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General Rules for Quotations
When you make important claims in your essay, you should back up these claims with critical analysis that helps prove your point. An excellent way to do this is to support your insights by responding to the specific language of the text you are writing about. Since your essays for me will be relatively short (4-6 pages), it is best to quote several short passages rather than using a bunch of long quotations. Choose your quotations carefully and don't overdo it: quotations should not appear in a string, one after the other.
Please Note: I want to discourage you from using other people's critical insights (books and articles or Internet material) in your essays. I want to know what YOU think, not what some college professor or Internet source or essay writing service has to say. If you use other people's ideas and fail to cite them, it is plagiarism-- the unethical process of passing off other people's intellectual work as your own. Use your own good mind, and I'll be satisfied.
Since all of us are using the same anthology, there's no need to mention the name of it in your citations.
A good, inexpensive guide to proper citation style and basic grammar is
Pocket Keys for Writers by Ann Raimes. Here are the basic rules for quotation:
Quoting a short passage from our class text
If you quote 2 lines or less of poetry or 3 lines or less of prose,
1) introduce the quotation with an introductory phrase that gives
the author's name and, if it has not already been mentioned in
your essay, the name of the text (titles of stories, speeches,
sermons
and poems should be in quotation marks);
2) a comma;
3) then your quote surrounded by quotation marks;
4) then the page number, ONLY the page number, surrounded by
parentheses;
5) then a period.
example:
In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne writes that Goodman
Brown,
"was himself the chief horror of the scene" (1204).
Quoting a longer passage from our class text
Use long quotations only when they seem essential to supporting your argument. I don't want to read a collection of passages from other writers-- I want to know what your insights are. For this reason, whatever quotations you use should be accompanied by effective critical analysis.
If you quote 3 lines or more of poetry or 4 lines or more of prose
1) introduce the quotation with an introductory phrase followed by
either a
period or a colon;
2) indent 8 spaces on the left margin for your quotation;
3) NO quotation marks;
4) write out your quote keeping the indented margin of 8 spaces;
5) if you want to omit words in your quotation, you indicate that
you've
done so by using ellipsis-- three dots separated by
spaces, within
square brackets;
6) finish your quotation with a period;
7) then the page number, ONLY the page number, surrounded by
parentheses.
example:
Oddly, the dark figure gives his followers seemingly evil powers
that are
not unlike the creative gifts that Hawthorne reveals in his
disturbing tale:
By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall
scent out
all the places-- whether in church, bed-chamber,
street, field,
or
forest-- where crime has been committed. [. . .]
Far more than this!
It
shall be your's to penetrate, in every
bosom, the deep
mystery of sin. (1206)
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