Use of Quotations

            While quotations are common and often effective in research papers and essays, use them selectively. Quote only words, phrases, lines, and passages that are particularly interesting, vivid, unusual, or apt, and keep all quotations as brief as possible. Overquotation can bore your readers and might lead them to conclude that you are neither an original thinker nor a skillful writer.

            In general, a quotation – whether a word, phrase, sentence, or more – should correspond exactly to its source in spelling, capitalization, and interior punctuation.

Prose

            If a prose quotation runs no more than four typed lines and requires no special emphasis, put it in quotation marks and incorporate it into your text. If a quotation ending a sentence requires a parenthetical reference, place the sentence period after the reference:

Example 1:   Of the eighteenth century Charles Dickens writes, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (3).

Example 2:   “It was the best of times,” writes Charles Dickens of the eighteenth century, “it was the worst of times” (3).

            If a quotation runs more than four typed lines, set it off from your text by beginning a new line, indenting ten spaces from the left margin, and typing it double-spaced, without adding quotation marks. When adding a parenthetical reference to a prose quotation set off from the text, skip two spaces after the quotation and give the reference.

            At the conclusion of Lord of the Flies Ralph and the other boys realize the horror of their actions:

            The tears began to flow and the sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island;

            great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke

            before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other boys began to shake and sob too.   (186)

Poetry or Drama

            If you quote a single line of verse, or a part of a line, that does not require special emphasis, put it in quotation marks within your text. You may also incorporate two or three lines in this way, using a slash with a space on each side ( / ) to separate them. (In the following examples, note that verse plays are cited by act, scene, and line rather than page numbers; Julius Caesar III.v.46, for instance, refers to act 3, scene 5, line 46 of the play.)

            In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Antony says of Brutus: “This was the noblest Roman of them all” (V.v.74).

            “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” begins Antony's famous speech, “lend me your ears; / I come to bury Caesar,

            not to praise him” (III.ii.80-81).