Using Quotations

Overview
Paraphrasing
Quotations Shorter Than Four Lines
Quotations Longer Than Four Lines

Overview

In your essays, you should use quotations as evidence to support your thesis statement and your assertions, but you should be careful not to overquote. Your job as a writer is to express, explain, and develop your ideas, not to string together pages of quotations from others. As stated in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, "Overquotation can bore your readers and might lead them to conclude that you are neither an original thinker nor a skillful writer."

A general guideline is to never begin or end a paragraph with a quotation. If you were to begin a paragraph with a quotation, it would not be integrated into the paragraph nor would your reason for including it be clear. Following a quotation, leave the reader with your own ideas and analysis, rather than those of the person being quoted.

When you do quote, you have a responsibility to quote accurately from the original and to cite the source. You should also try to integrate the quotation into your text so that it does not disrupt your own argument and analysis. The following are examples of ways to incorporate quotations, how to punctuate them correctly, and how to include a parenthetical citation.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing means restating the material in your own words. When you paraphrase, you do not use quotation marks, because you are not quoting directly: The following example includes some paraphrasing from Hemingway's story, "Hills Like White Elephants."

NOTE: This text in your paper would be double spaced.

Readers know the girl in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" has a poetic nature when she refers to the hills on the horizon as white elephants and then again when she talks about them having skin colored like elephants (653, 654).

Quotations Shorter Than Four Lines

You may quote a complete sentence or a short phrase or even just a word. If the quotation is shorter than four lines, you only need to set it off by including it within quotation marks. The parenthetical reference follows the end quotation mark, and the end-of-sentence punctuation, if a period, follows the parenthetical citation (see first two sentences in the quoted material below for examples). If the end-of-sentence punctuation is a question mark or exclamation point, it remains before the quotation mark, and a period is still placed following the parenthetical citation (see last sentence in the quoted material below for an example).

NOTE: This text in your paper would be double spaced.

The girl's poetic nature is revealed by her statement that the hills "look like white elephants" (653). This aspect of her personality is further developed when she says, "They don't really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees" (654). Her use of the word "skin" in referring to the hills is significant. While she is denying her earlier statement that the hills are like elephants, she nonetheless still thinks of them as having skin. In addition, her need for reinforcement is shown when she asks her companion his opinion of the white elephant image: "'Wasn't that bright?'" (654). Understanding the girl's personality increases the reader's awareness of the basic conflict between the two characters.

You may place the quotation at the beginning of a sentence, at the end of the sentence, or even divide it and place your commentary in the middle. Avoid using "floating quotations," where a quotation is inserted into the text without being integrated or connected to your own ideas and analysis.

The argument seems to end when the man in the story asks, "'Do you feel better?'" His solicitous concern is brushed off by the girl. "'There's nothing wrong with me,'" Hemingway has her respond, and "'I feel fine'" (656). The reader senses, however, that she is not.

The previous example also demonstrates the use of single quotation marks within double quotation marks to indicate dialog.

Quotations Longer Than Four Lines

If the quotation is longer than four lines, it should be set up in block format, which means that it will be indented one inch from the left hand margin, but will not be indented at the right hand margin. Block quotations are double spaced. No additional spaces are added before or after the quoted material. The punctuation of the parenthetical reference at the end of the quotation is different than for a parenthetical reference that is included "in-text" (i.e., not block), as it appears following the quotation's end-of-sentence punctuation. Also, although in the original text the first line of the quotation was at the beginning of a new paragraph, because you are only quoting one paragraph, the first line in your text will not be indented.

If you are quoting from two paragraphs, however, you would indent the paragraphs in your text--unless you are beginning the first one in mid-paragraph.

Last Updated 04/04/02