QUOTING THE TEXT: TIPS AND STRATEGIES
Use partial quotations. It will be rare that you will need to quote an entire sentence from a text. Use
only the part that helps you to prove your point.
If your essay is mostly quotations from the text, it is not your essay. So, don’t over-quote! Your job is
not to string together phrases from the text. You are to use phrases from the text to prove your claims.
Think about why you want to use the quoted phrase or passage in the first place. How does it support
your claim? If you don’t know, why are you quoting it?
When quoting the text, set it up. You must give context first. If you find yourself “plopping” in a
quotation and then explaining it, you have not provided the context. (See the section below for more
help with this).
