Using Quotes in an Essay Quote Incorporation Rules

Using Quotes in an Essay

Quote Incorporation § Rules and standards are established by The Modern Language Association (MLA). § In order to avoid plagiarism and let the readers know where your information comes from, you must cite all quotations within your essay. You can do this in the form of a: § direct quote, § summary, § paraphrase, § or when stating any fact that is not common knowledge.

Direct Quotes § You must put all direct quotes in quotation marks and quote it word for word followed by a page number or line numbers enclosed in parentheses and then a period. § When quoting lines of poetry, you must put a “/” to indicate a line break. § There are 3 ways to incorporate quotes into your essay.

Quote Incorporation #1 § Introduce the context and speaker of the quote you are using in the sentence. § Example: § When Dr. King begins his “I Have a Dream” speech, he states, “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation” (King 1). § Context: “begins his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech” § Speaker: “Dr. King”

Quote Incorporation #2 § Use the quote in the sentence as a description. § Example: § Nelson Mandela explains that the Robben Island prisoners had little more than “mats, ” “blankets, ” and “iron sanitary buckets known as ‘ballies’” in their cells (Mandela 1). § Instead of quoting two whole sentences, I took the basic pieces that I needed from them to describe what prisoners had in their cells.

Quote Incorporation #3 § Use part of a quote by omitting material in the middle using an ellipsis in its place. § Ellipsis =. . . § Space dot space § Example: § The narrator introduces the sniper as a Republican with the “face of a student. . . but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic” (O’Flaherty 5). § The ellipsis is used instead of “thin and ascetic. ”