Let's talk about the most effective ways
to introduce or integrate quotations in
academic writing. And the way you do that,
typically, is with what's called a signal
phrase. And a signal
phrase is your own words that introduce
the quotation, that give some context,
and that basically allow the reader to
have a sense of what the quotation is
about--who is speaking, what's in it. And
the signal phrase then allows us to make
sense of the quotation and integrates
that passage smoothly into your own
writing. So to give some examples here of
different signal phrases, we've used this
rather contentious opinion from a
made-up source, Save the Pets, by Gilbert
Katz, and we're going to look at a
number of patterns for how to quote from
this passage. Our first pattern is what's
called the short expression. And what
this consists of is a subject, often the
author you're quoting, and then we have a
verb, and the verb is what's sometimes
called a verb of expression. So these are
verbs such as "argues" or "states" or
"insinuates" or "implies" or "suggests," verbs
that show that the author is expressing
some kind of opinion. And you can see
that here--we have "rights," there's our
verb of expression. We also have "Katz"--
"Katz" is our author who is doing the
expressing. And that's really all we need
in the simplest form for a short
expression signal phrase. So after that
we're going to add our comma, and then we
have the quotation. So with our quotation
here is a complete sentence--
as a result, it starts with a
capital. And then at the very end we're
going to get rid of the final
punctuation. So any final
punctuation such as a comma, a period, or a
semi-colon--we get rid of it, and we
replace it with our own period at the
very end after the citation.
Notice also that we have a space between
the quotation mark and
the citation. And there's two little
exceptions to what we've just talked
about that you need to know. So if
there's an exclamation mark in the
quotation or a question mark, then you
would keep that here as well--you would
still add your final period too. And if
you don't have a citation, then what you
can do is you can just put your period
inside the quotation marks, but that's
fairly rare in academic writing because
we do typically want to cite our sources.
We're using obviously the MLA style
guide here, but you can cite
in other ways as well. So if you were to
cite, let's say, with the
Chicago Manual of Style and use a
footnote, then probably you would be using this
pattern, and you can add your little "1,"
or whatever footnote number you're at,
after the quotation. Now notice that your
short expression doesn't have to be that
short. So if you look at the next example
here, we have at the core still our subject,
and we have our verb of
expression, but we have lots of other
information as well before we get to our
comma and our quotation. So you're
not restricted to just this really short
introductory phrase, but you can
elaborate on the pattern a little bit.
Finally, notice the use of "as" in
this pattern. Often people will start
with "as so-and-so argues," so that's a
common way to introduce a quotation. The
second pattern we'll have a look at here
is what's called the formal introduction.
And as the name implies, this is a signal
phrase that has a little bit more weight
to it. So it's a signal phrase that's
often longer. It doesn't have to have
that verb of expression in it, but it's a
kind of statement--it often
summarizes the quotation which follows
afterwards. So you can see here that we
have said, "there is one question PETA
supporters often face," and then the
quotation is that exact question.
Similarly in the second example, "some
critics believe that PETA is
inconsistent in its use of Darwinian
principles." You can see we have this
fairly elaborate
complete sentence--the sentence tries
to summarize something about what the
quotation is saying, and it introduces
the quotation that way. So the key
then to our signal phrase is that we have
a complete sentence--we don't just have a
short tag that has a verb of
expression in it, but we have a nice
complete sentence. And then we have a
colon, which carries a bit more weight
than a comma. And then we're going to get
our quotation. Now notice again that our
quotation is also a complete sentence in
this pattern, and because of that, because
in the original
we had a lower case "I," we've used square
brackets to make this into an uppercase
"I," and you're definitely allowed to do
that. So we have our complete sentence,
then we have our citation, and we
have a period. Notice that in the second
example, we often use formal
introductions with a block quotation. So
a block quote is a passage of four or more
lines of text. And a block quote is
fairly long, and if you're going to use a
longer quotation, then it better be
important--you don't want to waste
the reader's time by quoting long
stretches of text without it having
anything to do with your argument. But
because the quotation is quite long, the
reader is also going to struggle a bit
with the contents of the quotation
unless you kind of summarize what's
coming up. And that's why with block
quotations we typically want to use a
formal introduction to really give a
good sense of what's being said here. Our
third type of signal phrase is the
run-in quotation, and this is our last
major pattern as well. A run-in
quotation is where your signal phrase
runs directly into the quote with no
intervening punctuation. So there's no
comma, no colon in between, and instead,
your signal phrase and the quote form one
complete sentence. So if you were to take
the quotation marks off, if you got rid
of them, you should be able to read all
of this as one complete
sentence. And notice that's why we have the
lowercase "t" here--this used to be a
capital "t," but we've used square brackets to
turn it into a lowercase "t" in this case.
Incidentally, you don't want to use
square brackets too often. So sometimes
you may want to use a different kind of
introduction just so you can avoid the
use of square brackets. If you look at
the last example here, you'll notice that
one thing you can do with this kind of
quotation is you can continue after the
quote. Typically when we quote a passage,
we just want to put a period behind it--
we don't want to keep going, but if
you want to experiment, if you're
more adventurous, and if your quotation
is fairly short, then you can keep your
sentence going sometimes afterwards. But
try to do that just with this kind of
pattern mostly and really check, if you
were to take the quotation marks off,
that all of this can still be one
complete sentence. Let's end with a few
minor variants that we haven't covered
yet. So these are more exceptional kinds
of signal phrases, so I would tend to
stick with the major patterns that we've
talked about, but occasionally you may
want to experiment a bit and try out
these variants. One thing you can do is
you can add an extra quote or two after
your first one. So if you look at this
one it says, "the death of human beings,"
and then we have some of our own words
and we have a second quotation
afterwards. If they're from the same page,
then you would just put one page number
after the last one. If they're from
different pages, then you would have to
add a separate citation after this one.
So let's say this was from page 98--you
would put the citation right after the
final quotation marks there. So
that's one thing you can do--you can add
an extra quote afterwards, but be very
careful. Try to do this only with shorter
quotations and make sure that they are
nicely integrated, that the syntax of
your sentence keeps things going
smoothly. Two final ones here, you can
delay the signal phrase, and you can do that
either by sticking it in the middle, or
you can stick it at the very end. So
we'll call this an "inverted signal
phrase," and then the last one is a
"delayed signal phrase." I would be
hesitant to do this too often, especially
in academic writing, because as soon as
you delay your signal phrase, what
happens is that the reader doesn't quite
know what to make of the quotation until
they get to that signal phrase, and any
kind of delay makes it harder for the
reader. So if you're okay with that, if
you like to keep your reader in
suspense a bit, that's fine. But if you
really want to help your reader out, it's
usually best to put your signal phrase
at the beginning. This type of signal
phrase, an inverted or delayed signal
phrase, is probably more common in
formats like newspapers, but in
academic writing, I would tend to stay
away from it. So that's it for signal
phrases. Try them out yourself. Try to
vary your writing a little bit, and I
think if you do that, you'll be able to
write more freely, and you'll be
able to introduce your quotations in a
way that's smooth and coherent.