At the end of the lesson, you will understand how and when use direct quotations in your writing.
First, why would I use a direct quotation instead of paraphrasing? When the exact language that a person uses shows the power or nuance of his point of view, you may want to use a direct quotation. You may also use direct quotations when you are citing a text to make an argument about the work itself or its author. Direct quotations can be powerful additions to your writing, but they should be used sparingly — only when they serve a specific purpose and not to fill space.
In the following video, you’ll learn the rules and structure for quoting sources in your writing. You will also learn how to use the APA referencing system, which is a citation method used by universities. It was developed by the American Psychological Association and it is a structured format you must follow when you report ideas from other sources in your writing.
By using direct quotations you transfer the exact words of the author in your writing without committing plagiarism. Let’s look at an example :
Effective teams can be difficult to describe because “high performance along one domain does not translate to high performance along with another” (Ervin et al., 2018, p. 470).
Notice that the phrase appears within quotation marks. Adding quotation marks is a necessary step when using direct quotations. The second point is that the phrase within the quotation marks does not start with a capital letter because the writer of the essay only quoted part of the sentence in the original text.
It is not enough to directly quote a text without citing your sources. The citation always appears after the quotation, as you can see in this example. You can find the presentation from the video here.
You can directly quote up to 40 words in one quotation. Make sure you don’t overuse direct quotations. Your essay should include only up to two short direct quotations, appearing in separate paragraphs. It takes skill and a good understanding of the text to decide when a direct quotation is appropriate. Essays with a lot of direct quotations get lower scores as they don’t serve the purpose of academic writing, which is to demonstrate your knowledge and personal writing style.
Let’s look at some examples:
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Select all quotations with a correct citation.