Content

• Steps
• Warning

Using direct quotes in essays is a great way to use concrete evidence to support your ideas, making your arguments more convincing. Also, the quotes support your topic or topic. However, if you want a professional essay, you need to know how to add quotes properly whether using MLA or APA styles. Remember, if you use the quote without the source, it may be considered plagiarism. In addition, when adding citations to your essay, you must include the page you referenced at the end of the essay. If you want to learn how to add a quote to your essay, read Step 1 and get started.

Steps

Part 1 of 2: Quoting MLA style

The MLA (Modern Language Association) writing style requires that you cite the author's name and page number when you add the citation to the essay. If quoting poetry, you must quote lines of verse instead of page numbers. Unlike APA style, you do not need to provide five citations in the body of the essay, all references will be placed at the end of the essay.

1. 

   Add a short quote. In MLA style, short quotes are prose paragraphs shorter than 4 lines or less than 3 verses. If you want to cite text that meets the above length requirement, all you have to do is 1) enclose the quote in quotation marks, 2) provide the author's name, and 3) provide the number. Page. You can introduce the author's name before the quote or enclose the name in parentheses after the quote. You can write the page number at the end without using "p" or any other symbols.
   • Remember to write a few lines to introduce the quote; if you skip the introduction, the readers will not be able to navigate. Write and quote the quote and then enclose the quote in quotation marks; then quote the author's name and page number in parentheses and put a period (or any period) at the end of the sentence. For example:
     • According to some critics, fiction "is all but dead in the 21st century" (Smith 200).
   • You can include the author's name in the sentence instead of enclosing the parentheses at the end of the sentence. Here's another example:
     • Jones once asserted: "People who read fiction are shown to be more sympathetic to others" (85).
   • You can recommend to quote, quote and make a comment as follows:
     • Many believe that "Sport is meaningless" (Lane 50), while others completely oppose it.
   • If there is a punctuation in the original quote, you must include it in the essay:
     • The protagonist Harry Harrison always starts the day off by saying, "What a great morning!" (Granger 12).
   • If you are quoting a poem, you can quote the entire line with that verse and use the "/" sign to divide the line like in the example below:
     • As Miller puts it: "Nothing cuter than a sneezing cat" (11-12), and many cat lovers also testify to this fact.

2. 

   
   
   Long quote. In MLA style, long quotes are prose paragraphs longer than 4 sentences and verses longer than 3 sentences. If you want to quote, you must put them in a separate quote without quotes. You can write a few lines of quotation marks, ending with a colon. The first line of the quote is indented 1 inch (2.54cm) away from the double line. You can end the quote with punctuation, later Use the author's name and page number in parentheses.
   • Here's an example of how to introduce a long quote:
     • The short story "What They Bring" lists items that soldiers must carry during the Vietnam War, both for description and for readers to understand their hardship:

       What they bring with them is essential. Including P-38 can opener, pocket knife, heat card, watch, name tag, mosquito repellent, gum, cigarette, salt, Kool-Aid, lighter, match, needle set , Military Coupon, salary, 2 or 3 cans of water (O’Brien, 2)

   • When you quote more than 2 paragraphs, you must use the quote even if each paragraph has less than 4 sentences. The first line of each paragraph must be indented from the margin. Use parentheses (...) at the end of a paragraph to skip to the next paragraph.

3. 

   
   
   Quote poetry. If you want to quote a poem or a verse, you should keep the verse format to convey the intention of the author. The following is an example:

   • Howard Nemerov describes the waiting for lost love in his poem "The Window of the Storms":

     This lonely afternoon of memories (This afternoon, lonely memories come back)

     And missed desires, while the wintry rain (The wishes were missed in the winter rain).

     (Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!) (Distance in mind, unable to speak into words)

     Runs on the standing windows and away. (14-18) (Run on the window frame and go. (14-18))

4. 

   
   
   Add or remove words in a quote. You can do this if you want to change the citation slightly to suit the context of the essay, or you want to trim information that is irrelevant to the essay's thesis. Here are some examples of adding citations to essays in both cases:
   • Use brackets () to "write" specific information to help readers understand the citation context.
     • Mary Hodges, a 20th-century realist writer specializing in short story writing, once wrote: "Many women find themselves less questioning than novelists but they are not" (88).
   • Use parentheses (…) to omit any unnecessary parts of your essay. The following is an example:
     • Smith believes that many Ivy League students "feel that the teaching profession is not as ambitious as ... the banking profession" (90).

5. 

   
   
   Quotes from many authors. If you want to quote from more than one author, you must separate the last name with a comma or the word "and". The following is an example:
   • Numerous studies have shown that the MFA program "is the single most influential independent factor in helping writers publish their work for the first time." (Clarke, Owen and Kamoe 56).

6. 

   
   
   
   
   Quotes from the Internet. Quoting from the internet is difficult because you cannot find the page number. However, you should search for as much information as possible, such as the author's name, the year of publication, or the title of the essay or article. For example:
   • An online movie critic once said Trust is "the most embarrassing Canadian film of the past century" (Jenkins, "Blame Canada!").
   • Wedding guru Rachel Seaton affirmed on her personal blog "Every woman is a beautiful bride" (2012, "Godzilla in a Tux.").
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Part 2 of 2: APA-style quote

With the APA (American Psychological Association) citation style, you must provide the author's name and page number in MLA format, in addition to adding the year of publication. With APA style, you must add the character "p." before the page number in the excerpt.

1. 

   Short quote. When quoting short paragraphs (less than 40 words) in APA format, you must add the author's name, publication year, page number (insert "p." Before the page number) to the citation. Here are a few examples:
   • According to McKinney (2012), "Yoga is the best stress relief method of Americans in the 20th century" (p.54).
   • McKinney points out that "100 adults who practice yoga at least three times a week have lower blood pressure, better sleep habits, and less stress than the average person."(2012, p.55).
   • She also pointed out that, "Yoga relieves stress much better than running and cycling" (McKinney, 2012, p.60).

2. 

   
   
   Long quote. To quote a long paragraph in APA format, you must put the excerpt in a separate paragraph. The first line is indented 1.3cm from the margin, the rest remains the same. If the citation has many paragraphs, the first line of each paragraph must be indented 1.3 cm above the margin. Maintain double line spacing, quoted after parentheses after punctuation. The same rules as short quotes, you have to write the author's name, year of publication, number of pages in the trailer or in the snippet. Here are some examples:

   • Research by McKinney (2011) has shown the following:

     High school English teachers practice yoga 100 minutes a week for more than 1 month have better relationships with students, they easily sympathize with students and colleagues, less stress on grades and other daily tasks, even finding new meaning for the essays they have taught for years. (57-59).

3. 

   Write back your quote. If you are rewriting your citation in APA format, you should add the author's name, publication year, and page number to the rewrite paragraph. The following is an example:
   • McKinney believes that yoga is a form of therapy for the body and mind (2012, p.99).
   • According to McKinney, yoga should become a compulsory subject in public schools (2012, p.55).

4. 

   Quotes from many authors. If you are quoting from more than one author in the APA essay style, you need to use the symbol ("&") to combine the names of 2 authors alphabetically. The following is an example:
   • Finally, research shows that "Students who watch TV more than read books do not have a rich vocabulary" (Hoffer & Grace, 2008, p.50).

5. 

   Quotes from the Internet. When quoting from the Internet, you must try to find author name, date, paragraph number instead of page number. The following is an example:
   • In his article, Smith writes "The world doesn't need another blog" (2012, para.3).
   • If the author cannot be found, please use the article title instead. If you cannot find the date, write "n.d." instead of date. Like the following example:
     • Another study has shown that after-school support has a lot to do with student success ("Students and Tutoring," n.d.).
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Warning

• Always quote properly. Otherwise it will be considered plagiarism.