Video Transcripts:

Using Quotations: Integrating Quotations in the Middle of a Sentence

Last updated 5/6/2020

 

Visual: Screen opens to a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title “Using Quotations” and the video title “Integrating Quotations in the Middle of a Sentence.”

Audio: Guitar music

 

Visual: Slide changes to the title “Integrating a Quotation in the Middle of a Sentence” and the following examples:

• Narrative citation: Johnson et al. (2010) stated that “educators should control their students in the classroom in order to avoid misbehavior, misconduct, and decreased learning” (p. 57), therefore instructor training should prioritize classroom management techniques to promote increased student learning.
• Parenthetical citation: Recommendations for classroom management include reasoning such as “educators should control their students in the classroom in order to avoid misbehavior, misconduct, and decreased learning” (Johnson et al., 2010, p. 57), therefore instructor training should prioritize classroom management techniques to promote increased student learning.

Audio: When using a quotation, it’s important that you don’t drop a quotation into your paragraph without integrating it into your own voice. The reason for this is a quotation that’s dropped into your paragraph on its own can be very jarring; it’s sort of like if you were having a conversation with someone, and another person interrupted and started to say something and then just left. It might not be clear how what they said relates to the rest of the conversation you were just having, why they were there, or who they were. That is the effect dropping a quotation into your paragraph can have, which we want to avoid to develop clear, cohesive integration of our sources.

We can create this cohesive use of sources by using transitions to help lead the reader from your voice into the voice of your quotation and then out of it again.  One way to do that is to incorporate your quotation into the middle of your sentence, which is a really effective way of using a quotation. This approach of integrating quotations allows you to add context and analysis around the quotation, integrating it into your own ideas, your voice, and the rest of your paragraph.

Here are a couple of examples of integrating quotations into the middle of a sentence. This first example is a narrative example where the author's name is part of the sentence. You can see here that we have a continued thought after the quotation that explains the conclusions that this writer would like the audience to draw from that quotation. Likewise, you can also integrate a quotation with a parenthetical citation. In this case, you don't have to use the author's name in the text to include a quotation, but the citation is at the end of the quotation within parentheses, and there’s both a transition into the quotation and out of the quotation.

So those are a few options for integrating a quotation in the middle of a larger sentence to effectively and cohesively integrate the quotation into your writing.

 

Visual: The screen changes to an ending slide with slide a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The email address writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu appears on the screen.