QUOTING THINGS CORRECTLY "Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh and blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof “ (V for Vendetta).

Introduction to Incorporating (working-in) Quotations

A Couple of Preliminary Notes - Quotations are some of the most important data you can have to support a claim. Remember to copy wording and punctuation exactly as it appears in the source from which you are taking it. - When students are told to find quotations from a book, they sometimes think that they can only use something that is already in quotation marks (narration). You can actually use anything from a book, whether it be dialogue or narration or some of both, that serves your purposes.

Incorporating Quotations (Smoothly and Correctly) Method #1 Introduce a quotation that is a complete sentence with a complete sentence of your own and a colon.

Example: Katniss finds that Rue hasn’t always eaten as well as she would imagine she has: “’Oh,’ says Rue with a sigh. ‘I’ve never had a whole leg to myself before’” (143). Example #2: Marvin told me exactly what he thought about my haircut: “That mullet makes you look like you just stepped out of the 1980’s.”

Incorporating Quotations (Smoothly and Correctly) Method #2 Most of the time, you only need one set of quotation marks around a quotation. When Nailer points out Nita’s wealth, Pima responds, “Yeah, she’s rich all right. But she’s not crew” (121).

However, if you have more than one speaker in your quotation or you want to quote both narration and dialogue, then you will need to have a quotation within a quotation. To do this, put a normal set of double quotation marks around the entire quotation and put the inner quotation in single quotation marks. Example: Katniss finds that Rue hasn’t always eaten as well as she would imagine she has: “’Oh,’ says Rue with a sigh. ‘I’ve never had a whole leg to myself before’” (143). Example: Katniss and Peeta would like to avoid the reaping if they could: “’We could do it, you know,’ Gale says quietly. ‘What?’ I ask. ‘Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods’” (43). ***By the way, if you are quoting dialogue, do NOT put each new speaker in a new paragraph as you would if you were the author writing the story.

Note: avoidance is not always a bad thing. It is often easier for you and for the reader if you avoid having a quotation in a quotation. Katniss and Peeta would like to avoid the reaping if they could: “’We could do it, you know,’ Gale says quietly. ‘What?’ I ask. ‘Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods’” (43). BECOMES: Consider the last quotation within a quotation avoided in this way: Katniss and Peeta would both like to avoid the reaping if they could. This is seen when Gale says, “We could do it, you know… Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods” (43).

Make the quotation the ending of your own sentence without using any punctuation between your own words and the words you are quoting. Unlike method #2, you don't set these quotations off with a verb like "says" or "exclaims" and a comma. Instead, you work it into your sentence. Incorporating Quotations (Smoothly and Correctly) Method #3

Examples: The narrator lets the reader know his true motivation for helping his brother when he confesses that “When Doodle was five years old, I was embarrassed at having a brother of that age who couldn’t walk, so I set out to teach him” (318). * He observed that Doodle seemed “all head, with a tiny body which was red and shriveled like an old man’s” (316). Katniss remembers how her family had been "slowly starving to death" (27). When Katniss sees her score, she thinks that "There must be a mistake" (108). Pima warns Nailer that he “shouldn’t be fooled just because she looks so sweet" (121). Further Explanation * Notice that in the first example the word “that” replaces a comma. You usually have a choice, then, when you begin a sentence with a phrase such as "that narrator says." You either can add a comma after "says," or you can add the word "that," with no comma.