Premise

Who Really Cares?

That is actually a good question. All too often, students default to the simplest ways of integrating quotes into their writing—if they do at all. In some cases (and genres) it might even be acceptable if not expected to do this. But this is why it’s so important to try to identify when, where, why, and how, you can integrate quotes into your work when and where it’s appropriate—and more effective—to do so!

Examples

Primary Examples

Let us dive in with three examples of increasing complexity—and effectiveness:

Least Effective: “Sleep affects our mood and behavior, so the better you sleep, the better you will feel in the short and long term” (para. 8).

Somewhat Effective: The author says that “Sleep affects our mood and behavior, so the better you sleep, the better you will feel in the short and long term” (para. 8).

Much More Effective: The author surprisingly concludes that “Sleep affects our mood and behavior, so the better you sleep, the better you will feel in the short and long term” (para. 8).

Take a moment to think about why these examples are categorized as “least”, “somewhat”, and “much more” effective. Clearly there is more detail in each of these examples, but what difference does this further context make, and how can it lead to overall more successful writing?

In the “Least Effective” example, we are just given the quote with zero context or commentary. This lack of detail can be confusing—or just jarring and uninteresting for readers. Why are we looking at this detail now? How does it connect to everything else that you are saying?

In the “Somewhat Effective” example, we at least shift to identifying that it is the author’s words whom we are going to look at directly as part of our further analysis. It helps us to shift into knowing that we are about to get some quoted evidence to help identify our point. But at the same time, it is only “Somewhat Effective” because there is a clear opportunity (in this case) to add some commentary within introducing the quoted material. I.e. saying that the author is “saying” something over and over again gets repetitive very quickly throughout a paper!

In the “Much More Effective” example, we finally get this full, illustrative context. The fact we are told that the author “simply concludes” is some very nice, concise, and yet also specific further commentary that prompts us (as readers) to know what to expect to get out of reading the quote to come. Of course, further analysis will (and should) follow this quote, but we have been set up very nicely to have an expectation foreshadowing what your analysis will be by having identified how the author made this claim (as well, to some extent, why).

More Complex Situations

Sometimes it can be just as effective to integrate quotes within full sentences. I.e., you don’t always need to point out that “the author shows us this idea by arguing that…” It might be clear enough to just incorporate quoted evidence—especially if there’s no particular author to identify (or persuasive argumentative intention on their part to highlight). For example:

As they point out, such overexertion can lead to burnout, which “is ignored in favor of getting better results or completing a task in order to receive validation or some sort of reward” (para. 2).

This incorporation of quotation reads just fine in this case. Most importantly, if you read the sentence out loud, it comes across like a clear sentence (i.e. grammatically correct, and therefore, flowing).

When to “Embed” Quotes Within Sentences

This is a particularly interesting and useful technique—and one that many students are already relatively familiar with. Basically, when you want to include a brief piece of information within a quote, it can be a really useful technique to simply embed the example within the text. For example:

The author uses startling diction to prove their point by claiming that he “never freakin’ cared” about his wife (James 5).

As you can see here, we are embedding a phrase while paraphrasing the rest of text around those keywords. The idea here is to just show us some emphasis of your analytical claims via a specific example that illustrates your point.

How to Avoid Too-Long Quote-Sentences

Ironically, sometimes students run into a problem when building upon what we have identified above. I.e., As they continue to specify their analysis around quotes (and or incorporate longer, more revealing and comprehensive quotes), they simply try to embed way too much within one quote-analysis sentence.

This “problem” can actually be addressed easily enough with just a little bit of editing. Take the following example of a “Too-Long Quote-Sentence”:

The author, who is clearly not of a mindset to agree with this aforementioned viewpoint, is quick to denounce such a perspective, saying that “I will not, never have, and never will, engage with these types of people. They are rude, inconsiderate, and worst of all: ignorant” (Lewis 76), which shows us exactly what he really thinks: that there are some people who are not worth his time in dealing with–even if he does still seek to improve his own standing, as well as that of his peers.

This could arguably be considered more than one sentence since the quoted material actually contains two sentences, but it is written as if the whole thing is a singular, sentence-driven idea. As you probably agree, there’s just way too much detail here to be even two sentences–let alone one.

A good technique, therefore, to edit this quote-sentence is to follow the rule of “one sentence, one idea”. Or, another strategy is to think of only including “two motives” per sentence. In this latter technique, you would only want to ever include two of the following three elements within one sentence: 1) an initial claim/context, 2) the quoted evidence, 3) analysis of that evidence. Let us simply apply these rules to the example above:

The author, who is clearly not of a mindset to agree with this aforementioned viewpoint, is quick to denounce such a perspective. He emphatically declares that “I will not, never have, and never will, engage with these types of people. They are rude, inconsiderate, and worst of all: ignorant” (Lewis 76). This strongly worded example shows us exactly what he really thinks: that there are some people who are not worth his time in dealing with—even if he does still seek to improve his own standing, as well as that of his peers.

Notice that we not only follow the rules above, but also now how the space and pacing to specify some key phrases more emphatically. I.e., instead of the author just “saying,” we can now more directly claim that he “emphatically declares,” which is an inherently more interesting and engaging degree of phrasing that alludes to the focus of our analysis.

Most importantly, readers now have time to pace the progression of these points here. Just read these two examples out loud slowly to see for yourself what a difference these small edits make on your focus—and interest!—of these examples.