[ Quoting Sources ]
Know how to incorporate long
and shorter quotations
When incorporating long quoted passages into your work, follow your discipline’s guidelines for
setting them off from the rest of your text.
For an overview of related key topics on quoting sources, visit the other videos and quizzes in this tutorial.
Explore It
Most of the time, embedding a quotation into your work smoothly requires weaving a phrase or a sentence
into your draft, using signal phrases, quotation marks, and the other elements of in-text citation for your
discipline. When you need to incorporate a longer quotation—also known as a block quotation—into your
research project, there are additional guidelines to follow for setting off the quoted material from your text.
Depending on the discipline, the instructions for formatting a long quotation vary. Generally, a long quotation should be set off by a sentence that explains and introduces it. Then the quotation begins on a new line,
indented. The following passage includes a long quotation (it appeared as seven lines long in the original
source):
From the young women’s perspective, hip hop culture with respect to gender and representation is
abysmal. Despite the pimps up–ho’s down ethos represented by the Bishop and vaunted in popular
culture, hip hop remains socially viable and relevant, if for but a few “conscious” rappers. Twentyone-year-old Lauryn, an aspiring law student, suggests that the profit motive has interfered:
Hip hop has been definitely relevant. I don’t know that it has been more political in my generation.
It used to be more political; it used to be much more conscious. You have a strain of conscious
rappers like Nas or Mos Def or Jurassic Five or Common. It [politically conscious rap] still exists,
but because of capitalism it has become such a commercialized industry. The politics has been set
aside for money-making.4
—T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s
Indent is oneHold on Young Black Women
half inch.
Number directs
readers to the
endnote for
the quotation’s
source.
Quotation
introduced by
an explanatory
sentence that
ends in a colon.
The author uses this long quotation to preserve the speaker’s voice. The author includes enough so that the
quotation makes sense out of context of the original interview and to support the point of the paragraph
but not so much as to overwhelm the reader.
Notice, too, that the author uses brackets ([ ]) in the last sentence to clarify the subject of the sentence.
(For more advice on how to use brackets to make alterations in a quotation, see the other examples in this
tutorial.)
CREDIT: Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. New York UP, 2007, pp. 150–51. Questia,
www.questia.com/read/117664505/pimps-up-ho-s-down-hip-hop-s-hold-on-young-black.
© 2016 Cengage Learning
Know how to incorporate long and shorter quotations |
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[ Quoting Sources ]
Learn It
The guidelines for formatting a block quotation vary, depending on the style you are assigned. Long quotations should be introduced by a complete sentence, ending in a colon. As with other quotations, you should
introduce it, offering information about the quotation and relating it to the point you are making.
Long quotations should begin on a new line, with no quotation marks since the additional indentation of
the long quotation signals to readers that it is from a source. (For quotations within the block quotation, use
double quotation marks [“]). Additional rules for formatting vary.
MLA style If you are working with MLA style, set off quotations longer than four lines. If you are quoting
poetry, set off quotations of more than three lines. Indent the quotation one-half inch or five spaces from the
left margin. At the end of a long quotation and after the end punctuation add the page number or other in-text
citation information in parentheses.
APA style If you are working with APA style, set off quotations longer than forty words. Indent the quotation one-half inch or five spaces from the left margin. At the end of the quotation and after the end punctuation add the page number in parentheses.
Chicago style If you are working with Chicago style, set off long quotations of 100 words or six to eight
lines. Also set off quotations that include more than one paragraph. Indent the quotation one-half inch or
five spaces from the left margin.
Use It
Using a topic for a current research project, visit a source in Questia that you plan to use. Or, in Questia,
visit the following chapter, “Bite-Sized Marketing: Candy Bars,” by Robert M. Rees that appears in
­Chocolate: Food of the Gods (pp. 125–29).
For this source, imagine that you are working on a research project that links marketing and nutrition and
have determined that this source will be of use.
Next, find two passages in the source you chose that are worth quoting in their entirety using block quotations. Find two passages that could be made into shorter, embedded quotations. Copy and paste the passages into a new file for notes, or onto a separate sheet of paper. Then draft sentences to introduce each
quotation into a research paper. Check your work, making sure that each quotation introduces your source.
Also check your grammar: Is each sentence grammatically complete and your punctuation correct?
© 2016 Cengage Learning
Know how to incorporate long and shorter quotations |
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