Advice on Quoting

Quoting means that you are reproducing the exact words of your source. When you quote, you must always use quotation marks (“”) to indicate quoted material. Do not change the source material in any way; reproduce it exactly as you find it, including unusual spellings and mistakes. Do not change the meaning of the original.

When should you quote? In your papers, you will undoubtedly need to quote from the work you are discussing in order to provide evidence for the points you want to argue. But you don't want to overwhelm your paper with quoted material. In general, quote only the words or sentences that are necessary to illustrate your point. Paraphrase the rest. In general, material from secondary sources should occupy no more than 20-30% of your paper.

How should quotations be formatted? Shorter quotations (no more than 4 typed lines in your paper) should be integrated into your sentence and set off with quotation marks. Generally, the citation should follow the closing quotation marks, and relevant punctuation should come after the citation.
    Longer quotations (more than 4 typed lines) should be set off from the rest of your text. For these longer quotations, do not use quotation marks; indent each line of the quotation 10 spaces (or two tab stops) from the left margin. In these longer quotations, closing punctuation should come at the end of the quoted text; the citation follows that punctuation.
    When quoting poetry, be sure to indicate the line breaks. In shorter quotations (3 lines or fewer), use a slash ( / ) to indicate these. When quoting more than three lines, set the quotation off from your text, and reproduce the line breaks as they appear in the original.
    Quotations must always be followed by a parenthetical citation that indicates the source of the passage. Consult your MLA Handbook for details.

How should alterations be indicated? In some cases, it may be appropriate to edit a quotation. Note that this is ONLY appropriate when your editing does not change the meaning of the quoted passage. For instance, parts of a long passage may not be relevant to your point and may need to be omitted. Or a brief quotation may need clarification of a pronoun or the like.

• Use ellipses (three spaced periods) to indicate where you have omitted part of a passage: Stephens celebrates the idea that photographers “will have unprecedented ability to shape the meanings their photographs . . . can communicate” (502).
• If you are omitting at the beginning or end of the quotation, you do not need ellipses: Stephens describes Newsday’s altered photograph as “rather ordinary-looking” (500).
• Use square brackets to indicate your own words within quotations:Stephens argues that “the idea [of digital editing] should be to clarify, not to pretend” (501).

How do you quote an author who is quoting another source? Whenever possible, it is better to locate the original source and to quote directly from it. If this is not possible, make sure it is clear --- both in your documentation and in your sentence --- that you know your source is quoting another source. The parenthetical citation must always refer to the source on your Works Cited list; for an indirect quotation, the parenthetical citation should also include the phrase "qtd. in" before the author's last name. You can then put a reference to the original source in your sentence.

• Brennan asserts that “it was the novel that historically accompanied the rise of nations" (qtd. in Schoene 43).

How do you integrate quotations into your own writing? There are several important things you need to do in order to integrate quotations into your work properly.

• Use quotation marks to indicate quoted material:
      Mitchell Stephens argues that the ability to manipulate photographs digitally means that “news images might finally be coming of age” (501).
• Blend quotations into your own sentences.
      Too abrupt:
          Stephens notes that this ability has a potential disadvantage. “For news photographs will not come of age by hoodwinking those who look at them” (501).
      Better:
          Stephens warns against misusing this new capability, noting that “news photographs will not come of age by hoodwinking those who look at them” (501).
• Use the correct punctuation to connect the quotation to your sentence. The most common punctuation marks introducing a quotation are commas and colons, but they are NOT interchangeable. In some cases, you may not need any punctuation to lead into the quotation.
      When introducing a quotation with a complete sentence, use a colon: "this quotation illustrates my  point" (Jones 102).
      When introducing a quotation with an attributive tag, use a comma. As Jones points out, "this quotation illustrates my point" (102).
      When the quotation is grammatically integrated into your sentence, no punctuation is needed to show that "this quotation illustrates my point" (Jones 102).
• Always follow quotations with commentary and analysis explaining how the quoted passage supports your claim. (For more on this, see The 4-Step Process.)