*Rules for direct Quotation:
Shorter prose quotations should be inserted in the text of the essay and enclosed in double quotation marks. Example:
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator focuses her resentment on her husband, “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition” (768).
Notice that the period comes at the end of the parenthetical notation and does not remain inside the quotation marks.
If you have already established the work from which the quotation is coming (as in the above example) then you only include the page number in the citation. If you have not, then you must include the name of the author as well. Example:
The narrator describes the wallpaper as “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study” (Gilman 768).
If your quotation is longer than four typed lines, you will treat it a little differently. A longer prose quotation running four or more lines of typescript (35 or more words) should be indented in its entirety ten typewriter characters or a one inch tab from the left margin and typed single spaced. Paragraphs should be indicated by indenting the first line an additional three typewriter characters. No quotation marks should be used.
Example:
The narrator noticed Usher’s agitation heightened after Madeline’s entombment:
His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his eye had nearly gone out (Poe 488).
Paraphrased Quotations
Paraphrased quotations means that you are using ideas that are not your own but have been put into your own words. You should not have many paraphrased quotations since you are quoting prose in your essays. But if for some reason you do, you will simply put the author’s name in parenthesis after the sentence of the idea you have modified.