Ways to Introduce/Integrate Quotations
Overview
A guide to quotation introduction, including introductory phrases, signal verbs, and integrating source material as part of your own sentence, with a focus on punctuation, capitalization, and citation.
Ways to Introduce/Integrate Quotations
OVERVIEW
When you quote another writer's words, it's best to introduce or contextualize the quote or to in some way integrate his or her words into your own unique sentence. It will almost always be better to familiarize your readers with the source author and title as well as any information they need to understand the author’s point. Don't forget to include the necessary info (author's last name, if not used in the quote’s introduction, and page number) in your citation, according to MLA format. Shown below are some possible ways to introduce quotations.
Introducing a quote with a complete sentence and a colon
Don’t start a sentence with quotation marks. This appears as if you haven’t led in to your quote, even if you feel the previous sentence helps set it up. If you use a full sentence to lead in to a quotation, use a colon to indicate that it is setting up or introducing the following quotation. What follows must be a complete thought or sentence, even if you are only using part of the quoted sentence.
Examples:
- In his exploration of racism as an experience felt deeply in the body both emotionally and physically, journalist and MacArthur Fellow Te-Nehisi Coates argues that all discussion of racism hides the plain fact that it is a violent, physical phenomenon: “[A]ll our phrasing...serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth” (10).
Note that the first letter after the quotation marks should be upper case. According to MLA guidelines, if you change the case of a letter from the original or alter the form of a word or add a word or words, you must indicate this with brackets [ ]. Any words omitted from the middle of a quotation must be indicated with ellipses (…).
- While it is important and useful to logically analyze the presence of racism in society in order to refute those who deny its existence and debate how best to fight it, it should never be forgotten that this is an intensely personal and traumatic topic: “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body” (Coates 10).
Note that the introductory sentence did not mention the author, so the author's last name had to be placed in the citation. It will always be worthwhile to use the author's name when you lead in to a quote, but if you just introduced the author for a previous quote and have not incorporated support from a different source since, citing an author this way may be sufficient.
Introducing a quote with a phrase and a comma
To quote an author or an authority, you can use an introductory phrase naming the source, followed by a comma. What follows must be a complete thought or sentence, even if you are only using part of the original sentence.
Examples:
- According to Coates, “[F]or us and only us--...the other side of free will and free spirits [is] an assault upon our bodies” (26).
- In Coates’s words, “ . . .
- In Coates’s view, “ . . .
- By Coates’s reckoning, “ . . .
- From Coates’s perspective, “ . . .
Another way to introduce a critic's words is to use a descriptive verb phrase, using a reporting verb or a signal verb followed by a comma. What follows must be a complete thought or sentence, even if you are only using part of the original sentence.
Note that these must always be in present tense. Also, avoid using “says” unless the words were originally spoken aloud, for instance, during an interview.
Examples:
- Coates states, “[W]hat matters is our condition, what matters is the system that makes your body breakable” (23).
- Coates remarks, “ . . .
- Coates writes, “ . . .
- Coates notes, “ . . .
- Coates comments, “ . . .
- Coates observes, “ . . .
- Coates concludes, “ . . .
- Coates reports, “ . . .
- Coates maintains, “ . . .
- Coates adds, “ . . .
- Coates argues, “ . . .
Note that you should not write “Coates quotes” unless the author was quoting someone else, in which case, you need to identify the person being quoted, or simply introduce the quote as theirs and indicate that it’s an indirect quote in the citation.
Indirect quotations
When you like a quote that is used in a source and want to incorporate it in your own writing, you need to make clear that you read the quote in a certain source, that the author of your source was quoting someone else.
Examples:
- Coates quotes human rights activist Malcolm X, who describes the black American experience as one of perpetual captivity, stating, “If you're black, you were born in jail” (36).
- Human rights activist Malcolm X describes the black American experience as one of perpetual captivity, stating, “If you're black, you were born in jail” (qtd. in Coates 36).
Remember that if part of your quote contains the words of the author and another part contains the author’s quotation of someone else’s words, you must use nested single quotations to indicate what was in quotes in the original source.
Example:
- According to Coates, “The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant ‘government of the people’ but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term ‘people’ to actually mean” (6).
Integrating portions of a quote into your own unique sentences
You can also begin a sentence with your own words, then complete it with quoted words. Even a short phrase or a single word from a source can be integrated into your sentences.
Examples:
- Coates asserts that black people must struggle not only to survive in a society that makes them vulnerable and places them at a disadvantage, but that they must also determine how they “should live within a black body,” telling his son that he “must find some way to live within all of it” (12).
- It is important to note when discussing racism as a visceral experience, that the word “visceral” also denotes an elemental feeling or emotion, which in the case of racism is a deep-seated fear, fear of violence and death, “the sheer terror of disembodiment” (Coates 12).
Note that if your lead-in to the quotation ends in “that” or “as,” it is probably more of a quote integration. Because of this, you should not follow it with a comma, and the first letter of the quotation should be lower case.
Examples:
- Coates emphasizes that “[o]ur world is physical" (33).
- Coates contends that “[t]his was a war for the possession of his body” (18).
- Coates describes our society as a “system that makes your body breakable” (18).
- Coates characterizes this fear as arising from the “vulnerability of the black teenage bodies” which causes them to feel “naked before the elements of the world” (15, 17).
AVOID MIXED CONSTRUCTION (what’s your subject? Is it an object too?)
When introducing a source or an author using both an introductory prepositional phrase (“In the book… by Ta-Nehisi Coates…”) followed by a reporting verb, be certain that you have a subject for the reporting verb. The objects of the preceding prepositional phrases (“…the article …Ta-Nehisi Coates) cannot be the subject if they are part of those prepositional phrases.
Examples:
INCORRECT: In the book “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that people of color experience racism viscerally, in both its physical and emotional sense.
POSSIBLE CORRECTION #1: In the book “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, he argues that people of color experience racism viscerally, in both its physical and emotional sense.
POSSIBLE CORRECTION #2: In the book “Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that people of color experience racism viscerally, in both its physical and emotional sense.