A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018

Incorporating quotations into your text
Quotations
Style

You can incorporate a quotation into your text in one of two ways, depending on its length. If the quotation is four lines or less, run it into your text and enclose it in quotation marks. If it is five lines or longer, set it off as a block quotation, without quotation marks. Follow the same principles for quotations within footnotes or endnotes.

You may use a block quotation for a quotation shorter than five lines if you want to emphasize it or compare it to a longer quotation.

25.2.1 Run-in Quotations

When quoting a passage of less than five lines, enclose the exact words quoted in double quotation marks. There are several ways to integrate a quotation into the flow of your text; see 7.5. You may introduce it with the name of the author accompanied by a term such as notes, claims, argues, or according to. (Note that these terms are usually in the present tense, rather than noted, claimed, and so forth, but some disciplines follow different practices.) In this case, put a comma before the quotation.

Ricoeur writes, “The boundary between plot and argument is no easier to trace.”

As Ricoeur notes, “The boundary between plot and argument is no easier to trace.”

If you weave a quotation more tightly into the syntax of your sentence, such as with the word that, do not put a comma before it.

Ricoeur warns us that “the boundary between plot and argument is no easier to trace.”

If you put the attributing phrase in the middle or at the end of a quotation, set it off with a pair of commas when it occurs in the middle or with a single comma when it occurs at the end.

“The boundary between plot and argument,” says Ricoeur, “is no easier to trace.”

“The boundary between plot and argument is no easier to trace,” says Ricoeur.

For the use of commas, periods, and other punctuation marks relative to quotations, see 21.12.2 and 25.3.1; for permissible changes to capitalization and other elements, see 25.3.1.

25.2.1.1 PLACEMENT OF CITATIONS. If you cite the source of a quotation in a footnote or endnote, where you place the superscript note number (see 16.3.2) depends on where the quotation falls within a sentence. If the quotation is at the end of the sentence, put the number after the closing quotation mark.

According to Litwack, “Scores of newly freed slaves viewed movement as a vital expression of their emancipation.”⁴

If the quotation ends in the middle of a sentence, put the number at the end of the clause that includes the quotation, which often is the end of the sentence.

“Scores of newly freed slaves viewed movement as a vital expression of their emancipation,” according to Litwack.⁴

Litwack argues that “scores of newly freed slaves viewed movement as a vital expression of their emancipation,”⁴ and he proceeds to prove this assertion.

The same placement options apply to citations given parenthetically with either notes-style (16.4.3) or author-date citations (see 18.3.1), with two notable differences:

✵ ▪ If a period or comma would normally precede the closing quotation mark, place it outside the quotation, following the closing parenthesis.

The authors seek to understand “how people categorize the objects they encounter in everyday situations” (Bowker and Star 1999, 59).

To determine “how people categorize the objects they encounter in everyday situations” (Bowker and Star 1999, 59), the authors devised a study.

✵ ▪ When the author’s name is mentioned in text along with the quotation, place the date next to the author’s name, regardless of where it appears relative to the quotation.

“Scores of newly freed slaves viewed movement as a vital expression of their emancipation,” according to Litwack (1999, 482).

Litwack’s (1999, 482) observation that “scores of newly freed slaves . . .”

25.2.1.2 SPECIAL PUNCTUATION. For a quotation within a quotation, use single quotation marks for the inner set of quoted words.

Rothko, argues Ball, “wanted to make works that wrought a transcendent effect, that dealt with spiritual concerns: ’Paintings must be like miracles,’ he once said.”

If you run two or more lines of poetry into your text, separate them with a slash (/), with a space before and after it. In most cases, however, use block quotations for poetry (see 25.2.2.2).

They reduce life to a simple proposition: “All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave; / In silence, ripen, fall, and cease.”

25.2.2 Block Quotations

25.2.2.1 PROSE. Present a prose quotation of five or more lines as a block quotation. Introduce the quotation in your own words in the text; see 7.5. If you introduce the quotation with a complete sentence, end the sentence with a colon. If you use only an attribution phrase such as notes, claims, argues, or according to along with the author’s name, end the phrase with a comma. If you weave the quotation into the syntax of your sentence, do not use any punctuation before the quotation if no punctuation would ordinarily appear there (see the second example below).

Single-space a block quotation, and leave a blank line before and after it. Do not add quotation marks at the beginning or end, but preserve any quotation marks in the original. Indent the entire quotation as far as you indent the first line of a paragraph. (In literary studies and other fields concerned with close analysis of texts, you should indent the first line of a block quotation farther than the rest of the quotation if the text is indented in the original; see also 25.3.) For other punctuation and capitalization within the quotation, see 25.3.1.

Jackson begins by evoking the importance of home:

Housing is an outward expression of the inner human nature; no society can be fully understood apart from the residences of its members. A nineteenth-century melody declares, “There’s no place like home,” and even though she had Emerald City at her feet, Dorothy could think of no place she would rather be than at home in Kansas. Our homes are our havens from the world.¹

In the rest of his introduction, he discusses . . .

If you quote more than one paragraph, do not add extra line space between them, but indent the first line of the second and subsequent paragraphs farther than the rest of the quotation.

He observed that

governments ordinarily perish by powerlessness or by tyranny. In the first case, power escapes them; in the other, it is torn from them.

Many people, on seeing democratic states fall into anarchy, have thought that government in these states was naturally weak and powerless. The truth is that when war among their parties has once been set aflame, government loses its action on society. (Tocqueville, 248)

If you cite the source in a footnote or endnote, place the note number as a superscript at the end of the block quotation, as in the first example above (see also 16.3.2). If you cite the source parenthetically, put the citation after the terminal punctuation of a block quotation, as in the second example above. (Note that this differs from its placement with a run-in quotation, as explained in 25.2.1.1.)

25.2.2.2 POETRY AND DRAMA. Present a quotation of two or more lines from poetry as a block quotation. Begin each line of the poem on a new line, with punctuation at the ends of lines as in the original. For most papers, indent a block of poetry as you would a prose quotation; if a line is too long to fit on a single line, indent the runover farther than the rest of the quotation. (In a dissertation or other longer paper that includes many poetry quotations, center each left-aligned quotation on the page relative to the longest line.)

Whitman’s poem includes some memorable passages:

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this

soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same,

and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

If you are quoting a poem with an unusual alignment, reproduce the alignment of the original to the best of your ability.

This is what Herbert captured so beautifully:

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn

Before my tears did drown it.

Is the yeare onely lost to me?

Have I no bayes to crown it?

No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?

All wasted?

If you quote two or more lines of dialogue from a dramatic work, set the quotation apart in a block quotation formatted as you would prose. Present each speaker’s name so that it is distinct from the dialogue, such as in all capital letters or in a different font. Begin each speech on a new line, and indent runovers farther than the rest of the quotation.

Then the play takes an unusual turn:

R. ROISTER DOISTER. Except I have her to my wife, I shall run mad.

M. MERYGREEKE. Nay, “unwise” perhaps, but I warrant you for

“mad.”

25.2.2.3 EPIGRAPHS. An epigraph is a quotation that establishes a theme of your paper. For epigraphs used in the front matter of a thesis or dissertation, see A.2.1. Treat an epigraph at the beginning of a chapter or section as a block quotation. On the line below it, give the author and the title, flush right and preceded by an em dash (or two hyphens; see 21.7.2). You do not need a more formal citation for an epigraph. Leave two blank lines between the source line and the beginning of text. See also figure A.9.

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand.

—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities