How to Integrate Quotations
Integrating quotations means “to weave the author’s words into your own sentences.” Quotations should not be thrown or dropped into your essay. Always make note of ideas and quotations gathered from sources so you are able to cite and give credit for the information. Integration is not hard, only time-consuming. It is absolutely necessary that you learn to document your textual evidence.
Attention: If you do not cite your source, it is called plagiarism and it is illegal in high school, college, and work. The consequences can be anything from a disciplinary referral and a zero for a high school student to legal fees and jail for an adult.
- Cite ideas, references, and especially direct quotations.
- ALWAYS make the mixture of the author’s words and your words grammatically correct.If you need to insert a word of your own, or if you need to change a letter in order to make the sentence grammatically correct, use brackets around the word or letter which you change[d].
- Choose only the best part of the evidence to use with your words to complete a whole sentence.
- Smoothly integrate your evidence into your own writing.
Here are two patterns:
Your words + “quote words” (citation). = complete sentence
Your words + “quote words” (citation) + your words. = complete sentence
- Do NOT put ellipses . . . IN FRONT of or AT THE END of . . . a quotation, even if the front or end of the sentence is missing.
- Ellipses in the middle of a quote are required if you leave text out and continue with more of the text. See example on the back. If the material you’re omitting includes the end of a sentence, you can include the period along with the ellipsis (four periods instead of three).
- Do NOT use more than one period per sentence.
- You MAY use more than one quote per sentence, as long as, the proper punctuation and citation is used.
*In the next examples, the terminal punctuation is part of the quotation, so it stays inside the final quotation mark:
Bradley asked, “Can we have steak for dinner?”
Mom snapped and shouted, “No, we cannot have steak for dinner!”
*On the other hand, in these examples, the terminal punctuation isnotpart of the quotation―it applies to the whole sentence―so it goes outside the final quotation mark:
Do you actually like “French Style”?
I can’t believe you lied to me about the ending of “IT”!
*Example of one integrated quote sentence with one quote:
The sow is unaware of the danger approaching her since she is “sunk in deep maternal bliss” (Golding 134).
Note: When read, this example sounds as though it was written by the same person; however, when we look at it, we see part of it has been borrowed from the author because it is carefully punctuated with quotation marks and cited with the author’s name and page number.
*Example of one tightly integrated quotation sentence with 3 quotes:
The sow is “sunk in deep maternal bliss” (Golding 134), and unaware of the approaching “dreadful eruption from an unknown world” of British boys masked as savages, who will soon be laughing at Jack’s “reeking palms” (Golding 135) as they baptized with blood.
Note: This example has three integrated quotations in one sentence. If all the quotes come from the same page, you can put the documentation at the end of the sentence. However, all of these do not come from the same page. The second quotation and the third come from the same page so the quotation follows the third.
*Example of a sentence with ellipses in the middle:
Telling Romeo to forget about Rosaline, Benvolio argues that “one fire burns out another’s burning; . . . pain is less’ned by another’s anguish” (I.ii.46-47), which suggests that Benvolio knows Romeo is playing a game. If falling in love is easy, Benvolio seems to be saying, then so is falling out of love.
Note: This example uses ellipses to demonstrate the omission of some words in the chosen quote. This citation is different because it is from Romeo and Juliet, a play. The citation is the (Act. scene. line numbers). After the quote, the continuation of the context and the analysis are provided.