Blending quotations

Blending Quotations
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The Basics
• Always integrate quotations into your text.
• NEVER just “drop” a quotation in your
writing!
• In other words, don’t let a piece of textual
evidence stand alone as its own sentence
(unless it’s multiple sentences long).
• Use your own words to introduce a
quotation.

How To Improve Blending Quotes
• Use only the most effective part of the
quotation.
• Maintain a smooth sentence style.
• Remember to use ellipses if necessary.
• Remember to use brackets [ ] if you add
or change a word.
• Use signal phrases which precede the
quote.

Example from TKAM
• Original example:
– Mr. Radley is an unattractive man. “He was a
thin leathery man with colorless eyes, so
colorless they did not reflect light” (Lee 32).
• Bad example!
• Why?
• The quote is just “dropped in.”

Example from TKAM (cont’d)
• Original — unblended:
– Mr. Radley is an unattractive man. “He was a thin
leathery man with colorless eyes, so colorless they
did not reflect light” (Lee 32).
• Smoother integration — well blended:
– Mr. Radley is unattractive, a “thin leathery man with
colorless eyes” (Lee 32).
– The part about his eyes is omitted.
• Even smoother integration:
– Harper Lee describes Mr. Radley as “a thin leathery
man with colorless eyes…[that] did not reflect light”
(32).

Another Example
• Original:
– Hemingway hints of a storm on the move.
“The shadow of a cloud moved across the
field of grain” (Hemingway 179).
• Smoothly blended into sentence:
– A storm approaches the town as “the shadow
of a cloud [moves] across the field of grain”
(Hemingway 179) and Maggie turns back to
the forest.

Using Signal Phrases
• Ineffective:
– T.S. Eliot, in his “Talent and the Individual,”
uses gender-specific language. “No poet, no
artist of any art, has his meaning alone. His
significance, his appreciation is the
appreciation of his relation to the dead poets
and artists” (Eliot 29).
• Why ineffective? the quote is “dropped
in.”

Using Signal Phrases
• Use signal phrases to blend the quote into
the sentence, making it read smoothly:
– T.S. Eliot, in his “Talent and the Individual,”
uses gender-specific language. He argues,
for instance, that “no poet, no artist of any
art, has his complete meaning alone.
[Indeed,] his significance, his appreciation is
the appreciation of his relation to the dead
poets and artists” (Eliot 29).
• See how the signal phrase makes the
sentence read smoother?

Student Examples from Night Timed Writing
• Original:
– Now, as Rabbi Eliahu searches hopelessly for
a son of his whom had abandoned him, Elie
renounces his faith completely. “And in spite
of myself, a prayer formed inside of me, a
prayer to this God in whom I no longer
believed” (Wiesel 91).
• A suggested revision:
– Now, as Rabbi Eliahu searches hopelessly for
a son of his whom had abandoned him, “a
prayer formed inside [Elie]…to this God…[he]
no longer believed” and he renounces his
faith completely (Wiesel 91).

More Student Examples
• Original:
– Night also represents the fire that killed so
many people. “And just as the train stopped,
this time we saw flames rising from a chimney
into a dark sky” (Wiesel 28).
– Wiesel suggests night represents death by
fire as he and other passengers witness
“flames rising from a chimney into a dark sky”
which are no doubt burning people alive
(Wiesel 28).

• Original:
– You start to see this fairly early in the book.
“What had happened to me? My father had
been struck in front of me, and I had not even
blinked” (Wiesel 39).
– Elie is disgusted with himself when his father
is beaten right “in front of [him], and [he] had
not even blinked” (Wiesel 39). He begins to
question his own values as his concern for his
father appears to decrease.

• Original:
– Through out the book, most of the killings or
horrible events, including Elie, occur during
the night. “They must of taken him away
before daybreak and taken him to the
crematorium” (Wiesel 112).
– Throughout the book, many horrible events
including the killings occur during the night.
Indeed, Wiesel tells of a man “taken…away
before daybreak… to the crematorium”
(Wiesel 112).

Blending quotations

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