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Online Study Center: General Resources

Quoting

A quotation is an exact repetition of words written or spoken by someone else. Quotations have many uses in writing, but along with their application come responsibilities.

Quotations perform important functions in argumentative writing: They support your views with authoritative sources, add clarifications, provide context for issues, reveal controversies, and add touches of drama and eloquence.

The original wording from a text can be authoritative. When experts express their thoughts in their own words, it is as if you brought the actual authority to speak personally to your reader. Similarly, quoting from a relevant document can persuade your reader to trust your analysis and interpretation of it. For example, if you were arguing about gun control, you might quote Article II of the Bill of Rights.

Although the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, it also requires regulation: “A well regulated [emphasis mine] Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

When the original statements are complex, confusing, or subtle, unraveling the meaning may become the focus of your writing.

When Mae West says, “Marriage is like a book—the whole story takes place between the covers,” she humorously uses double entendre to assert the predominance of sex: The second meaning of covers refers to a bed.

When you wish to reveal the extent, history, or nature of a debate, a series of quotations may be effective.

Writers disagree on how selfless love should be. Although Emerson exhorts, “Give all to love: Obey thy heart,” Yeats cautions, “O never give the heart outright,” and Housman writes, “Give not your heart away.”

A controversial statement may provide an interest-catching “hook” or a thematic focal point for part or all of an essay.

Vice President Cheney claimed that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for a terrorist attack: “If we make the wrong choice [for president], then the danger is that we’ll get hit [by terrorists] again.”

Because readers respond more readily to real people rather than to abstractions and concepts, your writing can be enlivened with dialogue or personal statements made by others. Dramatic techniques of description and dialogue can make an issue come alive.

Her eyes reflecting the flames from the apartment building, she pleaded, “Save my daughter! Won’t somebody save my daughter?”

Sometimes you may wish to preserve the original wording because its rhetorical style is striking. In the following quotation, John F. Kennedy skillfully used a technique known as inversion or chiasmus, reversing the order of the terms you and your country in the two parallel clauses.

Kennedy reminds us of the selflessness of patriotism: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Several important responsibilities accompany the use of quotations.

When you quote from a source, one of your most important obligations is to present the original message honestly. Although exact quotations help maintain honesty, even a precise repetition of a person’s words does not convey all of the original meaning. To present another person’s ideas honestly, you must (1) provide context when needed and (2) interpret fairly.

Online Study Center: General Resources

How to Quote Effectively

The Quoting Process

Plan

· Read critically and annotate. Look for passages that can enhance your argument. Such passages can be used to support your argument or to represent opposition arguments.

· Make choices. Determine how much of the source you wish to delete, quote, paraphrase, or summarize.

Draft

· Integrate. Connect the quotation to your text with an introductory lead-in.

· Explain. Restate, interpret, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the quotation as needed.

Revise

· Check major features: honesty, acknowledgment, proportion, integration, and accuracy.

Surprisingly, quotations don’t always “speak for themselves.” Consider, for example, this simple, one-word quotation: “Yes.” Although we all know the meaning of yes, the word itself signifies nothing outside of the context in which it was spoken. Words taken out of context can distort a source’s original meaning, sometimes conveying the exact opposite.

President George W. Bush was quoted as saying, “I don’t think we can win the war on terrorism,” a statement that sounds like an admission of failed policy. However, the context of the quotation concerned ways in which terrorism was unlike conventional warfare, making a conventional victory involving a peace treaty impossible.

When you quote someone, you usually follow up with your own words of explanation and interpretation. A misinterpretation will distort the meaning of a quotation. For example, during the 2004 presidential campaign, Senator John Kerry was quoted as saying he supported authorizing President Bush to declare war on Iraq. Kerry’s opponents interpreted this statement as Kerry supporting Bush’s decision to go to war; Kerry, however, insisted that his support was only to give Bush discretionary power and not approval to invade Iraq before United Nations weapons inspections were concluded.

Whenever you quote a source, you must acknowledge it through an attribution known as a reference or citation. This credit can be in text (within your text but attached externally to the main body of the sentence), integrated (grammatically part of your own sentence), or both (parts of the citation are given in both places).

Often you will give credit to your source in a standardized, formal method known as a style. Referencing or documentation styles are distinct from rhetorical style; these guidelines are issued by professional organizations such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) or the American Psychological Association (APA). Styles dictate what kind of reference information must be given and how it must be displayed. MLA and APA, for example, require that references be given inside parentheses that are not grammatically part of a sentence. (MLA and APA styles are fully discussed in later chapters of this book.)

MLA Style: Author’s Name and a Page Number

“If the microscopic dot is a human being with full human rights, the answer is easy: no stem cell research” (Kinsley 13).

APA Style: Author’s Name, Year of Publication, and a Page Number

“If the microscopic dot is a human being with full human rights, the answer is easy: no stem cell research” (Kinsley, 2004, p. 13).

Sometimes you will decide to place credit for your source within your own sentence as you introduce a quotation; this is especially advisable when the name of the source endows the quotation with more authority. The simplest way to integrate a citation is by including an introductory lead-in that names the source: “According to Jones, . . .” or “Smith states that . . . .” To emphasize the credentials of the authority, you may choose to add brief biographical information.

MLA Style

Critical theorist Stanley Fish asserts that “free speech is not an independent value but a political prize” (43).

APA Style

Critical theorist Stanley Fish (1993) asserts that “free speech is not an independent value but a political prize” (p. 43).

Composition students tend to quote excessively—too often and at too great a length. The result seems like a string of oversized pearls of other people’s wisdom, with the composition student providing only the string. The chief reason for overquoting probably is a lack of writing experience: Novice writers may not trust their own ability to “turn a phrase” and may be unacquainted with strategies for paraphrasing and summarizing. The temptation to borrow the ready-made words of others is difficult for writers-in-training to resist, especially when they are struggling to meet a deadline and satisfy a word count.

An essay brimming with quotations is seldom a very good essay. The chorus of quoted experts tends to drown out the voice of the author, who then becomes more like an emcee rather than the featured performer. If the quotations are not dead-on relevant to the author’s claims, the essay will tend to ramble and consequently will lack focus. Worst of all, the author may inadvertently reveal a very unpersuasive lack of self-confidence by not asserting ownership of the argument. Remember that you own the argument. To claim ownership of your writing, use quotations sparingly.

· Quote only those parts of others’ writing that relate to your claim. To do so, you may have to delete parts from quoted sentences or remove sentences from quoted paragraphs.

Full-Length Quotation

Cohen and Kristol caution against stem-cell research: “And in trying to stamp out disease by any means necessary, we risk beginning the ‘compassionate’ project of killing off the diseased themselves, something that has already begun with the selective abortion by parents of ‘undesirable’ embryos.”

Shortened Quotation

Cohen and Kristol caution that stem-cell research may lead to euthanasia—“killing off the diseased themselves.” [The shortened version focuses specifically on euthanasia.]

· Quote only when necessary for establishing authority, making a clarification, providing context, pinpointing a controversy, creating a dramatic effect, or showcasing eloquence.

· Use paraphrasing and summarizing whenever you need material from sources but quotation is not required by other circumstances. (Paraphrasing and summarizing are demonstrated later in this chapter.)

Pretend for a moment that your essay is simply a conversation between you and your reader. If someone known to you but unknown to your reader joins this conversation, etiquette dictates that you should introduce this newcomer. If the newcomer bursts into the conversation without any introduction, your reader may be jolted, puzzled, and perhaps even irritated. The etiquette of writing is similar to the etiquette of conversation: readers benefit not only from knowing when to shift their attention to another speaker but also from knowing something about that new speaker. Through this introductory signaling you integrate (“make whole”) the quotation: You join the quotation with your essay not only logically but also grammatically.

Online Study Center: General Resources

Integrating Quotes

Novice writers often integrate quotations weakly or not all. Quoted sources that lack any introduction are known as dropped, floating, free-floating, freestanding, or dumped quotations. Even when dropped quotations follow the logical flow of a paragraph, you are still obliged by convention and common sense to integrate them.

Dropped Quotation

After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, homeland defense will never be the same. “Everything has changed: the nature of threat, the sources of information, the technology use” (Treverton 40).

Integrated Quotation

After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, homeland security will never be the same. Gregory Treverton, former vice chairman of the National Security Council, underscores the 9/11 effect: “Everything has changed: the nature of threat, the sources of information, the technology use” (40).

In the first example, the quotation follows the logical flow of the first sentence, but lacks any kind of introduction. In the second example, the quotation is integrated by identifying the source.

The most common method of integrating a quotation is to identify the source. In its briefest form, this identification consists of a personal name or title. This method of integration is known by various names: signal phrase, tag, introductory phrase, or lead-in. Some writers prefer short lead-ins: “in the words of [name],” “according to [name],” “as stated by [name],” or “as [name] has pointed out.” However, the “name coupled with a verb” method can become boring to read unless you vary how you write the lead-ins.

Although it makes sense to provide introductory material before beginning a quotation, readers also prefer varied sentence patterns. Minor changes in punctuation will enable you to locate your lead-ins at the beginning, middle, or end of a quotation:

Beginning Lead-In

As stated by Michael Kinsley, “Embryos that aren’t transferred get destroyed or frozen indefinitely—unless, that is, they are used for stem-cell research.”

Middle Lead-In

“Embryos that aren’t transferred get destroyed or frozen indefinitely,” states Michael Kinsley, “—unless, that is, they are used for stem-cell research.”

Ending Lead-In

“Embryos that aren’t transferred get destroyed or frozen indefinitely—unless, that is, they are used for stem-cell research,” writes Michael Kinsley.

Some verbs and phrases are neutral, including little or no information to influence the reading of a quotation. “Jones writes . . .” or “In the words of Smith . . .” leads a reader into a quotation without revealing how the source is related to the issue or how you feel about the source. As a writer, you would deliberately employ such “neutral” lead-ins when you do not wish to influence the reader.

At the same time, you have the option of including any of hundreds of non-generic lead-in verbs that can add useful information. “Jones agrees that . . .” or “Smith disputes the fact that . . .” at the very least will provide some variety in your diction. More importantly, informative verbs help your reader anticipate how the quotation relates to the issue under discussion.

Skilled writers go beyond the minimal requirements of a lead-in, expanding it to include many kinds of relevant information:

· Revealing the credentials of the source: J. R. R. Tolkein, author of Lord of the Rings, defines fantasy as . . . .

· Clarifying the relevance of a quotation to an issue: Jones refutes Smith, saying . . . .

· Sharing an attitude of a source toward an issue: Smith blusters . . . .

· Sharing your estimate of the value of the source: Jones is mistaken when she states . . . .

· Rather than using a name of a particular source, commenting on the content of the quotation: Plagiarism can actually be encouraged by policies that seek to discourage it: “We had been operating on an outdated and semirelevant policy that clearly affected the punishment that could be meted out” (Rouche).

Experienced writers rarely move past a quotation without discussing it, instead “milking it for all it’s worth.” Inexperienced writers overlook a quotation’s potential for initiating discussion and consequently find themselves in desperate need of quotations to meet a required word count.

Following are some strategies for explaining a quotation, based on Bloom’s taxonomy. For more information on explanations, seeChapters 3 and 4.

· Knowledge (clarification): Clarify to make sure the evidence is understood. You can restate its key point to ensure that a quotation is understood on a basic, literal level. Paraphrase, summary, and emphasis are types of restatements that help clarify evidence.

· Comprehension (interpretation): Speculate on the quotation’s deeper meaning and significance. Sometimes a quotation requires an interpreter who can “read between the lines,” putting a kind of “spin” on it.

· Application: Explain how the evidence applies. Application can be important when the connection between the quotation and your claim isn’t immediately clear.

· Analysis: Explain the parts. Analysis is like a dissection, dividing a whole into its parts and explaining how they work both separately and in unison. When a quotation is complex, breaking it down into smaller pieces will help your audience understand it.

Lead-In Verbs

When introducing a quotation, you have the option of using a verb purposefully—thereby guiding the reader’s understanding of the quotation or of the source—or remaining neutral.

. Neutral influence: Adds little or no perspective or interpretation in advance of the quotation.

Patrick Henry states, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

. Interpretation: Suggests the attitude that a source or quotation takes toward an issue. Briefly explains the attitude expressed by each verb.

Patrick Henry exhorts his fellow legislators, proclaiming, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

. Evaluation: Suggests the attitude that you take toward the source or quoted information. Briefly explains the attitude expressed by each verb.

Bravely, Patrick Henry placed his life on the line: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

The verbs listed below are examples of lead-ins. Although this list seems long, it represents only a small fraction of the choices available to a writer.

· Synthesis: Relate the quotation to other claims or evidences. One quotation may interact with others, either supporting or refuting those other quotations. Synthesis brings two or more quotations together, allowing for comparison/contrast, rebuttal, or an accumulation of mutually supporting points.

· Evaluation: Explain the quotation’s value. Sometimes a quotation needs qualification—an explanation of how reliable and complete it is.

Practice 9.1. Choosing the Right Verb

For each of the following purposes, list five appropriate lead-in verbs. Briefly explain how each might affect a reader.

1. Neutral influence—adding little or no perspective or interpretation in advance of the quotation

2. Interpretation—suggesting the attitude that a source or quotation takes toward an issue

3. Evaluation—suggesting the attitude that you take toward a source or quoted information

Practice 9.2. Vary Your Lead-Ins

Choose one or more quotations from a source you may use in an argumentative essay. Practice writing lead-ins at the beginning, middle, and end.