Annotation

“Quoting someone else’s words gives a tremendous amount of credibility to your summary and helps ensure that it is fair and accurate. In a sense, then, quotations function as a kind of proof of evidence, saying to readers: “Look, I’m not just making this up. She makes this claim and here it is in her exact words.” Adding pieces of others’ work in your writer in the form of quotes makes your writing more credible. Quotes serve as proof to your reader that the ideas in your writing are supported.

“But the main problem with quoting arises when writers assume that quotations speak for themselves. Because the meaning of a quotation is obvious to them, many writers assume that this meaning will also be obvious to their readers, when often it is not. Writers who make this mistake think that their job is done when they’ve chosen a quotation and inserted it into their text. They draft an essay, slap in a few quotations, and whammo, they’re done.” Often when people are quoting, they tend to just put the quote in their writing without any explanation assuming their readers would know what the quote means.  Most time the quotes are not easy to interpret, which leaves their reader confused.

“In a way, quotations are orphans: words that have been taken from their original contexts and that need to be integrated into their new textual surroundings.” The author’s analogies make their writing and points/ ideas very clear and coherent.

“Finding relevant quotations is only part of your job; you also need to present them in a way that makes their relevance and meaning clear to your readers. Since quotations do not speak for themselves, you need to build a frame around them in which you do that speaking for them.” When quoting, you cannot simply quote something and leave it without an explanation. After finding relevant quotations you must further explain what the quote means to you and your writing which proves the relevance of that quote in the first place. 

“And yet, though the particular situation usually dictates when and how much to explain a quotation, we will still offer one piece of advice: when in doubt, go for it. It is better to risk being overly explicit about what you take a quotation to mean than to leave the quotation dangling and your readers in doubt.” Some questions that arise in the article are “But is it possible to overexplain a quotation? And how do you know when you’ve explained a quotation thoroughly enough?” and I was wondering the same thing. When quoting, it is better to overanalyze than under analyze though there is no standard way to analyze a quote in your writing. When you feel as though your quote needs to be overanalyzed in order to make it clear to your readers then go for it overanalyze. Better to overanalyze than to leave your audience confused about the purpose of the quote. 

 

 

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