How to Frame Quotations

Professor Teresa MichalsGeorge Mason Literature Professor Teresa Michals has some tips on using quotations in a literature essay.

I’m a literature professor.  That means I’m interested in words themselves, not just in the big ideas that words may represent. 

When you write an essay for my class, I’m hoping you’ll quote key words from your author to back up and develop your argument.  Here’s the nuts-and-bolts of how to do this.

Frame Quotes With Your Own Ideas, Your Own Words, and Appropriate Punctuation

Please tell me why the short quote you picked is important to your argument.  Connect it to a sentence of your own somehow.  Please don’t drop it on the page like a dead fish. 

Don’t Do This:

The Grimms’ tales do not actually promise that their heroes and heroines will live happily ever after. “The wedding was celebrated, and they lived happily until they died” (208).

Instead, Use One of These Strategies:

1. Quote a complete sentence and introduce it with a sentence of your own and a colon:

The Grimms’ tales do not actually promise that their heroes and heroines will live happily ever after. The conclusion of “Furrypelts,” for example, rewards its heroine and hero with a more limited version of human happiness: “The wedding was celebrated, and they lived happily until they died” (208).  Although they sometimes bring characters back to life, these stories never claim that life lasts forever.

OR,

 2. Integrate a substantial quote into the structure of your own sentence:

The Grimms’ tales do not actually promise that their heroes and heroines will live happily ever after. The conclusion of “Furrypelts,” for example, merely claims that the “wedding was celebrated, and they lived happily until they died” (208).  Although they sometimes bring characters back to life, these stories never claim that life lasts forever.

OR, 

3. Integrate a single quoted word or short phrase into the structure of your own sentence:

 Rather than promising that their heroes and heroines will live happily ever after, Grimms’ tales such as “Furrypelts” merely claim that “they lived happily until they died” (208).  Although they sometimes bring characters back to life, these stories never claim that life lasts forever.