Composition and Literature

Dr. Susanne Bloomfield

SETTING UP QUOTATIONS

When incorporating quotations in your essay, vary the way that you introduce them. The following gives several examples as well as illustrates how to punctuate the sentences correctly. Note that the discussion of the story, in this case, is in the present tense. Below are five ways to say basically the same thing:

When Jim Burden arrives in Nebraska, he feels that “the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction” (54).

When Jim Burden arrives in Nebraska, he is overwhelmed. “I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction” (54).

When Jim Burden arrives in Nebraska, he says, “I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction” (54).

“I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction,” states Jim Burden when he arrives in Nebraska (54).

“I had the feeling,” believes Jim Burden when he arrives in Nebraska, “that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction” (54).

The following is an example of a longer quote (more than 4 regular lines) that employs the “sandwich technique”:

Jim and Antonia spend many afternoons exploring the Nebraska prairie, and neither ever lose their sense of awe at its vastness:

As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy, and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned and was not consumed. . . . It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day. (28)

Cather’s Biblical reference emphasizes the reverence which the pair held for the Nebraska plains and foreshadows how the two would eventually be transformed because of their association with it.