Use quotations effectively - Integrating sources - Writing Papers in APA Style

Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

Use quotations effectively
Integrating sources
Writing Papers in APA Style

When you quote a source, you borrow some of the author’s exact words and enclose them in quotation marks. Quotation marks show your readers that both the idea and the words belong to the author. Use quotations when your source’s language is especially vivid or when exact wording is needed for technical accuracy.

See “When to use quotations” (p. 388) for more advice.

Limiting your use of quotations

Keep the emphasis on your own ideas, and, as much as possible, keep your ideas in your own voice. It is not always necessary to quote full sentences from a source. Often you can integrate words and phrases from a source into your own sentence structure quite effectively.

Citing federal data, The New York Times reported a 30-percent drop in “people entering teacher preparation programs” between 2010 and 2014 (Rich, 2015, para. 10).

Bell (2010) has argued that the chief benefit of student-centered learning is that it connects students with “real-world tasks,” thus making learning more engaging as well as more comprehensive (p. 39).

Using the ellipsis

To condense a quoted passage, you can use an ellipsis — a series of three spaced periods — to indicate that you have omitted words. What remains must be grammatically complete.

Demski (2012) noted that “personalized learning . . . acknowledges and accommodates the range of abilities, prior experiences, needs, and interests of each student” (p. 33).

The writer has omitted the phrase “a student-centered teaching and learning model that” from the source.

If you leave out one or more full sentences, use a period before the ellipsis.

According to Demski (2012), “In any personalized learning model, the student — not the teacher — is the central figure. . . . Personalized learning may finally allow individualization and differentiation to actually happen in the classroom” (p. 34).

Ordinarily, do not use an ellipsis at the beginning or at the end of a quotation. Your readers will understand that you have taken the quoted material from a longer passage. The only exception occurs when you feel it is necessary, for clarity, to indicate that your quotation begins or ends in the middle of a sentence.

Image Using sources responsibly Make sure omissions and ellipses do not distort the meaning of your source’s words.

Using brackets

Brackets allow you to insert your own words into quoted material to clarify a confusing reference or to keep a sentence grammatical in your context.

Demski’s (2012) research confirms that “implement[ing] a true personalized learning model on a national level” is difficult for a number of reasons (p. 36).

To indicate an error such as a misspelling in a quotation, insert “[sic],” italicized and in brackets, right after the error.

Setting off long quotations

When you quote forty or more words from a source, set off the quotation by indenting it one-half inch from the left margin, and use the normal right margin.

Long quotations should be introduced by an informative sentence, often followed by a colon. Quotation marks are unnecessary because the indented format tells readers that the passage is taken word for word from the source.

✵ Svokos (2015) described popular educational games developed by the nonprofit organization GlassLab and used in thousands of U.S. classrooms:

o Some of the company’s games are education versions of existing ones — for example, its first release was SimCity EDU — while others are originals. Teachers get real-time updates on students’ progress as well as suggestions on what subjects they need to spend more time perfecting. (5. Educational Games section)

NOTE: The parenthetical citation with a locator (page number, paragraph number, or heading) goes outside the final mark of punctuation. When a quotation is run into your text, the opposite is true. See the sample citations on page 470.

For more advice on how to punctuate quotations, see “Quotation marks with other punctuation” in 56b.