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Well, hello there English students! This is Ms. P speaking to you from inside of your
computer. I’m here to help you again with a new task. Now you know for your papers we’ve
been working on, I’m asking you to use quotations in order to prove your claims. You know that
simply having a claim is not enough; rather, you need to illustrate the claims that you
make about a book, or text, or any type of argument—you’re illustrating those claims
with support and proof from a text. So, once you’ve found quotes that you think are very
valuable, that illustrate what you’re trying to say, that are words said better than what
you could write, you need to correctly format those citations. What this means is that first
of all and most definitely, the direct quotes need to be copied exactly. You have to copy
them just as they’re written in your book or in your text. So don’t make any changes
because the quoting means that you’re copying exactly. Now I’d like you to take a look
at this website, I’ll scroll up here for a second. This is Purdue’s Online Writing
Lab; it’s a handy tool and just before we start talking about formatting quotations,
I’d like for you just to look to the left of your screen where there’s a whole bunch
of resources that you can use. Now I know that I’ve given you a hard copy of many
of these things; however, if you ever struggle or need another example, this is a great place
to look. The website is right at the top of the screen. Now let’s get back to how to
quote. If you have a short quote, you can take a look at this example and it illustrates
for you how to quote, how to cite, and what I’m most interested in beyond these two
things, how to quote and cite, is how to integrate the quote into your own sentence. Now, anybody
can look up a quote in a book, but it takes much more skill to be able to use the quote
to make you look like a more capable, sound writer. So take a look at this quote. It says,
“According to some, dreams express ‘profound aspects of personality’ (Foulkes 184), though
others disagree.” So you can see that this quote has become a part of the author’s
sentence; the citation, the author’s last name and page, the parenthetical, is right
after the quote, and it’s beautifully used to illustrate the author’s claims by using
a credible source. And you can see that same quote used at the end of the sentence in the
next example. “According to Foulkes's study, dreams may express ‘profound aspects of
personality’ (184).” Notice because the author of the quote is said in the actual
sentence, it prefaces the quote. The author’s last name is not used in the parenthetical.
And finally you can see another example at the bottom when the author says “Is it possible
that dreams may express ‘profound aspects of personality’ (Foulkes 184)?” Now the
author has taken that same idea and turned it even more into their own statement as it’s
functioning in the sentence. All of these are great, and that’s what I’d really
like for you to see, for you to do. Not only find a good quote, not only cite it properly,
but integrate it into your own sentences. Now of course this website offers many other
solutions if you have long quotes, if you have, if you’re taking out words. Notice,
when you’re taking out, you simply use the second example’s use of ellipses; if you
have a really long quote, it’s just three dots. However, if you have something that’s
unclear, the first quote uses brackets and that’s how you add information. You can
see then from Purdue’s OWL website that there are many helpful tools that I’m hoping
you’ll use to make your writing stronger and better. Thanks for tuning in, and I look
forward to seeing your work in action.