Hey guys, it's Ms. Peer Editor. Today I'm going to show you how to integrate quotes seamlessly in your essays. So if you're including excerpts from an outside source in your essays, these techniques will be really helpful for you, especially if you're writing a literary analysis essay or an article.
So let's get started. Are you tired of constantly introducing quotes in your essays with phrases such as according to the author, the character states, the author claims, the character says, or the author writes that. These phrases are pretty mundane and overused and they don't really provide a smooth transition.
into your quotes. So what do I mean when I say integrating quotes? That means that you're trying to include an excerpt from literary prose, a poetry or plays, a secondary source, or a person's quote in your essay.
And you want to make sure that you do that in a really seamless, smooth manner without any awkward transitions. So three techniques to achieve that goal are number one, weaving into your sentence. Number two, using a colon.
And number three, using simple dialogue integration. And I'm going to teach you all three of these methods. Let's say I wanted to integrate this quote from the short story, The Japanese Quince, in my own essay.
So the quote says, It was covered with young blossoms, pink and white, and little bright green leaves, both round and spiky. And on all this blossom and these leaves, the sunlight glistened. So the word it at the beginning of this quote, refers to a tree, the Japanese quince tree.
So I want to include this description of a tree, this imagery, in my own essay. So I'm going to include a little bit, a little excerpt from this quote in the following example. So this is my sentence in my essay.
Not usually attuned to his surroundings, Mr. Nilsen, who's a character in the story, starts to appreciate nature when he sees a tree covered with young blossoms. pink and white, and little bright green leaves, both round and spiky. Galsworthy won.
So you can see at the end of this sentence, I've included a parenthetical citation, which you should always do when you're quoting from literature. So I put the author's last name and the page number where I found this quote inside parentheses right before the period. So at the end of this sentence.
So you might be wondering, how did I... integrate this quote smoothly into my sentence because there's no word such as the author states or the word says in my sentence itself. It pretty much blends right into my own words as if I even wrote the quote.
But you can see here that what I've done is matched a word from the quote itself to a word in my sentence. So notice how the quote starts with the word it which refers to a tree. And in my sentence itself, I've started, I've introduced the quote with the word a tree.
So when he sees a tree covered with young blossoms. So I've pretty much used a synonym or a matching word from the quote, integrated that into my own sentence, and provided a smooth transition. So let's see another example. This quote is an excerpt from a secondary source. source that analyzes the play The Crucible.
So the quote says, he places his own reputation above innocent lives and uses religion to justify the deceit, which makes him a truly evil force. So the he, who's referred to at the beginning of the sentence, refers to Judge Danforth, who's a character in The Crucible. So let's see how I blended this quote into my own sentence.
By choosing to execute the accused without substantial evidence, Danforth places his own reputation above innocent lives and uses religion to justify the deceit, which makes him a truly evil force. And you can see the parenthetical citation again. So, as you've noticed, I've pretty much used the exact same technique. I've matched a word, the word he, at the beginning of the quote to a word in my own sentence.
which is Danforth. That refers to the same person in the quote. And I've smoothly integrated the author's words into my own, and also I want you to note that I've included context at the beginning of the sentence in this phrase. So I'm setting up the reader to know what exactly I'm talking about. I'm not dropping this quote in the middle of nowhere, and this is definitely a great technique you should use.
This is the second method, use a colon. The first method is actually my favorite, but whatever, I can't use a colon. use that, I will revert to this method.
So let's say I'm using this quote from The Crucible by Arthur Miller in my own essay. So the quote says, a fire, a fire is burning. I hear the boot of Lucifer. I see his filthy face. and it is my face and yours, Danforth, for them that quell to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quelled and as you quell now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud, God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together.
This is a pretty long quote, so I'm going to cross out the parts that I don't want to include in my essay. So here's how I integrated the quote into my own words. The imagery that compares Danforth's hot fire in the... court to Lucifer's fire highlights Danforth's failure, suggesting that he is an unwitting servant of the devil. Frustrated by the court's proceedings, John Proctor exposes Danforth's hypocrisy and irrationality.
A fire, a fire is burning. I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face. And it is my face, and yours, Danforth, for us that quell to bring men out of ignorance. God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together. Miller 96. So you can see here that I've provided additional context for this quote in the sentence preceding the quote.
So I've actually pretty much used two sentences to set up the context for this quote, which you can definitely do as well. And notice how in the phrase that I've used to set up the quote, I say, John Proctor exposes Danforth's hypocrisy and irrationality. colon.
So what you want to do is, if you're including a quote from a character, you can say the action, what they're trying to achieve in this quote, and then provide a colon right after that. So you can see this is pretty much a signpost to the reader that after this colon, I'm going to show you directly how John Proctor is planning to expose Dan Ford's hypocrisy and irrationality. So you can even practice this on your your own.
Try to use this same setup that I've used and swap out a different character, a different action that that character is trying to achieve in that quote. Also, I've altered this quote slightly. So you can see that instead of using the word them in the original quote, I use the word us to provide more clarity and just because that actually makes more sense in the context that I'm using it. So I've included the word us. So for us, us that quell to bring men out of ignorance, I've included the word us in between two brackets.
So whenever you want to clarify or replace a word that's in a quote, make sure to put your word in brackets. So I've totally taken out the word them, replaced it with the word us. I'll show you more rules as to how you can alter a quote, but make sure to stay tuned until the end of this video for that lesson. Also, I've used an ellipsis. or those three dots to omit part of the quote, the part that I wanted to cross out.
The third method is simple dialogue integration, and it's definitely okay to use this method once in a while, but try to use the first two methods a bit more often. So I'm going to include this quote from The Shining by Stephen King, which is one of my favorite books, by the way, and here's the quote. You're the caretaker, sir, Grady said mildly. You've always been the caretaker. the caretaker.
So notice how there are single quotes around this these two pieces of text in the quote. So the single quote denotes dialogue. So Grady is saying something so his dialogue, his speech is in single quotes whereas the narration is not in single quotes. It just remains to be a part of the regular text of inside the double quotes. So the narration is the part that says Grady said mildly.
So here's my example of integration. While serving drinks at the Overlook Hotel, Grady tells Jack Torrance, you're the caretaker, sir. You've always been the caretaker.
King 517. So I've pretty much used a very simple method. I'm saying that the character is saying something. It would be equally fine to say Grady says to Jack Torrance or or Grady's.
states or anything along those lines as long as you remember to put a comma right after that phrase. Here's an excerpt from the play Romeo and Juliet that I want to include in a sentence. So the quote says, I fear too early for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin this fearful date with this night's revels and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death. So don't worry, you don't have to know what this quote means. I've actually kind of forgotten too, but I've crossed out the parts that I don't want to include, and you can see that I only actually want to include two parts of this quote, or two lines.
So when I'm integrating this into my sentence, I'll say, before infiltrating the Capulet's masquerade ball, Romeo predicts with uneasiness that some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin this fearful date. And this citation is a little bit different than the citations you might have seen before. So whenever I'm quoting from a play, I'm going to include the author's last name, so Shakespeare, and then the act number with a period after, the scene number with a period after, and then the line numbers. So remember to be consistent with this type of... of citation whenever you're quoting from a play.
With The Crucible, I did it a little differently. I just included a page number, but this is really the way you should do it. So also notice how I've used a slash in the middle of the quote.
That's because those are two separate lines. So whenever I'm quoting more than one line from a play, I have to include that slash in there. Also, when you are quoting one to three lines, three lines of a play or poem, you can include your quote in your paragraph just like I've done here. However, if you're including four or more lines from those types of texts, you must use a block quote. So that's a totally different type of syntax, and I can definitely go over that in another video if you'd like, but if you pretty much look it up online, you can see how to do that.
I told you I was going to go over formatting rules at the end of this video, so here it is. First off, I want to address a controversy, though. So according to Purdue OWL, or the Online Writing Lab, which is a great resource for anything related to writing, the simplest way to cite a source is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence. So just before the period, I always put my parenthetical citation. citations right before the period, but I've also seen it done in other ways.
Just make sure to ask your teacher how they prefer to use parenthetical citations to avoid any confusion. So here are the formatting rules when you're altering a quote. Remember to use the ellipses or the three dots when omitting part of the middle of a quote.
So not the beginning of or the end of a quote, only when you're omitting a middle section. To clarify, add a replace a word in a quote, make sure to put your word in brackets. So let's say I wanted to include this quote in my essay.
So the quote is, he likes to jog in the mornings. I could write, he, John, in brackets, likes to jog in the mornings to clarify who exactly he is. Also, if I wanted to change the tense of the sentence to the past tense, I could say, he. and then in brackets, liked to jog in the morning. So I've totally replaced the word likes with the word liked.
Make sure though that you're not altering the original meaning of the sentence when you're putting words in brackets. Always retain the original meaning. And this is a bit of a random piece of advice, but always put commas inside quotation marks. So that includes whether you're putting in a quote in your essay.
or putting a title that happens to be in quotations. Just always put the commas inside the quotations. It will make your life a lot easier. If you can think of an instance in which you would put a comma outside of a quotation, let me know in the comments below, but I can't think of one off the top of my head. Lastly, make sure to avoid these mistakes.
So don't write the author or include page numbers outside of the citation. So don't say, on page four, John Proctor said... or anything like that. Don't write that the text states or in the book or play or poem the author writes because these phrases don't really mean that much and the text states doesn't actually make that much sense. Also make sure not to use synonyms for the word says that are unnecessary such as articulates, declares, exclaims, etc.
So it's okay to just say the character says this. Don't feel the need to dress up your language in any way. And the most important piece of advice that you should take away from this video is to not drop quotes.
So what that means is literally just plopping a quote in the middle of your essay with none of your words in the same sentence. If you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe, and tap the bell to receive notifications whenever I make a new video. Two of my other videos can be found here. comment down below and tell me what other writing topics you'd like me to cover.
I will see you next time.