Quotation

Writers often quote when the source's language is   vivid or memorable (e.g., Barth, 
"we'd be arse deep in crabs") or when your source is so respected by your readers that 
quoting would lend authority to their writing (e.g., Barth,  "He [John Gardner] then 
properly adds, 'Hemingway, it may help to remember, went away for free 'tutorials' to 
two of the finest teachers then living, Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein.'")

MOST IMPORTANTLY for writing summaries, when you argue claims of 
interpretation, textual evidence can be very important and you will want to quote from 
the text so that readers can understand how you arrived at your hypotheses about the 
text.

Principles of quoting

• Duplicate the source exactly.  If the source has an error, copy it and add the Latin 
word sic in brackets immediately after the error to indicate that it is not yours but your 
source's:

He observes that even authors such as Hemingway, who claimed that the way 
"for a writer to learn his [sic] craft was to go away and write," showed his 
writing to some of the finest teachers then living.

• Use ellipsis for omissions.

Barth suggests his reservations when he describes himself as "less sanguine than 
Gardner . . ."

• Use brackets for insertions or changes.

"It [writing] can be learned."

• Incorporate brief quotations into your text (no more than about four typed lines of 
prose).

• Put five or more typed lines of prose in block form, indented ten spaces from the left 
margin and double spaced.  Do not enclose the passage in quotation marks.  Use a 
colon to introduce the quotation, unless the context calls for another punctuation mark 
or none at all.

Finally, Barth notes that it can be studied, maintaining that authors have 
acquired writing in four main ways:
first, by paying a certain sort of attention to the experience of life as well 
as merely undergoing it; second, by paying a certain sort of attention to 
the works of their great and less great predecessors in the medium of 
written language, as well as merely reading them; third, by practicing 
that medium themselves, usually a lot . . . ; and fourth, by offering their 
apprentice work for discussion and criticism by one or several of their 
impassioned peers, or by some more experienced hand, or both.

• Use a combination of paraphrase and quotation so that your sentences are 
grammatical.

NOT	Barth suggests his reservations when "I am less sanguine in this 
matter than Gardner . . . "

BUT	Barth suggests his reservations when he describes himself as "less 
sanguine than Gardner . . ."

Quotation