Early Childhood Education

"I hate quotation.  Tell me what you know."  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

The majority of your paper should be paraphrasing of resources and your analysis of the topic.  A good rule of thumb is to have no more than one quote per page of the paper.  Use quotations to emphasize a point, and also explain why the quote is relevant in the paragraph around it.

When it's best to use the exact words from a source, you need to indicate it's a quote.  Do so by putting quotation marks " " around the words.

Example:

Smith (1998) went on to explain, "The zombies were crawling over the roof and I was afraid they would break in the window" (p.64).

Example courtesy Colorado Technical University.

If the quote you want to use is longer than 40 words, you set it apart from the paragraph in a double-spaced block of text.  Use block quotes sparingly: one block quote per term (every class, every paper) is still probably too many block quotes.  It is usually better to paraphrase all or most of the quote.

Example:

Smith (1998) went on to explain:

We were cowering in the upstairs bedrooms when they came.  I remember hiding under the bed like that would stop them from smelling my location.  It was of no use, though: the zombies were crawling over the roof and I was afraid they would break in the window!  (p. 64)

To create a block quote:

• Indent the whole block of text five spaces from the regular margin.
• Provide a statement of introduction, with a colon :
• There are no quotation marks around the quoted text.
• Give the parenthetical reference at the end of the block quote, then start a new line and continue typing your paper.  If the next line is the start of a new paragraph, do indent it as normal (even though it looks weird).

Example courtesy of Colorado Technical University.