integrating quotations in an essay with mla documentation activity quizlet

Integrating Quotations in Research Writing: A Lesson for High School Students

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook . For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook .

Lesson Plan

Grade levels.

Students will write sentences that incorporate quotations to provide readers with the context of the original source and the connection to the essay’s main idea.

Total Estimated Class Time

Additional outcome.

Students will think critically about how their source material connects with the main idea of their essays and develop note cards that will help them start a draft.

Course Work or Assignment Underway

Students have completed an annotated bibliography and are preparing to write an essay supported by evidence from researched and cited sources.

Work Completed before Class

Students should have copies or printouts of their sources with some parts highlighted for potential use in their essays. Previous class sessions will have introduced students to searching for and evaluating sources and creating an MLA-style works-cited list for their annotated bibliographies.

Sequence of Classroom Activities

• Pass out copies of sample research paper, and ask students to highlight quotations.
• Ask students to notice how rarely a quotation stands alone as its own sentence. Often, the quotation occurs at the end of the sentence and sometimes at the beginning of the sentence. Ask students to use a different color highlighter to highlight the words in the sentence before or after the quotation. Then ask them where in the sentence quotations most often appear: the beginning, the middle, or the end.
• Introduce students to the 5W and 1H questions (also known as the journalistic questions): who? what? when? where? why? how? Note that while writers might not provide answers to all those questions in the introduction to the quotation, they might answer some of them to provide necessary context for the quotation. Ask students to label the information provided before the quotation with who, what, when, where, why, or how to show what type of context is being provided. (Below, I have provided some examples, taken from the MLA Handbook , 8th ed.)
• It can add credibility to the quotation because you show who originated it and what that person’s expertise is.
• It can add credibility to the quotation because by showing when it was written, you show that it is a timely source.
• It can help your readers understand the quotation better because you explain your source’s purpose (why it was written).
• Show you: Use the sample completed template in the Note-Taking Template to show how section 1 provides some context (who, what, when, where, why, how) and section 2 provides the paraphrase.
• Guide you : Display a blank template for the whole class to see. Ask a student to volunteer a quotation from any articles brought to class. Write that quotation in section 2 of the template. Ask that student the who, what, when, where, why, how of the quotations. As a class, come up with a way to incorporate the most important part of that context in section 1 of the template.
• Watch you : Divide students into small groups. Ask them to work with each other to produce one note-taking card for each student in the group. Circulate around the room to help with specific issues and to assess competence.
• Let you : Once student have achieved competence in a small group, you can assign the rest of the cards for independent practice.

5W and 1H Example

Alternative Approaches

A lesson on citing the material (section 3 of the template) may be done after or before this lesson. A lesson on explaining how the material relates to the student’s topic (section 4 of the template) may be done after or before this lesson. When students have completed all sections of the Note-Taking Template, they can print out the document and cut each into a separate “note card” to work on organizing and then drafting their essays. 

To see how you can adapt these activities for undergraduates, see the lesson plan for college students .

Lesson Materials

Copies of a sample research paper or of a body paragraph from a sample research paper

Highlighters of different colors

Note-Taking Template

Dorota 23 November 2023 AT 05:11 PM

A good lesson plan, thanks

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Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)

Integrated quotes: citing sources effectively in mla-style papers.

Jerz > Writing > Academic  > [ Argument |  Titles | Thesis Statements | Blueprinting  | Quoting | Citing |  MLA Format  ]

Rather than interrupting your ideas with long chunks from other sources, prefer integrated quotations — short, meaningful quotes that work organically with the grammar of your original sentence, invoking outside evidence with power and precision.  (See also: Academic Writing ;  Thesis Statements .)

Integrate Brief Quotations from Outside Sources

If you bring your essay to a screeching halt in order to introduce the full name and credentials of each author, you will bury whatever argument you were trying to make.

Spot the Wordy Formula

Efficient revision, three potential ways to apply borrowed material.

The following examples show three different ways that the same quoted material could be used to advance an original argument, by directly tying the material from one source to related material from another source.

 Integrate Borrowed Material Smoothly and Efficiently

Avoid clunky, high-schoolish documentation like the following:.

Don’t expend words writing about quotes and sources.  If you provide a lengthy introduction such as “In the book  My Big Boring Academic Study , by Professor H. Pompous Windbag III, it says” or “the following quote by a government study shows that…” you are wasting words that would be better spent developing your ideas.

Using about the same space as the original, see how MLA style helps an author devote more words to developing the idea more fully. We shall continue to revise the above example:

If your college instructor wants you to cite every fact or opinion you find in an outside source, how do you make room for your own opinion?

• Paraphrase. You can introduce studies that agree with you (Smith 123; Jones and Chin 123) and those that disagree with you (Mohan and Corbett 200) without interrupting your own argument. (See what I did there?)
• Quote Selectively . If you must use the original author’s language,  work a few words from the outside source into a sentence you wrote yourself . (If you can’t supply at least as many words of your own analysis of and rebuttal to the quoted passage, then you are probably padding.)
• Avoid Summary . Summarizing someone else’s ideas is one of the easiest ways to churn out words; while students often turn to summary when they want to boost their word count, paragraphs that merely summarize are not as intellectually engaging, and therefore not worth as many points, as paragraphs that analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. See “ Writing that Demonstrates Thinking Ability .”)

While MLA Style generally expects authors to save details for the Works Cited pages, there’s nothing wrong with introducing the work more fully — if you have a good reason to do so.

For example, in a paper on the history of the typewriter, you might want to refer to the typist who appears in T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land.” If so, you should identify the source as a poem, so that reader won’t mistake the reference for an academic article. In a similar way, if your paper mainly cites poets, you might need to identify somebody else as an editor or literary critic. Or, perhaps you feel that a particular author’s nationality, ethnicity, gender, age, or education level may affect the relevance of a particular point raised by the author.

Don’t give the full, high-schoolish introduction without a good reason — the presence of irrelevant details is a signal to your reader that you don’t know what you want to say.

Integrated Quotes Facilitate Smarter Writing

How good is a composer who only lets one instrument play at a time? Would you like a pizza that was served to you first as a dry round crust, then a bowl of tomato sauce, then a hunk of cheese?

Avoid a rigid, simplistic organizational structure focused only on summarizing or reflecting on the sources you have found. It’s not possible to think about an issue in a complex way if you examine only one source per paragraph.

Consider instead the following, more intellectually complex use of sources:

03 Oct 2007 — extracted and expanded from a handout that focused on finding good sources . 04 Nov 2011 — reorganization and updates 20 Dec 2016 — further reorganization and updates 06 Dec 2017 — expanded Kanye example

12 thoughts on “ Integrated Quotes: Citing Sources Effectively in MLA-Style Papers ”

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great posting thanks a lot !!

still confused on how to insert things when needed and basically using it in general paper is due wednesday rough draft

Leslie, it’s great that your instructor is giving you the chance to revise. He or she is doing twice or three times the work it would take just to give you a single grade, and you will learn a lot if you take full advantage of the opportunity.

You are bang on correct!

I’m looking at the author’s footnote, and it says “…STATISTICS”.

So I Google the article in the NYT by it’s title: “Belt-Loosening in the Work Force” (NYT 2 Mar 2003)

and the article’s author writes:

______________________________________

The economists — Shin-Yi Chou, Henry Saffer and Michael Grossman — presented their findings in a working paper called ” An Economic Analysis of Obesity ” for the National Bureau of Economic Research . In the paper, the economists note that… ______________________________________

So I Google An Economic Analysis of Obesity and find it’s REALLY:

An Economic Analysis of Adult Obesity: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Shin-Yi Chou, Michael Grossman and Henry Saffer NBER Working Paper No. 9247 October 2002 JEL No. I12, I18

The mis-cited, mis-cited :) statement is on page 28:

“Without trend terms, the increase in the per capita number of restaurants makes the largest contribution to trends in weight outcomes, accounting for 69 percent of the growth in BMI and 68 percent of the rise in the percentage obese.” (Chou 28)

So, first, kudos to you!!! – for even taking the time to fact-check the quote… If it wasn’t for you, I’d have been wrong, and wronger :)

Second, now that I have the correct citation information, do I

a) cite Banzhaf only, and b) with a [sic]?

The reason I ask is… I learned from you, elsewhere on your site, that I should not quote from an “outside source”… If I quote Chou’s paper, I’m thinking that is considered an “outside source”?

Wow. You blow my doors off with your attention to detail. Excellent, sir. Pure excellence.

Your own detective work was pretty good, too! Most professional researchers will put this level of scrutiny into every source they plan to use in their papers, which is why it’s worth the effort for students to find and use peer-reviewed academic sources, rather than random web pages.

If you want to use that statistic, I wouldn’t cite Banzhaf at all — which looked like a random website, not a scholarly publication. Just cite the MBER paper directly.

I just wanted to catch up and say thanks for your help.

I was (and still am) under a ton of deadlines, so I wasn’t able to stop back here right away…

FYI: The Banzhaf essay in question is in a textbook called: “They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing : With Readings. By Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0393931747

The final was due within hours of my last post, so I had to make a corporate decision as to what(whom) I should cite…I picked Banzhaf. Citing him was easier than going with the MBER paper :)

I received a solid “B”. I kinda thought I was getting an A (hah! giggle…) When I read my professor’s critiques of my paper, however, she was deadly accurate as to what I needed to improve upon. It certainly was not an A paper, after all. So, I’ve got new goals for paper #2 :)

She made this very neat-o checklist of what constitutes A level work, B level work, C level work, etc… I’ll ask her permission to scan in and send to you…might be something cool to pass along.

An interesting anecdote: Discovering the mis-cited, mis-cited information in the Banzhaf essay/NYT article led me to my thesis topic for paper #2.

(I’m still trying to work out how I’m going to explain somewhere in that paper that ya’ got ta’ put da’ lime in de’ coconut… but it’ll come to me…)

Keep up the awesome work on helping all of us of out here in “the intertoobs” land… we, the unwashed masses of inept paper writers :) You rock!

How delightful to hear your update! If you are taking your learning this seriously, I don’t see how you can go wrong.

I love your website! I’m in a college English Comp class and am working on a thesis paper.

(MLA format)

I’m quoting an author named John Banzhaf and have a question about how to cite the quote.

My author’s essay is actually a transcript of his Congressional testimony. He uses footnotes to provide references to validate his statements.

In one of his footnotes, he quotes an excerpt from an article in the New York Times.

I’ve quoted that same NYT excerpt.

How would I format the quote citation?

Do I cite the quote as coming from the author’s body of work, and not worry about it’s original source?

I’m thinking it should be: (I’ve included my own lead-in, for your to see what I’m trying to quote)

…it is one of these footnotes that refers us to a study done by the National Bureau of Economic Statistics and subsequently reported in the New York Times that the “growth of fast-food accounted for 68 percent of the rise in American obesity”. (Banzhaf 166)

I asked my professor, and she wasn’t sure. MLA’s website doesn’t provide specific formatting help (buy the book :) and Purdue doesn’t mention a quote within a quote…

Thank you for any help!!! You are an ENORMOUS help to us literary n00bs :)

You’re playing the telephone game — I am reading what you say Banzhaf said the New York Times said something called the “National Bureau of Economic Statistics” said.

I just did a Google search, and I found a US Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Bureau of Economic Research. I don’t know anything about economics, so I don’t know whether perhaps the same organization had a recent name change, but it looks to me like Google references to NBES are actually talking about the NBER instead. At any rate, that’s enough of a warning sign that I’d say the problem is not how to cite Banzhaf, but rather how to trace the 68% statistic directly to its source. (I’d start by looking for the NYT article that Banzhaf mentions.)

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Integrating Quotations in MLA Style

Integrating Quotations (MLA)

A reader may be able to make sense of a quotation dropped into a piece of writing, but introducing or integrating quotations into the flow of your sentence is the way to use them most effectively—to be sure that your reader knows what you mean. You have three options: 

• Introduce the quotation with a statement that puts it in context. A colon follows a formal statement or independent clause.
• Lynn Quitman Troyka warns us of the particular challenges of using quotations in research papers: “The greatest risk you take when you use quotations is that you will end up with choppy, incoherent sentences” (184). 
• Use a signal phrase followed by a comma or a signal verb followed by that to announce a quotation.
• According to Lynn Quitman Troyka, “. . ..”
• The narrator suggests that “. . ..”
• As Jake Barnes says, “. . . . . ..”
• Frye rejects this notion when he argues, “. . ..”
• Integrate the quotation fully into your sentence. The quotation and your words must add up to a complete sentence.
• We know the boy has learned a painful lesson when he says that his eyes “burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 481). 
• Leaders are inspirational; they are concerned with “providing meaning or purpose in work for employees and creating meaning in the product for customers” (Ivancevich, Lorenzi, and Skinner 341).  
• Researchers found that firms with a strong corporate culture “based on a foundation of shared values” outperformed the other firms by a large margin (Quigley 42).

Quotations within Quotations:

Use single quotation marks to enclose a quotation within a quotation.

• Miller states, “Religions are examples of ‘noble lies’ aimed at uplifting human stature” (18).

Adding Material within Quotations:

Use square brackets to enclose material that you add to or change within a quotation to allow it to fit grammatically into a sentence. 

• Balko (2015) argues, “If they [policymakers] want to fight obesity, they’ll halt the creeping 

socialization of medicine” (p. 142).

• “Today, the [saturated fat] warnings remain a cornerstone of the government’s dietary guidelines,” O’Connor (2016) states, “though in recent years the American Heart Association has also begun to warn that too much added sugar may increase cardiovascular disease risk” (p.92). 

Block Quotations:

Indent longer quotations (more than four lines) ten spaces from the margin. Notice that quotation marks are not used to enclose material that is set off from the text and that the parenthetical reference is placed after the punctuation following the quotation. 

A socially responsible vision can make an organization more attractive to customers, potential employees, and investors.  As consultant Robert Rosen puts it,  

The best companies are values-based and performance-driven.  Their community involvement supports the mission of the business.  Modern employees want to work for companies who make a difference, their customers want to do business with them because they have solid reputations as good corporate citizens, and shareholders enjoy the value such companies represent over the long term. (9)

Shortening Quotations:

Use an ellipsis of three dots to shorten longer quotations by removing non-essential words and ideas from the middle of the quote.  The quotation must fit grammatically into the sentence even with the ellipsis.   It must also retain enough of the quotation so that it still makes sense in your essay and you do not distort its meaning.   You do not need to provide ellipses at the beginning or the end of the quoted material. 

Foer states, “My grandmother survived World War II barefoot, scavenging Eastern Europe for other people’s inedibles . . . So she never cared if I colored outside the lines, as long as I cut coupons along the dashes” (159). 

Complete quote: “My grandmother survived World War II barefoot, scavenging Eastern Europe for other people’s inedibles: rotting potatoes, discarded scraps of meat, skins and the bits that clung to bones and pits. So she never cared if I colored outside the lines, as long as I cut coupons along the dashes.” 

Quick tip about citing sources in MLA style

What’s a thesis, sample mla essays.

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MLA Formatting Quotations

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When you directly quote the works of others in your paper, you will format quotations differently depending on their length. Below are some basic guidelines for incorporating quotations into your paper. Please note that all pages in MLA should be double-spaced .

Short quotations

To indicate short quotations (four typed lines or fewer of prose or three lines of verse) in your text, enclose the quotation within double quotation marks. Provide the author and specific page number (in the case of verse, provide line numbers) in the in-text citation, and include a complete reference on the Works Cited page. Punctuation marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons should appear after the parenthetical citation.

Question marks and exclamation points should appear within the quotation marks if they are a part of the quoted passage, but after the parenthetical citation if they are a part of your text.

For example, when quoting short passages of prose, use the following examples:

When using short (fewer than three lines of verse) quotations from poetry, mark breaks in verse with a slash, ( / ), at the end of each line of verse (a space should precede and follow the slash). If a stanza break occurs during the quotation, use a double slash ( // ).

Long quotations

For quotations that are more than four lines of prose or three lines of verse, place quotations in a free-standing block of text and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, with the entire quote indented 1/2   inch  from the left margin while maintaining double-spacing. Your parenthetical citation should come  after the closing punctuation mark . When quoting verse, maintain original line breaks. (You should maintain double-spacing throughout your essay.)

For example, when citing more than four lines of prose, use the following examples :

Nelly Dean treats Heathcliff poorly and dehumanizes him throughout her narration: They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room, and I had no more sense, so, I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it would be gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr. Earnshaw's door, and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house. (Bronte 78)

When citing long sections of poetry (four lines of verse or more), keep formatting as close to the original as possible.

In his poem "My Papa's Waltz," Theodore Roethke explores his childhood with his father:

The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We Romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. (qtd. in Shrodes, Finestone, Shugrue 202)

When citing two or more paragraphs, use block quotation format, even if the passage from the paragraphs is less than four lines. If you cite more than one paragraph, the first line of the second paragraph should be indented an extra 1/4 inch to denote a new paragraph:

In "American Origins of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Movement," David Russell argues,

Writing has been an issue in American secondary and higher education since papers and examinations came into wide use in the 1870s, eventually driving out formal recitation and oral examination. . . .

From its birth in the late nineteenth century, progressive education has wrestled with the conflict within industrial society between pressure to increase specialization of knowledge and of professional work (upholding disciplinary standards) and pressure to integrate more fully an ever-widening number of citizens into intellectually meaningful activity within mass society (promoting social equity). . . . (3)

Adding or omitting words in quotations

If you add a word or words in a quotation, you should put brackets around the words to indicate that they are not part of the original text:

If you omit a word or words from a quotation, you should indicate the deleted word or words by using ellipses, which are three periods ( . . . ) preceded and followed by a space. For example:

Please note that brackets are not needed around ellipses unless they would add clarity.

When omitting words from poetry quotations, use a standard three-period ellipses; however, when omitting one or more full lines of poetry, space several periods to about the length of a complete line in the poem:

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11.3: Smoothly Integrating Quotations

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SMOOTHLY INTEGRATE QUOTATIONS?

When you are incorporating the direct language of others into your own writing, you want that integration to be fluid and seamless. You don’t want your reader to get lost or confused as you transition from your voice and ideas to another person’s. You want to use quotations in a way that clarify, support, and strengthen your writing.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

• Readers can better understand the relevance of smoothly integrated quotations.
• Readers can clearly see the connection between an integrated quotation and what it is trying to prove or illustrate.
• Readers can be better convinced by evidence presented in smoothly integrated quotations.
• Readers don’t experience being lost or frustrated by quotations that appear unrelated, inappropriate, or off topic.

HOW DO I SMOOTHLY INTEGRATE QUOTATIONS?

A dropped quote is a quote from someone else that is placed in your writing but it stands alone and is not introduced and not integrated into a sentence of your own. A dropped quote interrupts the flow of your writing, as the reader must jump abruptly from your words to someone else’s and back again. Also, if you’re not integrating direct quotations into your own writing, you’re probably not giving your reader the context they need to understand the quote.

Think of a quote as a helium balloon that needs an anchor to hold it down in your essay:

II. Connect quotes to phrases that introduce them.

Here are a few approaches for creating introductory phrases for quotes:

1) Identify the speaker and context of the quote

Example: Dee protests to her mother that her sister does not know the true value of the quilts, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use” (Walker 490). 2) Lead in with your own idea

Example: Miss Emily Grierson’s house is a reflection of her being out of sync with the times: “But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 459).

3) Formulas

• In (title of source), (author) writes/ argues/ explains/ describes, "quote" (#).

Example: In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , Maya Angelou writes, "In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really absolutely know what whites looked like" (20).

• According to (author) in (title), "quote" (#).

To avoid monotony, try to vary your formulas. The following models suggest a range of possibilities: In the words of researcher Herbert Terrace, “…” Jason Applegate, Smith’s trainer, points out, “…” “…,” claims linguist Noam Chomsky. Psychologist H.S. Terrace offers an odd argument for this view, “…”

Also, by choosing an appropriate verb , you can make your stance clear and the description more alive and engaging:

Practice: Integrating Quotes using introductory Phrases

For each quote below, create a sentence that smoothly integrates the quote. Try a few different methods: Method #1: Identify the speaker and context of the quote: Quote : "On this island, you walk too far and people speak a different language. Their own words reveal who belongs on what side" Background information : From The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat, the speaker is Senora Valencia, page 304. Senora Valencia is referring to the island of Hispanola, which the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic share. She is speaking during the times that the dictator Trujillo had many Haitians murdered in and exiled from the Dominican Republic. Quote integrated into a sentence :

Method #2: Lead in with your own idea: Quote : "They did not have the tanates to go up north and break through the wall of electric fences and enter the land of plenty, the U.S. of A., a land so rich that what garbage they throw away in one day could feed entire pueblos." Background information : From Macho! By Victor Villasenor, page 31. The book tells the story of a young man named Roberto from Michoacán who risks himself to go north to California to work as an illegal alien picking fruit in California. Quote integrated into a sentence :

Method #3: Formula (try using a good and dynamic verb): Quote : "Racial targeting and abuse by police is costly. U.S. taxpayers have paid tens of millions of dollars in police brutality lawsuits. Between 1992 and 1993, Los Angeles county alone paid more than $30 million to citizens victimized by police brutality." Background information : From The Color of Crime by Katheryn K. Russell, page 45 who writes about the ways in which African-Americans are misrepresented by the media and mistreated within the criminal system. Quote integrated into a sentence :

Potential answers for INTEGRATING QUOTES USING INTRODUCTORY PHRASES EXERCISE

Method #1: Identify the speaker and context of the quote:

Senora Valencia describes the severe division that exists in her homeland of Hispanola due to Trujillo’s bloody dictatorship, "On this island, you walk too far and people speak a different language. Their own words reveal who belongs on what side” (Danticat 304).

Method #2: Lead in with your own idea:

Villasenor captures the decadence of the United States through the hungry eyes of Roberto, a young boy who risks going north to work illegally, "They did not have the tanates to go up north and break through the wall of electric fences and enter the land of plenty, the U.S. of A., a land so rich that what garbage they throw away in one day could feed entire pueblos” (31).

Method #3: Formula (try using a good and dynamic verb):

In The Color of Crime , Katheryn K. Russell exposes: "Racial targeting and abuse by police is costly. U.S. taxpayers have paid tens of millions of dollars in police brutality lawsuits. Between 1992 and 1993, Los Angeles county alone paid more than $30 million to citizens victimized by police brutality” (45).

III. Follow quotes with an explanation of their significance.

After the quote, provide your own reasoning and analysis explaining the significance and relevance of the quote.

Here are a few approaches to ensure the inclusion of analysis and significance for the quotes you select:

APPROACH 1: SAY, MEAN, MATTER?

“Say, Mean, Matter” is a 3-step approach to select good quotes, understand them, and then analyze them.

Quote integration

Quote integration is arguably one of the most difficult parts of essay writing; however, it does not need to be. Here are some tips to make quote integration easier. 

First things first, the most basic way to integrate quotes into any piece of writing is with the following format

Signal phrase + Quote + Citations

• Signal phrase: A short phrase or verb that indicates to the reader that you are going to introduce a quote.
• Quote: Short quotes are less than four lines and can be integrated into the actual body of your essay. Quotes over four lines typically should be formatted as block quotes (based on the citation style you are using).
• Citations in MLA 8th edition
• Citations in APA 7 th
• Citations in Chicago
• Citations in AMA  

The following example follows the pattern of signal phrase , quote, and citation (in MLA style)

• Exercise has many benefits for not only an individual’s present health but in the long term as well : “exercise is known to reduce a number of inflammatory markers…which are linked to a number of diseases” (Walton 1).

Another way to introduce a quote into a source is to use the author’s name as your signal phrase with a subsequent verb that is used to introduce the quote. For citation styles such as MLA or APA, when you start with the author’s name to introduce the source, the end of text citation only needs to have the page number/year.

• Alice Walton writes that “exercise is one of the best-illustrated things we can do for our hearts, and this includes markers like blood pressure and cholesterol, in addition to the physical structure of the heart itself, and blood vessel function” (3).

Verbs to use to signal the beginning of a quotation

• Demonstrates
• Illustrates

Other methods to integrate a quote into a sentence

Introduce a quotation and have subsequent sentences that expand on the relevance.

• This is the best way to integrate quotes into a paper. It is crucial that anytime you use from an outside source, you  explain the relevance of the quote to the rest of your paper .
• Dr. Carrie Fisher details some of the most pressing ethical concerns that arise in the field of public health: “the primary ethical concern of public health officials is creating a balance between the common good and the right of the individual, when we undermine autonomy we create distrust among the general public, destabilizing the governing principles of public health” (2). Dr. Fisher’s concerns surrounding the field of public health echoes the main dilemma that has plagued the field since its conception. Her argument that undermining autonomy betrays public trust demonstrates that as public health officials it is crucial to understand that if individual autonomy is restricted, it can only be in the direst of circumstances.

Make the quotation part of a complete sentence

• Current research indicates that exercise is beneficial for long-term health as it “can help control blood lipid abnormalities, diabetes, and obesity” (Fletcher et al., 1996).

Utilize brackets and ellipses to help improve clarity of a sentence

Brackets are used to add words to improve understanding. Ellipses are used to remove words to shorten a phrase.

• According to physical therapist Dr. Smith, developing a consistent and sustainable workout foundation is the key to long term success: “[Workout programs] must be enjoyable, you cannot expect an individual to adhere to a regimen where they dread each day they must go. I recommend that individuals find a workout routine that both challenges them but also excites them, where it does not feel like a chore to workout” (2).

Here is an example sentence that utilizes all of these tactics to integrate a quote into a sentence

• In the field of medicine, exercise recommendations remain hotly contested, “although a consensus is growing on the importance of the relation between physical activity and health and wellness, the specific dose of physical activity necessary for good health remains unclear… some of the inconsistency among physical activity recommendations is due simply to the inherent uncertainties of biomedical science” (Blair 2). It is crucial that the differing ideologies be addressed as they have the potential to impact the dissemination of information to the general public. The average American already struggles to meet the weekly exercise recommendations and conflicting information regarding these recommendations will only further exacerbate the issue.

Paraphrasing

• You may be thinking “isn’t this supposed to be about integrating quotes into an essay?” You are correct; however, there are many times (and citation styles) where it is best to paraphrase a source instead of integrating a whole quote into the paper. Quote integration is crucial when the exact wording of the primary source is critical to the point being made, whereas paraphrasing is sufficient when restating the general idea is all that is required. 
• Despite continual recommendations put forth by the CDC regarding exercise and physical activity “80% of the population is not meeting the guidelines. Each year in the US, an estimated 10% of premature deaths and $117 billion in healthcare costs are associated with inadequate physical activity” (Smith, 2017).

Paraphrased 

• The CDC estimates that 80% of the United States population is not adhering to the guidelines regarding weekly physical activity recommendations (Smith 3). Inactive adults cost the U.S health care system an estimated $117 billion per year; estimates suggest 10% of premature deaths are due to inactivity (Smith, 2017).

*Remember that when paraphrasing a quote from a source an in-text citation is still included.

Common mistakes to avoid

Drop quotes.

This is when you “drop” a quote into your essay without any form of introduction; the most common mistake is making the quote its own sentence.

This is what you don’t want to do

• There are numerous health benefits to working out. “Adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. Some physical activity is better than none. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity gain some health benefits” (CDC).

A better way to approach this is

• There are numerous health benefits to working. According to the CDC, “adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. Some physical activity is better than none. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity gain some health benefits” (2019).

Not using brackets

Using brackets when integrating a quote actually helps improve clarity while writing. Otherwise, if you integrate a quote directly without adjusting it through the use of brackets, the sentence can be confusing to readers.

• Dr. Smith, talks to patients candidly about the importance of physical activity while they are young, “it is important that you start working out when you are younger as it helps you build up bone density, which can decrease the risk of developing arthritis as you get older” (Horton 3).
• Dr. Smith talks to patients candidly about the importance of physical activity while they are young: “it is important that [individuals] start working out when [they] are younger as it helps [them] build up bone density, which can decrease the risk of developing arthritis as they get older” (Horton 3).

Chap. 15: Quoting and Paraphrasing/Summary Skills

Integrating quotations into your writing, what are direct quotes.

Direct quotes are portions of a text taken word for word and placed inside of a work. Readers know when an author is using a direct quote because it is denoted by the use of quotation marks and

The Basics of Directly Quoting

• All quoted material should be enclosed in quotations marks to set it off from the rest of the text. The exception to this is block quotes (see final video on this page), which require different formatting.
• Quoted material should be an accurate word-for-word reproduction from the author’s original text. You cannot alter any wording or any spelling. If you must do so, you must use a bracket or an ellipsis (see section below).
• A clear signal phrase/attribution tag should precede each quotation.
• A parenthetical citation normally follows a quotation.
• An explanation of why the quoted material is important should follow the quote.

The Hard Part of of Directly Quoting: Integrating Quotes into Your Writing

Sample Signal Phrases:

Dr. Jane Doe  declares her belief in UFOs, which she says are “phenomena scientists cannot explain” (105).

Dr. Jane Doe argues  that . . .

Dr. Jane Doe believes  that . . .

The work of Dr. Jane Doe shows  that . . .

As Dr. Jane Doe indicates . . .

As Dr. Jane Doe implies . . .

As Dr. Jane Doe suggests . . .

Dr. Jane Doe thinks  that . . .

Dr. Jane Doe addresses . . .

• Include necessary information so that your reader can figure out which source you used. In the cases above (in the box), the writer uses the author’s name in the sentence . An in-text citation follows the quote, indicating the page number on which the quote appeared. In this case, the quote appeared on page 105.
• Explain why the material you have just quoted is interesting or important. Do not, however, merely restate what is said in the quote. You, as the author of your essay, should explain the significance of each quotation to your reader. This goes far beyond simply including a signal phrase. Explaining the significance means indicating how the quoted material supports the point you are making in that paragraph.

Remember: just because you add a quote does not mean that you have made your point. Quotes never speak for themselves. How and why does that quoted material make the point          you think it does?

Here are some helpful phrases for explaining quoted materials. Take a look at the sentences that follow the quoted material in bold:

Dr. Jane Doe believes that humans “must attempt to befriend our extraterrestrial neighbors” (110).  What Dr. Does’s point demonstrates is that . . .

Dr. Jane Doe believes that humans “must attempt to befriend our extraterrestrial neighbors” (110).  Here, Dr. Doe  is not simply stating _______, she is also demonstrating __________.

Dr. Jane Doe believes that humans “must attempt to befriend our extraterrestrial neighbors” (110). This is an example of _____ because _______.

Dr. Jane Doe believes that humans “must attempt to befriend our extraterrestrial neighbors” (110). This statement clearly shows ______ because _______.

Brackets and Ellipses

Sometimes, in order to smoothly integrate quoted material into your paper, you may need to remove a word or add a word to make the quote make sense. If you make any change to quoted material, it must be formatted correctly using an ellipsis or brackets

Use brackets [these are brackets] to change a word. In the example below, the verb “approach” has been added to the quote by the student writer:

At the beginning of David Lodge’s novel  Changing Places,  “two professors of English Literature [approach] each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour” (7).

Use an ellipsis (this is an ellipsis . . . )  to indicate omissions. 

The  MLA Handbook  explains that you should “[i]dentify an omission within a sentence by using three periods with a space before each and a space after the last . . .” (81). 

Examples taken from the MLA Handbook .

When in doubt, strive to allow your voice – not a quote from a source –  to begin each paragraph, precede each quote, follow each quote, and end each paragraph. Quotes that are integrated well into a paper allow you to control the paper. That is what a reader wants to see: your ideas and the way that you engage sources to shape and discuss your ideas.

The Quote Sandwich

In high school, you may have had an instructor who used the following metaphor of a sandwich to describe how to integrate a quotation into your writing.

The top slice of bread represents the signal phrase that introduces the quote. The middle part of the sandwich is the quoted material. The bottom slice of bread is your explanation of the quote.

Watch the video below about The Quote Sandwich metaphor:

What about long quotes? How do you format them?

First, it should be noted that most short essays, those under 5 pages, should likely NOT contain long quotations. This is because short essays are typically not research papers. If you do want to include a long quote—over 4 lines of prose or 3 lines of poetry—use block quotations . Take a look at this video to see how to format long quotes according to MLA 8 formatting:

[1]  Attributions

This chapter contains material from “About Writing: A Guide” by Robin Jeffrey, OpenOregon Educational Resources, Higher Education Coordination Commission: Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development is licensed under CC BY 4.0

It also contains an excerpt from David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University.”

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