Incorporating Quotes

"The best proof that a work of literature does what you say it does is textual evidence: words and sentences you can cite from the poem, the story, or the play you are discussing.  If you say that a character in a story is evil, can you quote a passage in which he clearly says or does something evil, or a passage in which a reliable character or narrator talks of his evil? The best support you have as you discuss a literary work is the text of the work itself.

 As you incorporate textual evidence into your discussion through the use of quotations, there are some rules you should keep in mind.

 1.    Do not overuse quotations.  The style of your writing will be better if you incorporate the heart of the quote as a quoted phrase into your own sentence structure rather than writing a sentence and then quoting a sentence or poetic line.

Ineffective:  Richard Cory was very polite.  "He was a gentleman from sole to crown."  Also, he was good-looking, even regal-looking-- "clean favored and imperially slim."

 Effective:  Richard Cory was polite, "a gentleman from sole to crown."  Like a handsome king, he was "clean favored, and imperially slim."

 2.    Avoid having two quotations in a row.  Your own commentary should bridge the two.

 Ineffective:  Richard Cory had everything going for him.  "He was a gentleman from sole to crown."  "And he was rich-- yes, richer than a king."

 Effective:  Richard Cory had everything going for him.  Not only was he a "gentleman from sole to crown," but also he was "richer than a king."

 3.    Work the quotation comfortably into your sentence structure.

 Ineffective (NOT BLENDED):  "Darkened by the gloomiest of trees" shows just how frightening the forest looked.

Effective (BLENDED): The forest, "darkened by the gloomiest of trees," was a frightening place.  (Blended means Your words....."their words"...perhaps your words again.)

 4.    Longer quotations (more than two lines of verse or four lines of prose) should be set off from your paragraph to display form: single spaced and centered without quotation marks.  "

  from Linda J. Smith  :)