In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.
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| [a] Emphasis RF |
7. Quotations and Captions
This is one of the most important things you will learn to do in academic writing, so pay attention. Engaging authors, their opinions, and the range of their research findings lies near the center of academic life. You read, you reflect, and then you write about it. More often than not, you are going to want the words of the authors who led to your stimulating new thoughts...on the page, right there with you. And that is a good thing.
The hard part is getting it just right. The first thing you may want to consider is the word "quotation." Most people say "quote," as in "I put the quote from Edmund Spenser on the third page." Nope, you "...put the quotation from Edmund Spenser on the third page." There are stock quotes and price quotes, but the thing you put in your paper is a quotation. Look it up. If that sounds a little too prescriptive, think rather how you'll wow your friends with the consistently accurate use of the term. They will puzzle in wonderment at your linguistic control, and you will have to do your best to feign humility. It'll be fun.
But learning to quote (this is the "unsplit" infinitive) is not all play. There are a great number of details to consider, the most important of which is to set off quotations of more than three lines. We begin with that one, below, and work our way through the hanging vines of quotation procedure, before coming to the calm waters of italics and emphasis in our next post.
The hard part is getting it just right. The first thing you may want to consider is the word "quotation." Most people say "quote," as in "I put the quote from Edmund Spenser on the third page." Nope, you "...put the quotation from Edmund Spenser on the third page." There are stock quotes and price quotes, but the thing you put in your paper is a quotation. Look it up. If that sounds a little too prescriptive, think rather how you'll wow your friends with the consistently accurate use of the term. They will puzzle in wonderment at your linguistic control, and you will have to do your best to feign humility. It'll be fun.
But learning to quote (this is the "unsplit" infinitive) is not all play. There are a great number of details to consider, the most important of which is to set off quotations of more than three lines. We begin with that one, below, and work our way through the hanging vines of quotation procedure, before coming to the calm waters of italics and emphasis in our next post.
a. Short quotations of fewer than three lines can be set off in the main double-spaced text with quotation marks. “I would like you to get that straight,” Rob muttered, “or it could be a very long semester.”
b. Please remember that proper quotation form requires proper use of (“) and (‘). (‘) should only be used for a quotation within a quotation—never “independently.” By the way, the Norwegian bachelor farmer said, “My daddy always told me to milk the cows first and socialize later, if time permits. ‘And that is why I have spent all of my time with cows,’ he reminded me.”
c. Quotations longer than three lines should be set off from the text by an extra .5” on each side, and should be single-spaced. Learn to make a “quotation style” for your software that will do this automatically (see #3—Styles, above). This is my personal preference.
d. Quotations should remain in the same twelve-point font used in the body of your paper. Do not use a different (or smaller) font for quotations, even if you have seen beautiful examples of it in published works. Publishers (usually) use higher quality equipment for their printing than do college libraries or computer rooms.
e. Do not italicize or use bold face fonts in quoted texts. (Italics for emphasis—yours or the author’s—is acceptable). If you italicize a portion of the text you have quoted (for emphasis or clarity), you must make a note of this in your citation (see below).
Example
2John Gardner, The Art of Fiction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 55–56.
Italics mine.
3Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 20. Author’s italics.
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| [b] Painted-in RF |
f. Single-spaced quotations are my preference, even though many publishers prefer that everything be double-spaced. I am reading for the quality of your prose and your argumentation, and do not need extra spaces to critique the writers you quote.
g. Longer quotations should be inset by a half-inch on both the left and right margins (this is my personal preference, since it is helpful for making comments—see 7c, above).
h. Please be aware that you should not place quotation marks around inset quotations. They should only be used in brief quotations within the body of your text. Rob said one more time, for all to hear: “You need to get this straight!”
i. Do not “center” quotations. This just makes your text “messy.”
j. All quotations should have an unjustified right margin (see 4g).
Example:
… a complex rhetorical strategy, as we shall see. Others, such as the entry below,
are brief, and comment quite directly on a preceding textual entry:
Left Margin Justified Right Margin Unjustified
Eighth month. Sun Quan sent an envoy to declare himself subject [to Wei], his
memorial worded in humble language. He also returned Yu Jin and others [who
were prisoners in Wu]...Yu Jin’s mustache and hair were white, his appearance
disheveled. Before the sovereign, he wept and knocked his head against the
ground. The sovereign consoled him, relating the stories of Xun Linfu and Meng
Mingshi. He appointed him anyuan jiangjun, ordering him north to Ye, and to visit
Gaoling. The sovereign then had images of Guan Yu’s victory, Pang De’s rage,
and Yu Jin’s surrender painted on the Gaoling mausoleum walls. Seeing this, Jin
was ashamed, grew ill, and died.1
Before proceeding to a more general discussion of commentarial themes in the Zizhi
tongjian, it is important to point out that the vast majority of commentaries do not deal
directly with the rhetorical issues surrounding SimaGuang’s use of source materials.
k. There should be one “clean” space between double-spaced text and quotations. Delete extra spaces, but make sure that you do leave a space before and after the quotation. The example directly above is correct.
Example (Incorrect—insufficient spacing between text and quotation):
… a complex rhetorical strategy, as we shall see. Others, such as the entry below, are
brief, and comment quite directly on a preceding textual entry:
Eighth month. Sun Quan sent an envoy to declare himself subject [to Wei], his
memorial worded in humble language. He also returned Yu Jin and others [who
were prisoners in Wu].
Example (Incorrect—too much spacing between text and quotation):
… a complex rhetorical strategy, as we shall see. Others, such as the entry below, are
brief, and comment quite directly on a preceding textual entry:
(delete this space)
Eighth month. Sun Quan sent an envoy to declare himself subject [to Wei], his
memorial worded in humble language. He also returned Yu Jin and others [who
were prisoners in Wu].
NEXT
Dashes and Hyphens
This should be easy, but it's not. Just ask the journalists at the consolidated newspaper (this happened many years ago in Chattanooga) when the News and the Free Press were combined with a dangling and problematic hyphen. Think about it.
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