Lesson 1.1 - Direct Quotations: What are they good for?

Direct quotations, what are they good for?  “Absolutely nothing,” said the disinterested student.

Although we don’t agree with the student’s opinion, the above is an example of a direct quote.

Direct Quotation – the exact words you hear spoken

Let’s further explore how properly using quotation marks with direct quotes will better help the reader understand what they are reading.  Below will guide you through how to use quotation marks when quoting direct quotes.

• Use quotation marks to enclose a direct quotation.  A direct quotation is used to quote the author’s language word for word.
• When only a word or phrase is quoted from another source, be sure to place the quotation marks around only the words extracted from the original source and not around any rearrangement of those words.
• Be sure not to include such words as “a” and “the” at the beginning or “etc.” at the end of the quotation unless these words were actually part of the original quote.
• When quoting a series of words or phrases in the exact sequence in which they originally appeared, use quotation marks before and after the complete series.
• When the quoted material is introduced by “that” or is in some other manner integrated into the sentence, do not capitalize the first word of the quotation.
• When a quotation is woven into the flow of the sentence, do not use a comma before or after the quotation.
• When quoting material and changing the tense from how it was spoken in the original statement, the quote is no longer a direct quote and should not be quoted.

Let’s continue on to go over examples.