Research & Writing Tutorials

Using and Integrating Quotations

By Jordana Greenblatt

Many students find quotation baffling. You know you have to do it, but when, how much, and how aren’t terribly clear. Some assignments and/or disciplines will specify that they don’t want much—if any—direct quotation, telling you to paraphrase instead.

If that’s what your assignment or instructor says, listen to them! Don’t quote, just paraphrase as needed, citing appropriately. But what about when you are supposed to use quotation?

How Much Should You Quote?

Some assignments will ask you to close read or analyze a specific passage. For these assignments, you need to make sure that you engage substantially with the passage you have been assigned. Throwing in one or two lines from it and quickly moving on won’t suffice. You should use few, if any, examples from the rest of the text the passage comes from, instead prioritizing material from the passage itself.

What if you’re just writing a regular assignment (direct quotations are permitted, but you are not restricted to a single passage)? Quote as necessary to support your argument. If you’re writing an essay, say, about literature, and you almost never quote directly, you’re quoting too little. If the quotations—including from researched articles—are overshadowing your own voice, then you’re quoting too much.

When Should You Quote?

In general, you want to quote directly only when one or more of the following situations applies:

• You will be engaging in substantial analysis of the specific passage or phrase you have quoted.
• You will be critiquing, in detail, the position expressed in the passage or phrase you are quoting.
• The specific language that the writer uses to express their idea is particularly interesting, eloquent, or noteworthy.

How Should You Quote?

Analyzing Your Quotations

Whenever you quote, you must follow your quotation with analysis immediately. It is your job to demonstrate why and how the quotation is important; don’t leave this task to your reader! Here are some examples (I have used MLA format. You should cite using whichever citation format has been specified by your instructor):

Bad: When Shakespeare writes “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate” in Sonnet 18, the reader can see that the person he is writing about is beautiful (1-2). The reader can see from the line “thy eternal summer shall not fade” that the beauty will last for a long time.

Good: Asking first “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, Shakespeare’s speaker soon asserts that his beloved is not only “more lovely,” but “more temperate” than a single day (18.1-2). While the beauty of a day can vary even in the summer, the beloved’s temperate loveliness never fluctuates. Rather, preserved by the speaker’s poetry, his beauty stretches beyond the changeability of a single day into an “eternal summer” (18.9).

Integrating Your Quotations

Quotations must be integrated into sentences of your own. They cannot stand alone as a sentence, and they must work with the rest of your sentence in a way that is grammatically correct. Here are some examples:

Wrong: In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West claims that literature helps us to understand others. “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).

Wrong: In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West talks about “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).

Right: In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West argues that “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).

Right: Claiming that “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign,” Robin West positions the use of literary techniques in our interpersonal interactions as enabling us to grasp the experiences of others with whom we have little in common (“Economic” 874).

Sometimes you might have to change some words in the quotation to make it work grammatically with the rest of your sentence. To indicate that you have done so, use square brackets. To indicate that you have omitted words, use ellipses. Here’re some examples:

• In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West represents “Metaphor and narrative [as] the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).
• In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare’s speaker represents his beloved’s beauty as constant and unchanging, telling him: “Thou art … more temperate” (2) than “a summer’s day” (1).

If you feel unsure as to how to integrate a quotation into a sentence, you can always just begin by writing that the author “writes,” “argues,” “contends,” “claims,” “implies,” “suggests,” “explains,” etc. Here’s an example:

As Robin West contends, “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).

Make sure that your punctuation fits the sentence construction that you have used. Here are some options:

• Robin West argues that “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
• Robin West argues: “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
• As Robin West argues, “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
• According to Robin West, “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).

For more information, consult the UofT Writing website.