EMBEDDING QUOTATIONS

EMBEDDING QUOTATIONS English I PreAP

What is it? • Each piece of quoted material in a paragraph must have an introduction that gives the context and background for the quotation • Embedding quotations helps quoted material flow naturally and coherently into your paragraph

EXAMPLE of EMBEDDED QUOTATION While out hunting, a young boy’s “blood surged to be close to death.” *Introduction of evidence is bolded/underlined.

Listen to It! • When written properly, the reader should not be able to hear where the quotation marks are when the sentence is read aloud. • A properly embedded quotation creates a seamless transition from the background information to the quoted material.

Can you hear them? The young boy watches as his older companion “squeezed a thumb” into the sparrow’s throat until the boy himself feels as if he “could not breathe.” NO! The contextual information and quoted material are seamlessly working together to create a sentence that flows.

Can you hear them? In stanza 9 “Not yet he said. And squeezed a thumb into its throat until I could not breathe.” YES! The introduction of evidence is choppy, incomplete and predictable. The example does not make sense when read aloud. Every sentence must make sense regardless of whether it contains quoted material or not.

How do you make it flow? • You may need to change words within your quote so that the sentence is grammatically correct and coherent. • When changing words in a sentence, indicate the change by placing brackets [ ] around the change in the word or the changed word.

What does it look like? After injuring two birds, the speaker “still [hears] them.” • The original line in the poem is “still heard them” but because analytical writing is done in present tense, the verb needs to be changed in order for it to flow.

How do you make it flow? • You may need to omit a word or words in the middle of a long quotation to condense it or embed it in your thoughts. • To omit words, use ellipses (…) • Ordinarily, do not use the ellipsis at the beginning or at the end of a quotation. However, if you have cut some words from the end of the final sentence quoted, you must use an ellipsis.

What does it look like? Even after the cries of the birds physically stopped, the speaker “heard…Those slender flutes of sorrow never cease.” • The original line in the poem is “I ever have heard, time cannot drown them, Those slender flutes of sorrow never cease.” Parts of the text were omitted in order for the evidence to flow within the sentence and paragraph as a whole.

Put It All Together • Give background and context for all quoted material – What is happening? Who is speaking? Where did it happen? When did it happen? • Only use the most important part of the quote • Read your sentence aloud – can you hear the quotation marks? You shouldn’t! • Change word tense if necessary and omit unnecessary words and phrases; use brackets and ellipses to indicate your changes

Let’s Practice Embed this quote: “But I have hoped for years all that is wild, Airy, and beautiful will forgive my guilt.”

It might look like one of these. • Years after the speaker shot the birds, “[he hopes]…all that is wild, Airy and beautiful will forgive [his] guilt.” • The speaker hopes for forgiveness from “all that is wild, Airy, and beautiful…” • The speaker asks nature to “forgive [his] guilt.”

Independent Practice Identify whether the quote is embedded or not. For each unsuccessfully un-embedded quotation, rewrite the sentence correctly embedding the quotation. • The speaker in “Forgive My Guilt” learned his lesson. “The cries went out one day: but I still hear them” • “‘It’s not dead!’ caught in my throat.” The boy is disturbed by the bird’s suffering. • The speaker “still heard” the sounds of dying birds long after their cries had been silenced, although “time cannot drown” his memory of them. • After shooting at the birds, the speaker “ran to fetch them in.” • In “Forgive My Guilt”, a young boy shoots two birds and they die. “My gun went off, they ran with broken wings.” • “My own blood surged to be so close to death but the sparrow lived!” He felt the bird’s pain and was scared of his closeness to something dying. • The narrator feels as if he is in the bird’s position. “squeezed a thumb into its throat until I could not breathe” shows how the boy is deeply affected by the death of the bird and feels for it. • “That welded his face again the gunstock.” This shows that he was gripping the gun very tightly and has a steady aim. • “I lay in the frost flowers with a gun.” The speaker recalls being younger and shooting two birds to know what it feels like to take something’s life. • The author states: “jagged ivory bones where wings should be.” The speaker sees the result of his violence when he looks at the birds.

EMBEDDING QUOTATIONS