DIRECT QUOTATIONS
1. Clearly identify the source and connect the source to one and only one entry in the Works Cited section. One of the most effective ways to do this is to name the author in your own sentence:
Jim Robbins describes eating habaneras, the hottest of all chile peppers, as an apocalyptic experience: “The flavor of the peppers comes through first, and then, a few milliseconds later, the capsaicin roars to my brain with an unmitigated ferocity. They are savage, thermonuclear chilies that threaten to tear the top of my head off” (51).
2. You may also place the author’s name inside the parenthesis:
One effect of the Green Revolution is smaller gene pools: “The creation of new chili plots in Central America is having at least one negative effect -the demise of a diverse chile pepper gene pool” (Robbins 50).
Note the placement of the period in the above examples: when you quote briefly within your text, the period (or comma: see below) is placed after the parenthesis.
3. Place the parenthetical notation as close as possible to the material it documents:
Smith calls the new theory “hogwash” (27), but Jones considers it “a scientific miracle” (379).
*NOTE: computer generated sources will not include page numbers.
4. When your quote from a source includes a quote from someone else, use single quotation marks inside the double quotation marks:
Robbins continues his description of the effect of habaneras: “I pant in and out rapidly. No help. I recall- and now understand -a Woody Allen line upon tasting a hot curry. ‘Too hot,’ he said. ‘My teeth are melting” (53).
5. If your source directly quotes someone else, use the following method
to acknowledge both sources:
Woody Allen sums up many people’s response to hot curry: “Too hot. My teeth are melting” (qtd. in Robbins 53).
6. If you use two works by one author, mention the title each time you quote the author:
In Acid Rain and Dead Forests, Robert Racoon says, “Industry in Ohio must be made financially responsible for the death of forests in Nova Scotia” (432). Racoon also maintains that President Jones is not a true advocate of government control of acid rain: “He’s given a nod to environmental spending, but not encouraged the money needed to be legislated” (Acid Rain 433). From Racoon’s perspective, President Jones should “[walk] the walk rather than just talk the talk” (Nova Scotian Peril321).
Note that abbreviated titles are acceptable in notations.
7. Some sources do not list an author. You may introduce the borrowed materials with a general reference to the interview, magazine, report, etc., or with a reference to the title of the article. In the example below, “Crossroads” is the title of an unsigned article.
A regional magazine correctly identifies El Armine as “the modem city of Uz” (“Crossroads” 32).
8. If the source does not have page numbers, introduce the material as
indicated above but omit the page number reference.
A regional magazine correctly identifies El Armine as “the modern city Of Uz” (“Crossroads”).
9. The following example demonstrates how to punctuate a sentence
that is partly quotation and partly your own writing:
In a recent Newsweek article, Sharon Begley states that as a result of research into mass extinction, “there is evidence that a nuclear winter enveloped the earth 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs mysteriously died out” (106).
10. Do not change a direct quotation even if the grammar or information is incorrect. Instead, use [sic] immediately after the mistake:
Smythe says, “Fools are to [sic] willing to follow leaders” (17).
11. To cite one volume of a multivolume work, separate the volume number
and the page number(s) by a colon, and a space:
Jones is as right in calling the designated hitter “an aberration” (2: 378) as he is wrong about the “decline of starting pitching” (1: 98).
12. If a prose quotation is more than THREE typed lines, indent the quotation one inch. Do not justify the right margin. Do not use quotation marks. Skip two spaces after the concluding punctuation mark of thequotation and add the parenthetical notation.
In Fasting Females, Joy Skinny explains that anorexic women are unable to see themselves realistically:
Mary Nonflab was five feet six inches tall and weighed 83 pounds. When she was first hospitalized, she looked like a survivor of the Holocaust. Yet she refused more hospital food, eating less than 100 calories a day. When the hospital psychologist asked her to look at herself in the mirror, she pointed out all the places she thought she was fat – even though every rib and bone was pitifully evident. (451)
13. Indicate omissions with ellipses ( . . . ) and additions with brackets ( [ ] ). Compare the following passage with the one above. (Four dots include a required period.)
In her book Fasting Females, Joy Skinny explains that anorexic
women are unable to see themselves realistically: “Mary Nonflab [an anorexic] . . . weighed 83 pounds. . . [S]he looked like a survivor of the Holocaust . . . When the hospital psychologist asked her to look at herself in a mirror, she pointed out all the places she thought she was fat” (451).
Note the double spacing in ellipses.
14. If you cite an entire work, include the title and the author’s name in your text:
Franz Kafka’s The Trial is one example of manic modernism.
15. Cite verse plays and poems not by page numbers, but by divisions (act, scene, canto, book, part) and lines, using Arabic numerals. Use periods to separate numbers.
Hamlet expresses his anguished sense of betrayal when he declares, “(0 God! A beast that wants discourse of reason / Would have mourn’d longer) . . . , ” (1.2.156-57).
(1.2.156-57 indicates Act I, scene 2, pages 156-157)
Note use of diagonal to separate lines of verse.
Do not use diagonals for verse quotations of more than THREE lines. Indent one inch. Each line of the poem or play begins a new line of the quotation.
Sharon Olds’ “Rite of Passage” paints a disturbing picture of the developing male psyche:
As the guests arrive at my son’s party
they gather in the living room-
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. . . (1- 7)
