EMBEDDING QUOTES

QUOTE WITHIN A QUOTE

WHEN

If there is something said or requires quotation marks within the passage you are quoting, use single quotation marks for the inner quote.

EX: Attempting to bring peace between his friend and the elves, Bilbo Baggins passes to the eleven king the Arkenstone of Thrain, "'the Heart of the Mountain ... also the heart of Thorin. He values it above a river of gold. I give it to you. It will aid you in your bargaining.' Then Bilbo, not without a shudder, not without a glance of longing, handed the marvelous stone to the Bard, and he held it in is hand, as though dazed" (272-273).

Dropped in Quote

BAD

Embedded Quote

GOOD

A dropped in quote does not sound like the rest of the sentence. It sounds jarring and disrupts the sentence and the paragraph.

To add authority to your writing.

An embedded quote flows naturally into your own writing. When reading an embedded quote, it should sound like your own sentence.

Anytime to provide support or evidence from the text.

Example of a dropped in quote:

Beneatha is a character who believes in freedom of expression "People have to express themselves one way or another (Hansberry 48).

IF YOU WANT TO TRY MORE

SOPHISTICATED EMBEDDING -

TRY ADDING THE QUOTED MATERIAL

AS IF IT WERE PART OF YOUR OWN

SENTENCE.

Example of an Embedded Quote:

Beneath is a character who believes that "people need to express themselves one way or another" (Hansberry 48).

WHY DO WE EMBED QUOTES?

1. To support our arguments

2. To demonstrate familiarity with the

text.

3. To make our quotes fit our own voices

as writers.

Ex.: However, Lady Macbeth worries that Macbeth's nature is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness" and that he does not have "the illness that should attend holding power" (Shakespeare 564).

To add important information that helps the reader understand the central ideas of a text better.

Rule 1

Rule 2

SIGNAL PHRASES

Do not end a sentence then just start a quote. This is called "floating" your quotes or leaving them "naked" -

A quote should never appear in a sentence by itself because then there is no context for the quote.

A quote can be smoothly integrated into the sentence by using a signal phrase. A signal phrase can be set up in three ways:

A. A complete sentence followed by a colon and then a quote.

Ex.: The chairman was forceful in his plea for help: "Everyone must do his or her part to make this company profitable in the third quarter."

B. Writing an incomplete sentence, followed by a comma and

then the quote:

Ex.: In desperate need for help, the chairman forcefully pleaded, "Everyone must do his or her part to make this company profitable in the third quarter."

C. Writing a statement that ends in that or a signal phrase and

the the quote:

Ex.: In dire need for help, the chairman forcefully pleads that "Everyone must do his or her part to make this company profitable in the third quarter."

Practice

Rule 3

AUTHORS DON'T SAY

Remember, authors aren’t talking, so they don’t “say”;

they “write”, “argue”, “note”, “describe”, “posit”, “speculate”, "demonstrate," "display," etc.

* "Show" is fine too but remember to vary word choice

Practice these skills with this constructed response and all writing assignments you have, and your writing will grow stronger and stronger each time!

Never include quotes without your own analysis, arguments, or insight.

HOW

"Words are a lens to focus one's mind."

-Ayn Rand

What is embedding quotes?

Embedding the weaving in of someone else's words or ideas into your own writing to support your idea.

Quotes are used to SUPPORT an argument, not make an argument.

OMITTING WORDS

CHANGING WORDS

When it is necessary to leave out a few words from the original text, use and ellipses (...) indicating where the words were skipped.

Original quoted material: "People are always ruining things for you."

Omitting a word or words from the quote:

He claims that "people are ... ruining things" (Salinger 88).

Sometimes words need to be changed in order for the sentence to be grammatically correct. If you need to change words within a quote to make it fit grammatically, put [brackets] around the words you change.

Example:

Original quoted material: "Mama or Papa I could argue

things with"

Changing words to fit the sentence: She is just about to

apologize when she realizes that this nun is not "Mama or Papa [who she] could argue things with" (Alvarez 15).

EMBEDDING QUOTES