How to Include Direct Quotes in Essays Recall the link which gave you an outline to use in writing the several essays required in this course.  More specifically, recall the items I named the "first example" of a device, then the "second example" and the "third example."  I noted there that doing these well is crucial to your essay grade, and I also said that I would offer an ever more detailed explanation of how to use direct quotes for examples in this way.  Well, here it is; that promised explanation is what follows.  The way this works is that all five of these steps are used in presenting a quote which becomes the first example of how a device is used in a story; then to use another quote to show a second example, you go through all five steps again, and so forth.  Here is the five-step process of presenting a direct quote effectively:  To quote a source directly means that you are repeating the words of that writer, word for word.  You signal this by placing the words quoted within double quotation marks.  The easiest stopping and starting points for a quote are the beginning and end of the writer’s own sentence, though you may choose to quote only part of a sentence.  However, just knowing this is not enough.  An inexperienced writer will just “dump” a quote into a paper, with no signal other than the quotation marks that you are suddenly shifting from your own voice and opinions to the thoughts and words of someone else.  There are several steps involved in using a quote effectively: 1.       First, set the scene.  This takes one or perhaps several sentences.  If your quote is part of an interpretation of a work of literature, then “setting the scene” means literally to describe the scene in the work from which you are about to quote.  If your quote is part of another sort of paper, then “setting the scene” means to write a sentence signaling that someone’s voice besides your own is about to begin, and perhaps commenting on the purpose of the quote.  Your wording might go something like this:  In the scene where __________ is happening, _______ is speaking to _______.  If the work quoted from is an essay, your setting of scene might read In the third paragraph or In the middle section of the essay, the author is discussing ___________________________.  If the work quoted from is a poem, this sentence might read In the fourth stanza, . . . 2.       Next, provide a lead-in to the quote.  This differs from setting the scene in that the lead-in will consist of some words of yours that are actually part of the sentence which includes the quote, as opposed to separate, preceding sentences.  So your lead-in follows the setting of the scene, and reads like this:  In this scene (or paragraph or section or stanza), _______ says … 3.       Now comes the quote, beginning and ending with double quotation marks:  In this scene, _______ says “____________________________________” 4.       But you are not done.  After the closing quotation marks, place a parenthetical citation before the period, including the author’s last name and the page number, done exactly as you see here except without the italics:  In this scene, _______ says “______________________________” (Jones 231).  A tip:  When choosing what to quote, be aware of when you may be quoting more than one voice speaking.  The narrator of a work counts as a different voice!  Example:  And then he said to her, "Hurry!  We've got to go."  Here, the quotation marks you see are already in the story.  That means the narrator is quoting what a character said.  So if you use that entire quote, you are actually quoting two speakers, which gets more complicated.  There are two ways to handle such a thing.  The easiest and best is to avoid repeating the narrator's words, which aren't really needed anyhow.  Paraphrase that part and quote the essential part, like this:  At this point Joe said to Mary, "Hurry!  We've got to go" (Jones 231).  If you think you do need the exact words of both speakers, then you must handle this as a quote-within-a-quote, which takes single quote marks within double quote marks, like this:  "And then he said to her, 'Hurry!  We've got to go' " (Jones 231). 5.       You are still not done, though you may have thought you were.  Now comes the part that separates a mediocre paper from a good one:  In one or several separate sentences, you must warrant the quote.  This means that rather than assuming your reader gets the point of the quote without explanation or interpretation by you, you provide an explanation of what the quote is supposed to show the reader.  Begin with wording such as What this means is . . . or What this shows us is . . . or even, more specifically, These lines show gender conflict [or whatever] because . . . .Inexperienced writers almost routinely skip this part.  Don’t! I have found that in papers interpreting a literary work, the best way to “fill” a body paragraph is simply with a series of the above steps, repeated perhaps three times, at least twice.  So for instance, if you are analyzing the device of some literary device, or of some literary period characteristic in a work, your Topic Sentence should identify what kind of device or characteristic.  Then, to show the presence of that device or period characteristic, you will quote once, using the steps above.  But that is not enough; do it again; and better yet, do it a third time.  Then end with a Concluding Sentence which sums up what all the quotes show, taken as a whole.  You will find, especially if you warrant each quote thoroughly, that this “fills” your body paragraphs very well, so that in fact your paragraph may even be over a page long, all by itself—and that in turn provides more thorough discussion, and a higher grade.

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