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My name is Robert
Scafe and I'm a lecturer here in the expository writing program
at OU. In this tutorial, I want to introduce you to the skills that you
need to integrate quotations
smoothly into your writing. Now if you started working with quotes
from your primary sources already, you probably discovered that using them can
be trickier than it seems at
first. It could be a challenge to separate the important parts
from the words you don't need, for example, or to figure out how to blend
another author's wording with your own. Now, these problems have solutions,
and if you watch this video to the end you'll be equipped with a set of tools
that will give you the confidence
to start blending quotations into your own writing.
In particular, I'm going to touch on
one introducing quotes. That is,
what you should say to set up the quotation and how to smoothly connect
your own words
with the beginning of the quote. And two
cutting and blending, how you can chop up quotations
and weave then together with your own language.
Let's begin by comparing a raw undigested quotation
with a well-integrated one, and then we'll discuss how you get from point A to
point B.
This passage comes from an essay about American environmentalism
and the national parks in the early 20th century.
Take a second to read it imagining what it would be like to encounter such a
citation
in history a essay.
This is a classic example
of a dangling quotation, or a quote it's simply been
dropped into the middle of a text without any editing or blending.
I think you can see how
bringing along quotation like this in from a completely different context
creates confusion for the reader, just to site a few examples.
The first word, "nevertheless", signaled in Muir's original that he was
complicating something
he just said. But in this new context
it creates confusion, because the quote is intended to refute the sentence that
preceded it,
but to prove it. Similarly, the pronoun "they" in the quotation refers to something
in the previous sentence.
But since that's not included, we're left to guess.
Is the phrase "they have always been subject to attack", is a talking about the
environmentalists mentioned earlier?
Or is it talking about the national parks? Let's see how the author solved these
problems,
and some other ones, by chopping out the confusing bits
and blending what remaind with their own words.
This revision does three things right, to help the reader assimilate the quote
and to see how it supports the writer's arguments.
First, it begins by clearly indicating who's speaking
and in what context. Second,
it selects the most important bits from the original text
leaving aside distracting words and focusing the reader's attention on what
matters most,
And third, instead of simply
moving on after the quote is finished, the revision helpfully explains to the
reader
what they're supposed to be getting out of Muir's words.
In short, where the raw quotation may have left the reader disoriented,
the blended quotation focuses their attention
on how Muir's words prove the writer's point.
Now let's look at each at the skills and more detail,
starting with introducing. When you quote, you want to prepare your reader to grasp
its significance
by explaining who is speaking and in what context.
Its most basic form, introducing starts with
clearly attributing authorship. For example,
by writing "John Muir state's", or "Muir explains that"
as a kind of lead-in to the quotation. That last part,
as a lead into the quotation, is really important because if you don't actually
name your author in the same sentence where you begin to quote,
it's really easy to confuse your reader. For example,
while the first version did mention John Muir in the sentence prior to the
quotation,
it also cited environmentalists in general.
Thus when you start reading the quote, you might think this is
Muir speaking, but you might think its some other environmentalists.
You might even think it's a modern historian who's talking
about Muir and the environmentalists. To be sure, the reader in this case will
probably figure it out eventually
but you really want to avoid disorienting your reader like this
by blending your introductory comments with the quotation.
Now, sometimes students hesitate to blend their introductory remarks this way,
because they're confused about how to connect them. So let me give you a few
basic rules
on how to use punctuation when you fuse
own words with theirs. If you're introducing with some version of
"he" or "she says", use a comma
to connect your introduction with the quotation, like this.
If the quoted material is already
meshed with your own words, then you don't need to use a comma
Here's an example. You would not put a comma
here between "as" and "a worthy object"
if you weren't quoting, so you don't need to just because there's a quotation mark
there.
Note that this same rule applies even when you introduce
a quotation with "says that" as we did here.
So even though we
wrote "John Muir explains" the addition of "that" means you no longer
need a comma. In short, also use a comma
to introduce a quote when the syntax would normally require it,
or when you some version of "says"
right before the quoted material. Finally, use a colon
instead of a comma when you're announcing quotations
that are more than one sentence or for quotes longer than four lines.
For example, if you were to write Stanton declared
"The right is ours. Have it ,we must. Use it, we will."
you would use the colon, even though this is a short quotation,
because this quotation is more than one sentence long. If your quotation is
longer than four lines,
you should also introduce it with a colon and in this case you want to take
the additional step
of transforming it into a "block quotation".
You make block quotations by indenting
the entire quotation, single spacing,
and by omitting the quotation marks. This might be surprising, but
you don't need those quotation marks anymore because the block tells you
that it's a quote.
now it's important to know how to form block quotations,
because there will be times you can't avoid presenting a large chunk of text.
You should be aware, however, that it's generally considered better
to use short edited quotations when you can,
and particularly in a short history essay. So it's important
to clearly connect your authors with their words.
But in history writing, the author's not just a name-
an author's a person acting in a particular place
and a particular time. So in addition to naming authors,
historians often introduced their quotations with context
about the writer and their circumstances. In our case for example,
the writer noted that John Muir was the founder of the Sierra Club,
that this article was written in 1908, and that's a motivation for writing the
article
was the damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
There's no hard and fast rule about how much context
you should add but just bear in mind these principles.
One, include contextual information that the reader needs to understand
the significance of the quote that follows. In this case, for example,
the fact that John Muir was the founder of the Sierra Club
is vital for understanding his importance as a representative of the
environmentalist movement at this time.
To include details about the author
the first time we introduce them, but don't keep repeating them when you quote
them again.
For example, you want to use the author's whole name-
John Muir- the first time that you introduce them.
But after that you can just switch to "Muir goes on to say".
You might cite that date and title of his article the first time you
use it, but there's no need to keep doing that when you quote from it
later in the essay. So let's look at our quotation now that the author has been
properly introduced
to see what else we could do to sharpen its focus.
So we've added some contextual details about the author
to orient the reader, and we blended these with the beginning of the
quotation
by cutting a confusing word "nevertheless".
But there are still some problems here. First, the quote is still too long.
It contains so much information, but the reader's isn't really sure what they're
supposed to be focusing on.
And two, even though we've gotten rid of the confusing word "nevertheless",
there are still parts of this quotation that are out of context,
and that make it hard to follow. Now in order to prevent these problems,
experience quoters often chop up
long quotations and blend the smaller bits
with their own words. The guidelines for doing this kind
editing are very simple: one,
keep the words that are important to proving your assertion,
and cut those that would distract you
from your main point. Two, don't change the meaning of the original quotation in the
process of doing this.
So you always want to start when you're cutting by asking,
what's my purpose here? By using this quotation to show?
In this case, the writer wants to suggest that John Muir
portrayed the profit motive as an evil, insipid force
that would inevitably exploit the natural parks
if it isn't stopped. Which words do we need to keep to illustrate that argument?
Well we're interested in Muir's demonization of the lumberman and the
ranchers.
So let's keep these words that connect them to "Satan"
and that doesn't make the Parks as a "sacred" temptation
for evil. But we can eliminate the parenthetical
"like everything else worthwhile" - it's really just a distracting aside.
Certainly we want to keep "despoiling gainseekers"
since that designates the profit motive, but then we could probably omit what
follows -
"mischief makers of every degree" - because it clutters up the sentence
without adding anything that we need. And finally,
let's keep the memorable expression "smiling philanthropy,"
which underscores the deviousness of the profiteers' encroachments on nature,
however will cut the rest so we can introduce
"smiling philanthropy" more flexibly, using our own words.
The result, once you've supplied the connective tissue
by summarizing our paraphrasing Muir said in your own words,
is something like this.
Notice how taking control over the connective language between the quoted
bits
helps the writer solve some of the problems of contextualizing the quote.
For example, in the original, the pronoun
"they" in "they have always been subject to attack"
is really ambiguous because we don't know who "they" is referring to -
Is it referring to environmentalists? Is referring to the national parks?
Who's being attacked here? In fact, earlier in the original text Muir was
talking about National Parks,
so the writer clarifies the meaning by substituting his own wording
"national parks" for the quotation. Get
in the habit of weaving your own wording is your quotations
and you'll have the flexibility to overcome these sticky problems
like pronouns without antecedents, or conflicts in verb tenses,
and so on. Weaving short quotations into your own wording
solves many of the problems you face when quoting.
Sometimes, however, you still need to alter the author's original wording
to make it mash with your own, or to clarify something in its meaning.
In these situations you can use
ellipses, or brackets, to show
where you changed the original text. You can use ellipses,
or those three dots, to edit out unnecessary or
inconvenient language. In our citation for example,
the writer has edited out "mischief makers have every degree"
along with a dash because they make an already long sentence just a bit too
choppy.
When you edit quotes like this, just be sure
not to change their original meaning in the process. For example,
if the writer had quoted "despoiling gainseekers...
of every degree from Satan to supervisors...",
but if they had omitted "lumberman cattlemen and farmers"
this would really change viewers meaning. Muir was not just creating a scale of
nature despoilers from the devil to bosses,
he was also including more down to earth types,
like ranchers and farmers. So,
to omit this might suggest that he's only criticizing the rich,
not more sympathetic characters like farmers and ranchers.
To avoid changing yours intent, in this case, don't use the ellipses,
but keep the original phrasing. You can also use square brackets
to make minor changes to help the quotations better fit your own wording.
Here's an example: in the original quotation
"despoiling" isn't capitalized, but it has to be to start this sentence,
so the writer has indicated the change by putting the capital D
in brackets. Similarly, she chose to add
an "and" in brackets before "farmers"
and delete the "et cetera" that Muir ended with.
Let me conclude by emphasizing that introducing and blending quotations
are skills that take practice. It might seem presumptuous or
difficult at first to make these changes to an author's original words,
but you get the hang of it as long as you remember
these few basic principles: One, introduce your authors:
as simple as it sounds, we really need to know
who is speaking. And, the first time you introduce them, we need to know a bit
about who they were and why they were writing. Second, chop your quotations.
Edit long quotations down to the smaller bits
that you really need to prove your case. This not only focuses your reader's
attention
on YOUR argument, it also makes it easier for you to solve some of the problems
that raw quotations pose when you insert them into your own prose.
Three, blend quotes grammatically.
Don't hesitate to use paraphrasing,
ellipses, or brackets to help his smooth the connection between the original text
and your own writing.
And finally, number four, respect the evidence.
Don't significantly alter the original meaning.
You could cut repetitive or parenthetical words,
but be sure you're not changing the gist of what the author
intended to argue.