Transcript Blending Quotations

Blending Quotations
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The Basics
• To make your writing clear and easy to read
always integrate (blend) quotations into your
text.
• NEVER just “drop” a quotation in your
writing!
• In other words, don’t let a piece of textual
evidence stand alone as its own sentence
(unless it’s multiple sentences long).
• Use multiple-sentence quotations sparingly.
• Use your own words to introduce a
quotation.
How To Improve Blending Quotes
• Use only the most effective part of the
quotation.
• Maintain a smooth sentence style.
• Remember to use ellipses if necessary.
– Ellipses allow you to drop superfluous
words and phrases...
• Remember to use brackets [ ] if you add or
change a word.
• Use signal phrases which precede the quote.
Methods of Blending
• Colon (:) – when using this method the
preceding sentence MUST be a
complete sentence
• Comma (,)
• As Part of the Sentence (no
punctuation)
Example from To Kill a Mockingbird
• Original example:
– Mr. Radley is an unattractive man. “He
was a thin leathery man with colorless
eyes, so colorless they did not reflect
light” (Lee 32).
• Bad example!
• Why?
• The quote is just “dropped in.”
Example from TKAM (cont’d)
• Original — unblended:
– Mr. Radley is an unattractive man. “He was a
thin leathery man with colorless eyes, so
colorless they did not reflect light” (Lee 32).
• Smoother integration — well blended:
– Mr. Radley is unattractive, a “thin leathery man
with colorless eyes” (Lee 32).
– The part about his eyes is omitted.
• Even smoother integration:
– Harper Lee describes Mr. Radley as “a thin
leathery man with colorless eyes...[that] did not
reflect light” (Lee 32).
Another Example
• Original:
– Hemingway hints of a storm on the move.
“The shadow of a cloud moved across the
field of grain” (Hemingway 179).
• Smoothly blended into sentence:
– A storm approaches the town as “the
shadow of a cloud [moves] across the
field of grain” and Maggie turns back to
the forest (Hemingway 179).
Using Signal Phrases
• Ineffective:
– T.S. Eliot, in his “Tradition and the
Individual Talent,” uses gender-specific
language. “No poet, no artist of any art,
has his meaning alone. His significance,
his appreciation is the appreciation of his
relation to the dead poets and artists”
(Eliot 29).
• Why ineffective? The quote is
“dropped in.”
Using Signal Phrases
• Use signal phrases to blend the quote into
the sentence, making it read smoothly:
– T.S. Eliot, in his “Talent and the
Individual,” uses gender-specific
language. He argues, for instance, that
“no poet, no artist of any art, has his
complete meaning alone. [Indeed,] his
significance, his appreciation is the
appreciation of his relation to the dead
poets and artists” (Eliot 29).
• The signal phrase makes the sentence flow
more smoothly
Your Turn… 
More Student Examples
• Original:
– The narrator, Brother, disliked his younger
brother, Doodle, from the day he was born.
“Doodle was born when I was seven and was,
from the start, a disappointment” (Hurst 28).
• A suggested revision:
– Brother, the narrator, never accepted his
younger brother, Doodle, and viewed him as
inadequate from the very beginning: “Doodle
was born when I was seven and was, from the
start, a disappointment” (Hurst 28).
• Original:
– Montrestor desperately sought revenge
against Fortunato. “At length I would be
avenged; this was a point definitively settled –
but the very definitiveness with which it was
resolved, precluded the idea of risk.”
• A suggested revision:
– Montresor, consumed by his quest for revenge
against Fortunato demonstrates his daunting
need from the start: “At length I would be
avenged...but the very definitiveness with
which it was resolved, precluded the idea of
risk” (Poe 209).
• Original:
– Mme. Loisel thought negatively about her
home. “She suffered from the poverty of her
dwelling, from the wretched looks of the
walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the
ugliness of the curtains” (Maupassant 593).
• A suggested revision:
-- Mme. Loisel was obsessed with desire for
material possessions she did not have, and
such desire clouded her perspective of her
surroundings as “she suffered from the
poverty of her dwelling...the wretched looks
of the walls...the worn-out chairs, [and]...the
ugliness of the curtains” (Maupassant 593).