Part 1 - TEKS Glossary and Syllabus

• Lesson title: Embedding Direct Quotations and Incorporating Indirect Quotations
• Student-friendly summary of lesson: You will learn the appropriate formats for including direct and indirect quotations in your research paper.
• At least 3-5 key words in the lesson, including their definitions from the TEKS Glossary: embed, direct quotation, indirect quotation, block quotation, parenthetical documentation, paraphrase, common knowledge, plagiarism, indepandent clause, signal phrase, MLA

Introduction

When you’re writing an essay or research paper, you often want to support your points with the written or spoken words of someone else. There are two ways to do this. You can refer to that source’s words with either a direct quotation (the straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth approach) or an indirect quotation (the paraphrase approach). In this lesson, we’ll focus on the correct methods for using both kinds of quotations. We’ll also go a step further and explore how properly written direct quotations can fall into one of three categories—acceptable, better, or best—depending on how skillfully you embed them into your writing. And since you’ll certainly want to avoid plagiarism, we’ll also discuss how to properly document your sources with in-text citations.

Please note that we’ll use quote as a verb in the lesson, i.e., “Stanley will quote from the poem”. We will use quotation as a noun, i.e., “The quotation was printed in italics”, except in the term “quotation marks.”

Direct vs. Indirect Quotations

On the surface, differentiating between direct and indirect quotations is easy. Direct quotations have a speaker’s or writer’s exact words set off in quotation marks. Indirect quotations have no quotation marks because they don’t use the writer’s exact words. In writing a narrative essay, for example, you might recount a time your mother gave you advice by using a direct quotation:

The information is the same. Your mom’s exact words in the direct quotation example were simply rephrased or summarized in the indirect quotation. Both direct and indirect quotations have their places in research papers and essays (especially expository and persuasive ones). When deciding which of the two kinds to use in a certain situation, keep in mind a few guidelines:

• Direct quotations will be most effective if you use them sparingly and keep them rather short (longer quotations will be discussed in the next section). Whether you’re writing an essay or a research paper, using too many direct quotations is bad because your paper ends up containing less of what YOU have to say on the subject. In addition, your own style suffers when you’re trying to incorporate too many direct quotations.

Use direct quotations when the source contains such unique, powerful, or interesting words that altering them would detract from the impact of their meaning. Take, for example, this simple direct quotation:

You could paraphrase the quotation as follows:

This, however, strips the original language of its power. In this case, it would be best to use a direct quotation.

In other words, use direct quotations when there is a compelling reason to do so. Don’t indiscriminately sprinkle your writing with direct quotations because you think they look good or because using them was part of the assignment. Make direct quotations count!

Remember to place commas and periods inside closing quotation marks.

NOTE: When using the Modern Language Association’s  Style Guide (MLA) or some other forms of documentation, this punctuation rule can change.

• Indirect quotations (paraphrases) suffice when you need ideas, incidents, or details from a source more than you need the exact words. Most of an essay or research paper will be made up of such paraphrases combined with your own words and thoughts.

NOTE: Indirect quotations are often, but not always, preceded by that or if. For example, you might write the following:

Be sure that you have rewritten the key ideas using different words and sentence structures than the original text.

Research papers and essays that require outside sources do more than simply retell facts or events. Your purpose in writing such papers is to analyze, explain, or persuade. Don’t use quotations of either kind without including your own commentary, insight, or analysis about them.

To practice using quotation marks in direct quotations and other situations, do this exercise.  (You may want to refer to the excellent set of punctuation rules that is included at the end of this lesson.)

Write your answers using the Take Notes Tool or your own paper. When you are finished, check your understanding.

Now you’re ready to learn how to successfully embed direct quotations.

Embedding Direct Quotations

A direct quotation supports your argument or explanation. For your readers there should be no question about how a particular quotation is relevant. It is your responsibility, not theirs, to clearly connect the quotation to your claim. You should never drop a quotation into your writing and let it stand alone, unloved, and seemingly disconnected from the information around it. Consider the lonesome quotation in these two sentences:

The reader is left to make connections and figure out why the words are so important that they’re directly quoted. Additionally, even though both sentences are about bald eagles, they don’t flow together well stylistically.

Notice how much more meaningful, smooth, and logical the information is when the quotation is introduced and then embedded into a sentence:

Ah, that’s much better.

Speaking of better, I mentioned in the introduction that there are three types of direct quotations: acceptable, better, and best. Below is an explanation of each type. The list begins with a dropped quotation—unacceptable—and shows how each successive category of quotation improves on the previous one:

• Unacceptable embedding (dropped quotation): “The battle was lost before it began.” (Yikes! Who said it and in what context?)


• Acceptable embedding: The general said, “The battle was lost before it began.” (Oh, the general said it. But that’s very simple sentence construction, and what’s the context?)


• Better embedding: “The battle was lost before it began,” admitted the general. (The sentence structure and verb are certainly more interesting, but can’t the quotation or, at least the most important part of it, be smoothly embedded into a more sophisticated sentence?)


• Best embedding: General Arnold acknowledged defeat and admitted that the fight “was lost before it began.” (The sentence structure is good and there are added details, but more importantly, the quotation is seamlessly embedded in the sentence. Someone listening to it would not know that a quotation was included.)

The bottom line is, embedding direct quotations makes writing more readable and sophisticated.

• Make it clear to the reader which information comes from you and which comes from a source. A signal phrase is a phrase, clause, or full sentence that introduces borrowed material. Signal phrases queue the reader that the material comes from an outside reference. Varying your signal phrases keeps your writing from becoming monotonous: “according to Jane Doe,” “as Ms. Doe goes on to explain,” “as one critic points out,” “John Doe emphasizes,” “Doe insisted that,” “in the words of the President,” “John Doe observed that,” etc. Keep in mind that your word choice connects the source to your argument.

Signal phrases often incorporate verbs or verb phrases. The verb needs to fit the situation. Does the source claim, argue, observe, conclude, refute, or state? A list of verbs—a purposely long list—follows to help you think about possibilities for your own writing.

When you embed quoted material into your own sentences, be sure that the combination of your words with those from an outside source makes grammatical sense. Be sure that your verbs agree with their subjects, that pronouns agree with their antecedents, and that you maintain parallelism across your citation. You’ve been effective if someone listening to the sentence cannot tell where your words end and where the quotation begins. To ensure seamless reading, you may have to use an ellipsis (. . .) or brackets [ ].

Block quotations

If a direct quotation is more than four lines long within the text of your paper, it should be set off as a block quotation.

• A block quotation should be formatted like this:
  

Indent from the left margin one inch (two tabs). Double-space within, before, and after the quotation. Even though you’re using the writer’s exact words, do not enclose a block quotation in quotation marks. (Use quotation marks within the block quotation, however, if the passage you’re quoting contains them.)

Use the following sentences to practice embedding quotations. Try different ways of combining each group of sentences into one sentence that contains a properly embedded quotation. Rewrite the sentences using the Take Notes Tool. When you’re finished, check your understanding to see some suggested combinations. Remember that since there are several ways to embed quotations, your sentence may be correct even if it’s different from the suggested response. Pay special attention, however, to the punctuation in your sentence and in the suggested one.

1. Mr. Loftis was working in his fields yesterday. He saw something unusual. “The flying saucer appeared right before my own two eyes.”


2. Gretchen realizes something. She regrets that she screamed at her boyfriend, Ross. “I should think before I speak.”


3. “They don’t belong anywhere.” Jorge said this. He thinks that carnival workers have no real homes.


4. Teresa is talking to Lucy very quietly. “You close the window, and I’ll lock the door.”

Parenthetical Documentation

See the lesson, “Documenting Sources and Writing a Bibliography/Works Cited” for more information on this topic.

When you use the work of others in your research papers and essays, it’s imperative that you acknowledge where you got your outside information. If you don’t, you could be accused of plagiarism. There are various ways to document sources. Your choice will depend on which writing style guide your class or school uses. Most English classes use MLA style, so that is the documentation style we demonstrate in these lessons. Other styles include Chicago and APA (American Psychological Association).

As I said in the introduction, the sources of all quotations must be identified with parenthetical documentation, also called in-text citation. If you directly quote someone’s spoken or written words, no matter how inconsequential they may seem, you must identify the source and the page number (if there is a page number).

Indirect quotations also require documentation; the only exception is that you may not need to cite a source if an indirect quotation consists of common knowledge. But what information needs parenthetical documentation and what doesn’t?

Deciding When You Need to Give Credit

See how well you can separate common knowledge from facts that should be cited. Choose the correct answer for each statement below; check your understanding by reviewing the responses at the bottom of the application.

In the MLA documentation style, a short parenthetical citation is placed in parentheses at the end of a quotation. This in-text citation refers the reader to the list of works cited for more complete information about the source. (The “works cited” list is also called a bibliography by some other style guides.) Most citations consist of the author’s last name and a page number (for example: “Smith 47”).

For a complete list of the many parenthetical documentation possibilities, consult the newest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Below are a few examples of how in-text MLA citation would look for certain sources:

• (257)
  
  When the author’s name has already been mentioned in the sentence, use only the page number. 


• (Smith 47)

To cite a book with one author, a signed encyclopedia article, a magazine article, an article from a scholarly journal, or a newspaper article, include the author’s last name, a space, and a page number.

• (Smith and Jones 86)

To cite a book or article with more than one author, include the authors’ last names followed by the page number. When you list the names, use commas and “and” like you would in any other writing.

• (“Bank Robbery” 8A)

To cite a source with no author listed, include the first word or first two words of the title excluding articles (a, an, the) and the page number.

• To cite a source with no page numbers, or if an entire work is being acknowledged (a website or a film or song found online), it’s best to include the author’s name (or the title of the work, if the author’s name is not available) in your sentence instead of using parenthetical documentation.

Punctuating Parenthetical Citations

(or "Here We Go Again" With Exceptions to the Basic Punctuation Rules)

• Place a parenthetical citation before any punctuation required by the sentence. Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks UNLESS there is parenthetical documentation, in which case periods and commas go after the documentation.  For example, you would be correct to write a citation like this:

—She said, “Hurry up” (Thomas 14).

The exception itself actually has an exception. If you cite a sentence that ends with a question mark or exclamation point, use the exclamation point or question mark inside the closing quotation mark, and follow the quotation mark with the documentation and a period.  For example:

—The doctor asked, “What is a human life worth?” (Lowe 391).

• The ending punctuation of a block quotation comes before the parenthetic documentation. The block quotation from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in section three demonstrates this.

Avoiding Plagiarism

As noted by both contemporary author Smith and the unknown eighteenth-century author, plagiarism is NOT your friend! Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty in which a writer uses other people’s words or ideas (pictures, art, charts, graphs, computations, scientific data, music, etc.) as his or her own. The writer may do this by failing to credit the others at all or by improperly crediting the creator. If you use someone else’s exact words, put quotation marks around them and give the person credit by revealing the source in a citation. If you use someone else's ideas or revise, rearrange, or paraphrase their words, you still must cite your source. Otherwise you imply that the words or ideas are your own.

Some plagiarism is blatant and intentional. Unscrupulous students have been known to buy, steal, or copy an entire paper from the web. You commit plagiarism if you hire someone to write your paper, copy chunks of someone else’s work without documentation, or cite fake information. Some plagiarism might be considered unintentional, such as missing or improperly citing a source due to carelessness (perhaps because a student is hurrying to do an assignment at the last minute). It may be possible to accidentally paraphrase too closely to the original’s wording—so closely that quotation marks should have been used. Or a writer might use someone else’s ideas by mistake without giving them credit. Sometimes teachers or administrators will try to ascertain whether a student intended to cheat, but some may say that any kind of plagiarism, intentional or not, is still plagiarism.

With that in mind, let’s look at ways to avoid even being suspected of plagiarism in the first place.

Begin with the chart “Deciding When You Need to Give Credit” in the previous section. When you know the theory behind what you have to document, you can create a real-world plan, a no-way-am-I-going-to-plagiarize process, using the chart below.

This lesson is in both the writing and research modules, so the message is doubly loud and clear: you must learn how to collect and use source information ethically. It’s never too early to make a plan of action to ensure you accomplish these tasks successfully.

Making Sure You Are Safe

As you can see, avoiding plagiarism is even part of the proofreading process. However, since we’re planning ahead, it is wise to have a checklist to refer to during the entire writing process, not only at the end, to avoid inadvertent plagiarism. The Pearson Education website contains an extremely helpful checklist.

For information about how to punctuate quotations, see the lesson titled “Proofreading for Spelling, Capitalization, and Punctuation.”

Test Your Understanding

Complete the following steps to take a quiz that tests your understanding of this topic.

• Click on the link below. The quiz will open in a new window.
• When you have completed the quiz, click the Submit button.
• Close the window to return to this page.
• To review your test results, click the Tests/Quizzes button in the left-hand Epsilen navigation menu to open the Tests/Quizzes page.
• Under Past Tests/Quizzes locate the test for Research: Module 4: Lesson 3 and click on the magnifying glass icon to view your results.

Please Note: Question/answer choices periodically appear out of order onscreen. This is a known program bug within Epsilen and is currently being addressed.

Click here to take the quiz on this lesson.

Resources

Resources Used in this Lesson: Bibliography

“Checklist to Avoid Plagiarism.” Pearson – Online Resources for Little, Brown Handbook. 10th ed. http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/2942/3012900/checklists/ch45-plagiarism.doc.

“Brief Overview of Punctuation” The Purdue OWL. Purdue University Writing Lab. 2011. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/.

Conrey, Sean M., Mark Pepper, and Allen Brizee. “How to Use Quotation Marks.” The Purdue OWL University. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/1/.

Harvey, Gordon. Writing With Sources: A Guide for Students. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2008.

Nordquist, Richard. “Block quotation.” About.com Grammar & Composition. 
http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/blockquotationterm.htm.

Persig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.

“Research and Citation Resources.” The Purdue OWL. Purdue University Writing Lab. 2011.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/.

“Signal Phrases.” Center for Academic Excellence. Saint Joseph College. Revised 2001.
http://ww2.sjc.edu/archandouts/signalphrases.doc.