Read More Depending on your goals, you may educate, inspire, entertain, or horrify your audience. Leave all your quotes for the main body and maybe one to use in the conclusion. For example, using the above example, you would NOT need an ellipsis in either of these situations:. Make sure the quote is something you can analyze. It was written in a time when women lacked many rights.
Understand the Structure of a Quote in an Essay
This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use. The primary function of quotation marks is to set off and represent exact language either spoken or written that has come from somebody else. The quotation mark is also used to designate speech acts in fiction and sometimes poetry.
Since you will most often use them when working with outside sources, successful use of quotation marks is a practical defense against accidental plagiarism and an excellent practice in academic honesty. The following rules of quotation mark use are the standard in the United States, although it may be of interest that usage rules for this punctuation do vary in other countries. The following covers the basic use of quotation marks. For details and exceptions consult the separate sections of this guide. Johnson, who was working in his field that morning, said, "The alien spaceship appeared right before my own two eyes.
Although Mr. Johnson has seen odd happenings on the farm, he stated that the spaceship "certainly takes the cake" when it comes to unexplainable activity. When quoting text with a spelling or grammar error, how to use quote in essay, you should transcribe the error exactly in your own text. However, also insert the term sic in italics directly after the mistake, and enclose it in brackets. Sic is from the Latin, and translates to "thus," "so," or "just as that. Johnson says of the experience, "It's made me reconsider the existence of extraterestials [ sic ].
Indirect quotations are not exact wordings but rather rephrasings or summaries of another person's words. In this case, it is not necessary to use quotation marks. However, indirect quotations still require proper citations, and you will be committing plagiarism if you fail to do so. Many writers struggle with when to use direct quotations versus indirect quotations. Use the following tips to guide you in your choice. Use direct quotations when the source material uses language that is particularly striking or notable. Do not rob such how to use quote in essay of its power by altering it.
Use an indirect quotation or paraphrase when you merely need to summarize key incidents or details of the text. Use direct how to use quote in essay when the author you are quoting has coined a term unique to her or his research and relevant within your own paper. When to use how to use quote in essay quotes versus indirect quotes is ultimately a choice you'll learn a feeling for with experience. However, always try to have a sense for why you've chosen your quote. In other words, how to use quote in essay, never put quotes in your paper simply because your teacher says, "You must use quotes. Find Info For Find Info For Academics Admissions Current Students Athletics About Careers Prospective Students Research and Partnerships Quick Links Apply News President Shop Visit Give Emergency.
Purdue Online Writing Lab College of Liberal Arts. Writing Lab Purdue OWL Research Contact Site Map. General Writing Punctuation Quotation Marks. Welcome to the Purdue OWL This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. How to Use Quotation Marks Summary: A rundown of the general rules of when and where to use quotation marks. Johnson, a local farmer, reported last night that he saw an alien spaceship on his own property. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the end of slavery was important and of great hope to millions of slaves done horribly wrong.
said of the Emancipation Proclamation, "This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.
good topics for a narrative essay
Essay quotes that start sentences or end paragraphs make you appear passive. If you use a quotation in an essay to start a sentence or end a paragraph, your teacher automatically thinks that your quote is replacing analysis, rather than supporting it. You should instead start the sentence that contains the quote with your own writing. This makes it appear that you have an active voice. These examples are poor examples of using quotes:. Avoid Quotes that Start Sentences The theorist Louis Malaguzzi was the founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach to Education. Play is better than learning through repetition of drills or reading.
Play is good for all children. Avoid Quotes that End Paragraphs Before Judith Butler gender was seen as being a binary linked to sex. Men were masculine and women were feminine. Butler came up with this new idea that gender is just something society has made up over time. Both these quotes are from essays that were shared with me by colleagues. My colleagues marked these students down for these quotes because the quotes:. Instead, the quotes were doing the talking for the students. There are some easy strategies to use in order to make it appear that you are actively discussing and analysing quotes. Example 1: Start Quote Sentences with an Active Voice The theorist Louis Malaguzzi was the founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach to Education. According to Malaguzzi , p.
Play is important for children to develop. Here, the sentence with the quote was amended so that the student has an active voice. They start the sentence with: According to Malaguzzi, …. Similarly, in the second example we can also insert an active voice by ensuring that our quote sentence does not start with a quote:. How to Start Sentences containing Quotes using an Active Voice. Earlier on, I stated that one key reason to use quotes in essays is so that you can analyse them. Quotes should be there to be analysed, not to do the analysis.
Example: A Quote that is Too Long Children who grow up in poverty often end up being poor as adults. This student has included the facts, figures, citations and key details in the quote. Essentially, this student has been lazy. They failed to paraphrase. Instead, this student could have selected the most striking phrase from the quote and kept it. Then, the rest should be paraphrased. Example: Paraphrasing Long Quotes Children who grow up in poverty often end up being poor as adults. In their analysis, Mistry et al. For Mistry et al. Provide a brief quote in your essay, and then show you understand it with surrounding explanation and analysis. Nearly every referencing format requires you to include a page number in your citation.
This includes the three most common referencing formats: Harvard, APA and MLA. All of them require you to provide page numbers with quotes. Including a page number in your quotation makes a huge difference when a marker is trying to determine how high your grade should be. These little editing points can mean the difference between placing first in the class and third. For some reason students love to use italics for quotes. This is wrong in absolutely every major referencing format, yet it happens all the time. It looks sloppy, and teachers notice. Because the central theme of the overall text in which the quote emerges is escaping the civilizing effect of society.
My point here is that you need to focus on the main theme of the text in which the quote emerges: is it about racism, evading the trappings of civilized society, or maybe a theme about love, war, passion, or something else entirely? Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. This quote is from Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. So, when discussing a quote from this book, you can explain that the quote is in the context of a broader social discussion about race and racism in a nation whose history has been deeply troubled by racial injustice since its origins.
By doing this, you will be able to understand the quote far more effectively,. Nonetheless, he loves her not for her surname, but indeed despite it: he still sees the sweetness in her. How a quote is received and understood has a lot to do with the person who made the quote in the first place. So, examine the story of the person who made the quote. Dumbledore quotes will automatically be understood as wise, contemplative statements because Dumbledore is a wise and contemplative man! Similarly, often quotes from jesters in Shakespearian plays are interpreted as gems of truth and wisdom because jesters were some of the few people in middle England who were aloud to speak their minds among kings.
What makes this quote so powerful? Well, it would be a powerful quote because the Pope is seen by Catholics as someone who is very close to god and therefore what he says should be listened to very closely. By explaining the story of the person who made the quote, we can understand the quote more deeply. Do you think the previous two points were too hard? No worries. This is a very powerful way to dig deep into your contextualization of the quote. Explain the who, where, when and why about the quote. This quote comes from the US Declaration of Independence. What context can we take from this famous quote? Quotes often have multiple contested interpretations. If your quote could be interpreted in different ways, you will need to examine the different ways in which it is interpreted.
This quote comes from Ilhan Omar, a democratic congresswoman. She made this quote to highlight the influence of the Jewish lobby on Republican politicians. This quote had very contested meanings : for the political left, it highlighted the fact that money is a dark influence on policymaking in Washington. If you were to select this quote, you would of course have to present both perspectives on the quote. Maybe out of 5 people you find online, 4 see it one way and 1 sees it another. Of course, this might not be relevant to everyone: some quotes have a very clear central meaning! Remember when I said that you should check with your teacher about whether you can use first person in your essay? Well, if you can use first person in your essay, I recommend in this step to talk about what the quote means to you.
Questions you can discuss include:. If you are writing an expository essay that does not involve first person language, I recommend instead discussing the broader relevance of the quote to broader society today. While once injustice was in Nazi Germany, today that injustice might be in the arena of terrorism or Islamophobia. Essays about quotes are hard. Hopefully, these strategies have given you something to think about when discussing you quote. Keep in mind these five key points when trying to think of things to write about:. Feel free to navigate to each point, or just scroll through the whole post: Select the quote Wisely.
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