Quotation Guidelines
When analyzing a text or texts, it is important to support your ideas by incorporating in a grammatically and stylistically appropriate manner carefully selected textual quotations.
A few tried-and-true suggestions for stylish quoting:
1. Take only what you actually need—anything more amounts to useless filler
2. Fit the quoted material into your own sentences in a way that sounds seamless when read aloud
3. Words are words, sentences are sentences—quoted material must follow basic rules of syntax
4. Quotations should not stand alone. Be sure to provide a signal phrase for each quotation (who is speaking to whom on what occasion). The amount of information necessary will vary, depending on how much has already been made clear; generally, you will need at least to tell your readers who is speaking.
Compare the following:
a. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. “What then should I do, Utanapishtim, whither should I go, / Now that the Bereaver has seized my flesh? / Death lurks in my bedchamber, / And wherever I turn, there is death!”
In this instance, the quotation is both overly long (rule 1) and is “standing alone” (rule 4).
b. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure, “Death lurks in my bedchamber.”
Here, the quoted independent clause is connected with only a comma to the preceding independent clause, resulting in a comma-splice (rule 3). Also, no signal phrase is present (rule 4).
c. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. “Death lurks in my bedchamber.”
The quotation is not overly long, nor is it creating a comma splice—but, unfortunately, it is again “standing alone” (rule 4).
d. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. He sees death lurking in his bedchamber and everywhere he turns.
Here, the writer has attempted to paraphrase the textual material, but the result is too close to the original—the result is a form of plagiarism.
e. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. His mortality becomes the defining characteristic of every waking moment. “Wherever I turn," he exclaims to the immortal Utanapishtim, "there is death.”
This would be just fine. All rules here are followed.
f. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. “Death lurks in my bedchamber, / And wherever I turn,” he exclaims to Utanapishtim after he finally awakes.
Again, this would be fine. All rules here are followed.
g. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. Everywhere he looks, he mournfully complains to Utanapishtim, “there is death.”
This too is just fine. In this case, the author has decided that the single three-word phrase (“there is death”) captures the idea fully enough (see rule 1) and thus leaves everything else out. Note too that if read aloud, you would have difficulty “hearing” the quotation—a good example of rule 2.
h. Gilgamesh is devastated by his failure. His proclamation upon waking captures perfectly his despondence: “Death lurks in my bedchamber, / And everywhere I turn.”
This too is fine. The use of the colon indicates that what comes next somehow exemplifies or explains what came before, and thus the quoted material is not standing alone (rule 4)—and note that by including “his proclamation upon waking,” the author manages to provide necessary context, thereby (again) following rule 4 (we know who speaks the quoted material and on what occasion)