How to use quotations:
Use only the part of the quotation that is NECESSARY and MEMORABLE, necessary to supporting your idea and memorable for its expression or for some other reason. Don’t quote someone just to get information into your paper.
Bad quote: “Ghrelin is a hormone secreted in the gut.” (This is a fact, it need not be quoted, and it is not necessary or memorable.)
Good quote: "Our beliefs matter in virtually every domain, in everything we do," Crum says. "How much is a mystery, but I don't think we've given enough credit to the role of our beliefs in determining our physiology, our reality.”
Even better quote, because it is incorporated into your own idea: Crum says that because a person’s “beliefs matter in virtually every domain, in everything we do” (Spiegel), then it is not hard to understand how we can convince even our hormones of what we believe with our brains.
In other words, don’t turn over too much of your paper to quotations! One longer quotation per page is plenty, although almost every paragraph of a research paper should contain a small (necessary and memorable) portion of a quote.
"Here is how to punctuate a quotation," she said (Author's Last Name).
Depending on your source material and sentence structure, "there might be another way to punctuate a quotation" (Author's Last Name page number).
Read more about using quotes from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL).
Use only the part of the quotation that is NECESSARY and MEMORABLE, necessary to supporting your idea and memorable for its expression or for some other reason. Don’t quote someone just to get information into your paper.
Bad quote: “Ghrelin is a hormone secreted in the gut.” (This is a fact, it need not be quoted, and it is not necessary or memorable.)
Good quote: "Our beliefs matter in virtually every domain, in everything we do," Crum says. "How much is a mystery, but I don't think we've given enough credit to the role of our beliefs in determining our physiology, our reality.”
Even better quote, because it is incorporated into your own idea: Crum says that because a person’s “beliefs matter in virtually every domain, in everything we do” (Spiegel), then it is not hard to understand how we can convince even our hormones of what we believe with our brains.
In other words, don’t turn over too much of your paper to quotations! One longer quotation per page is plenty, although almost every paragraph of a research paper should contain a small (necessary and memorable) portion of a quote.
"Here is how to punctuate a quotation," she said (Author's Last Name).
Depending on your source material and sentence structure, "there might be another way to punctuate a quotation" (Author's Last Name page number).
Read more about using quotes from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL).