Punctuation Practice: Long Quotes

We'll continue refining our quoting abilities by practicing with long quotes, which are also known as "block quotes."  I've noticed that many of you are already experimenting with these, and this is likely to expand as we move into drafting longer papers.

APA defines a long quote as four typed lines of text; another rule of thumb is approximately 40 words or longer.  When you're using quotes this long, you'll need to do some special formatting to make them visually distinctive on the page.

I'm going to ask that you look over the samples and rules available at this website: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/06/block-quotations-in-apa-style.html Links to an external site.

After you're comfortable with the basics, I'll ask you to try your hand at formatting a long quote yourself.   This will also serve as prewriting for your Source Evaluation Essay.

1. Look at the source you've chosen to use as your subject for the Source Evaluation Essay.  Find a longish chunk (40+ words) that you feel illustrates something important about this source's contents or writing style.
   
2. Draft a paragraph that uses this quote, which might be included at some point in your Source Evaluation Essay.
   
3. Submit the entire paragraph, long quote included, here.  This should be an Google Doc, so that your formatting shows up properly.
   

This paragraph doesn't have to be used in your final Source Evaluation Essay draft if you decide it doesn't work.

Factors to consider:

• long quotes don't have quotation marks at their beginning or end
• they're indented 10 spaces (2 tabs) from the left margin.  This is one more time than a normal paragraph beginning.
• they're not indented on the right side at all.
• they're not italicized or bolded.
• citations should appear at the end, AFTER the period