you omit a word, phrase, sentence, or several sentences from a quotation you should use ellipsis points, three spaced periods ( . . . ), to indicate that you have left something out of the text. Ellipsis points are not needed at the beginning of a quotation and should only appear at the end when the ellipsis coincides with the end of your sentence. If the omitted material includes punctuation, such as a period or semi-colon, other marks of punctuation may be needed before or after the three periods. However you change the quotation, your sentence must be grammatically correct.

Examples:

Original:

Elinor joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, and thus by a little of that address which Marianne could never condescend to practise, gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same time. (Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Ed. Kathleen James-Cavan [Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001] 171)

Ellipsis in the middle:

By offering to help Lucy, Elinor “profited by the first of these proposals, . . . gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same time” (171).

Ellipsis at the end:

Elinor, using “a little of that address which Marianne could never condescend to practise, gained her own end . . .” (171).

Adding Words or Phrases to Quotations

Use square brackets ([ ]), not parentheses, to indicate that you have added or substituted something within a quoted passage to make the meaning clearer. If your keyboard lacks square brackets, insert with a pen. Square brackets and parentheses send different messages and are not interchangeable.

Example:

Using “a little of that address which Marianne could never condescend to practise, [Elinor] gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same time” (171).

Adding Emphasis

If you wish to emphasize a word or phrase in a quotation, use italics to do so. In the parentheses following the quotation, put “emphasis added” after the page number with no punctuation between.

Example:

Marianne begins to improve on “the morning of the third day” (318 emphasis added).

Quoting Prose

Short quotations, of a word, a phrase, or up to four lines of prose, appear within quotation marks as part of your sentences and paragraphs. (See examples in (a) below). Quotations of more than four typed lines should begin on a new line, be indented from the left margin one inch (2.5 cm) or ten spaces, and be double-spaced without changing font size and without quotation marks (example b). A colon most often introduces an indented quotation. Indent the first line of paragraphs an additional a quarter inch (.6 cm) or three spaces from this new margin only when quoting two or more paragraphs. In the case of indented quotations, final punctuation is placed before parenthetical page references.

Examples:

(a) The narrator comments that to Garnet “to pass judgements of this sort would seem self-conscious, pretentious” (Munro 188). Many of Munro's heroines have remarkable aunts. Del's, in middle age, can still “jump up so quickly [and]. . . still smelled fresh and healthy” (Lives 34). The six Flemming sisters are more austere; they “would venture no remarks of their own, but could answer questions. They offered no refreshments” (Moons of Jupiter 27).

(b) The storyteller of Sunshine Sketches expects readers to agree that Mariposa represents all small towns in Canada:

I don't know whether you know Mariposa. If not, it is of no consequence, for if you know Canada at all, you are probably well acquainted with a dozen towns just like it.

         There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the little lake that spreads out at the foot of the hillside on which the town is built. (13)

Note: No extra line space is inserted before and after indented long quotations. It is not necessary to start a new paragraph after every long quotation.

Quoting Poetry

Short quotations of up to three lines should be incorporated into your sentences (example a). Use a forward slash (called a virgule) with a space on each side ( / ) to indicate a line break (example b). Indicate line numbers in parentheses at the end of your quotation; the page number(s) will be given in your works-cited list. Like citations of prose, when the quoted passage ends with a question mark or exclamation point it will appear before the closing quotation marks (example c

Examples:

Original (Margaret Atwood, “Progressive Insanities of Pioneer”):

He dug the soil in rows,

Imposed himself with shovels.

He asserted

into the furrows, I

am not random.

(a) Atwood’s pioneer “impose[s] himself with shovels” (11).

(b) Atwood's poem makes writing and speech a metaphor for working the land: “He asserted / into the furrows” (12-13).

(c) In Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” the speaker calls repeatedly to the wind to hear him: “Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; / Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!” (13-14).

Quotations of more than three lines of poetry must appear in your essay in exactly the form they take in the text. Unless the poetry line is unusually long, indent one inch (2.5 cm) or ten spaces from the left margin and double-space between lines. Follow lineation, use no quotation marks, and include any final punctuation in the original text before giving the line numbers in parentheses. If you omit material at the end of the quotation and it coincides with the end of your sentence, use ellipsis ( . . . ) (example a). If the passage ends with no final punctuation, reproduce it that way (example b). If there is no room for the parenthetical citation on the same line as the final line, put it on a new line flush with the right margin of the page. If you leave out one or more lines of poetry within the block quotation, indicate the omission with a line of spaced periods (example c).

Examples

(a) Addressing the wind, the speaker in “Ode to the West Wind” uses imagery of sickness and death in evoking autumn leaves:

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave . . . (4-8)

(b) Nourbese Philip uses words from her Trinidadian background beside what she calls “Queenglish” (“Absence” 100) so that repeated sounds make both a political and a poetic statement:

     Today was

the year of the cockerel

     the dondon weaves a rhythm

Jongwe

     the gongon replies

Now the statesman stalks savage

yesterdays

(the butcher of Salisbury) (“Jongwe” 1-8)

(c) The speaker in Gray’s poem describes a cat falling into a tub of goldfishes:

Presumptuous Maid! With looks intent

Again she stretch’d, again she bent,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The slipp’ry verge her feet beguil’d.

She tumbled headlong in. (25-30)

Quoting Drama

When quoting from a play, cite, in the parentheses, act, scene, and line numbers in that order if these are used in the text (example a). Otherwise, cite page numbers (example b).

Examples:

(a) Maecenas remarks on the turn in Antony's fortunes, declaring, “Now Antony must leave her [Cleopatra] utterly” (2.2.234).

(b) The lives of Pollock's characters are examples of how double standards have been applied to the lives of men and women, even to the language they use. When Catherine says, “Bullshit, Daddy,” her father, Ev, replies, “Jesus Christ I hate to hear a woman swear like that” (126).

If quoting a short verse passage from a play, use slashes to indicate line endings just as you do when quoting poetry (example c). You can tell a passage is in verse if every line starts with a capital letter, regardless of whether the line starts a sentence.

(c) Ariel's first song in The Tempest is a summons to unseen spirits to dance: “Foot it featly here and there;  / And, sweet sprites, the burden bear” (1.2.375-80).

When you quote prose from a play, no slashes are necessary (example d). You can recognize prose by the fact that, in prose, every sentence begins with a capital letter but not every line on the page.

(d) In The Rover Hellena makes clear her perspective: “I don’t intend that every he that likes me shall have me, but he that I like” (3.1.36-7).

When you quote dialogue between characters in a play, indent each character’s name one inch (2.5 cm) or ten spaces from the left margin (example e). The name of the character should be written in upper case letters and followed with a period. Indent subsequent lines of the speech one quarter inch (.6 cm) or three additional spaces. Start a new line indented ten spaces for the next speech. Double-space the quotation.

|(e) |AMANDA. (Crossing out to kitchenette. Airily) Sometimes they come when they are least expected! Why, I remember one Sunday |

| |afternoon in Blue Mountain—(Enters kitchenette.) |

| |TOM. I know what’s coming! |

| |LAURA. Yes. But let her tell it. (The Glass Menagerie 8) |

Quoting Critics

Critical sources are quoted in the same ways as other prose. Make sure your reader knows whom you are quoting, by including the critic’s name in your sentence or in the parenthetical citation.

Example:

Michael Ondaatje claims that “the base of the book” is “myth with its power and its fragility” (268) and that “the fragments and formulas of myth . . . will repeatthemselves forever” (267). Another critic, however, argues that Tay John reveals “how myth is created to suit a particular need in a particular place and time”(Fee 10).

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