Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [201]
2. Splice quotations onto your own words. Always attach quotations to some of your own language; don’t let them sit in your text as independent sentences with quotation marks around them. You can normally satisfy this rule with an attributive phrase—commonly known as a tag phrase—that introduces the quotation.
According to Paul McCartney, “All you need is love.”
Note that the tag phrase takes a comma before the quote. Alternatively, you can splice quotations into your text with a setup: a statement followed by a colon.
Patrick Henry’s famous phrase is one of the first that American schoolchildren memorize: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”
The colon, you should notice, usually comes at the end of an independent clause (that is, a subject plus verb that can stand alone), at the spot where a period normally goes. It would be incorrect to write “Patrick Henry is known for: ‘Give me liberty, or give me death.’”
The rationale for this guideline is essentially the same as that for the previous one: if you are going to move to quotation, you first need to identify its author so that your readers will be able to put it in context quickly.
Spliced quotations frequently create problems in grammar or punctuation for writers. Whether you include an entire sentence (or passage) of quotation or just a few phrases, you need to take care to integrate them into the grammar of your own sentence.
One of the most common mistaken assumptions is that a comma should always precede a quotation, as in “A spokesperson for the public defender’s office demanded, ‘an immediate response from the mayor.’” The sentence structure does not call for any punctuation after “demanded.”
3. Cite sources after quotations. In MLA style, locate citations in parentheses after the quotation and before the final period. This information appears at the end of the sentence, with the final period following the closing parenthesis.
A recent article on the best selling albums in America claimed that “Ever since Elvis, it has been pop music’s job to challenge the mores of the older generation” (Hornby 168).
Note that in MLA style there is normally no punctuation at the end of the quotation itself, either before or after the closing quotation mark. A quotation that ends either in a question mark or an exclamation mark is an exception to this rule because the sign is an integral part of the quotation’s meaning.
As Hamlet says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?” (2.2.304–05).
See the section entitled “How to Cite Sources” earlier in this chapter for the appropriate formats for in-text citations in various documentation styles.
4. Use ellipses to shorten quotations. Add ellipses to indicate that you have omitted some of the language from within the quotation. Form ellipses by entering three dots (periods) with spaces in between them, or use four dots to indicate that the deletion continues to the end of the sentence (the last dot becomes the period). Suppose you wanted to shorten the following quotation from a recent article about Radiohead by Alex Ross:
The album “OK Computer,” with titles like “Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police,” and “Climbing Up the Walls,” pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person’s panicky embrace of it (Ross 85).
Using ellipses, you could emphasize the source’s claim by omitting the song titles from the middle of the sentence:
The album “OK Computer” … pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person’s panicky embrace of it (Ross 85).
In most cases, the gap between quoted passages should be short, and in any case, you should be careful to preserve the sense of the original. The standard joke about ellipses is helpful here: A reviewer writes that a film “will delight no one and appeal to the intelligence of invertebrates only, but not average viewers.” An unethical