General Advice
Paper
Mechanics
Strategies
for Good Writing
Thesis
General Advice
Having a clear thesis
3
tests for a good thesis
Argument
Paragraph
Structure
Topic
Sentences
Strong
Arguments
Checking
your arguments
Before your final
draft
Effective
conclusions
Evidence
Handling
Evidence
Quotation
Format
Writing skills
Clarity
Grammatical
Errors
The literary
present
Sentence Fragments
The use of
"I"
Word choice
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Quotation Format
Refer to Handbook sections 28a, 28d, 29b, and 32. Note that for Humanities we single-space indented quotations, which is an exception to the rule on p. 176.
A. Some examples of proper
poetry quotation format:
1. For shorter, embedded quotations:
Aeneas recalls how the horse, "fat with weapons" (Aeneid, II, 328), was rolled into the city.
Consistency is the key. You may not need
to include the title of a work if you are quoting from only one text throughout
your paper. Alternative parenthetical notations for the above sentence
would be (A., II, 328) or (II, 328).
When Aeneas leaves Carthage, he tells Dido, "It is not / my own
free will that leads to Italy" (A., IV, 491-92).
Notice that you must maintain the integrity of the poetic line as printed on the page. The slash indicates the end of the line.
2. For longer, indented quotations:
Laocoon cries out:
Do you
believe the enemy have sailed away?
Or think that any Grecian gifts are free
of craft? Is this the way Ulysses acts?
. . . . . . . . . . .
I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.
(A., II, 60-70)
Notice several things:
1) Use no quotation marks before and after indented quotations.
2) Indent ten spaces from left margin.
3) One line of evenly spaced periods indicates that one or more lines
of poetry have been omitted.
4) The parenthetical notation is placed on a line below and to the right.
5) If what you're quoting begins in the middle of the line, put the first
quoted word in the middle of your line.
6) The slash is not used in indented quotations.
When Aeneas recognizes his mother, he exclaims,
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Notice (1) that a quotation may be introduced either by a comma or by a colon, and (2) that brackets (see Handbook, section 31) are used to clarify something that readers would not otherwise understand.
Why do you [Venus] mock your son
. . .
. . . with these lying apparitions?
Why can't I ever join you, hand to hand,
to hear, to answer you with honest words?
(A., I, 581-84)
B. Some examples of proper prose quotation format:
1. For shorter, embedded quotations:
Job is described as "blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1).
Thucydides cites the plague as a primary cause of social and political breakdown in Athens, when he says, "Men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law" (The Peloponnesian War, p. 155).
2. For longer, indented quotations:
In the second creation story in Genesis,
the biblical author tells us that
the Lord God formed man of dust from
the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living being. And the Lord God
planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he
put the man whom he had formed.
(2:7-8)
When Socrates talks to the jury after
they have decided on the death penalty for him, he speaks optimistically,
according to Plato:
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(Apology, p. 76)
You too, gentlemen of the jury, must
look forward
to death with confidence, and fix your minds on this
one belief, which is certain that nothing can harm a
good man either in life or after death, and his
fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods.