Journal #4 The Art of Quoting

In ‘The Art of Quoting’ chapter in They Say, I Say, the authors outlined the important rules for seamlessly blending quotes into your piece of writing. Quotes are important because they serve to give the reader proof of the evidence you gathered and they show that the writer didn’t just make all the information up. However, you need to balance underquoting and over quoting. There is a fine line between providing no quotes and trying to recreate the author’s argument from memory, and providing too many quotes and forgetting to emphasize on your own commentary and original ideas. You also need to remember that quotes do not speak for themselves. Writers need to explain their quotes, because it may make perfect sense to the writer, but the reader may not understand the context. Make sure to carefully pick your quotations so they pertain to the topic at hand, support your argument and add to the discussion, rather than serving just as unneeded filler to make your essay longer. I found it interesting that they also mentioned that quotes can turn out to be unuseable as you progress further in the essay and your thesis develops, the quotes may not be as applicable to the discussion as you previously thought. One of the bigger concepts they emphasized was the importance of introducing your quote so the readers have context before they take in the quote. Then after the quote, explain why it is important to your ideas and connect it to the topic at hand. When quote, use similar language and tone to the quote while still maintaining your own writing style. This will integrate the quote into your writing and show that you have an understanding of what the quote asserts. In addition, it is better to over explain your quote than to not explain enough and leave the reader confused. Readers need to have an understanding of why you choose this quote, and to explain why you thought it was important to include in your writing. The last piece of advice the chapter gave us was to tell us what not to do. An unsatisfying way to introduce a quote would be by saying something along the lines of ‘A quote by Shakespeare says’ (Graff and Birkenstein 50), because directly saying that this is a quote or an idea from a certain person is redundant, the readers already know that this is a quote and not the writer’s original thought.