How Much Of A Text You Should Quote?
When quoting for a source material, the idea is always to quote as little as possible. Quote just enough for the reader to understand the main idea and create the desired effect, filling in the rest with your own words.
If you’re struggling with drilling a paragraph of quoted material down to size, here are some guidelines you can use.
- Avoid block quotations like the plague. Quoting large blocks of words can make your job easier. However, it also takes away from any impact your own ideas can make. Only do it if omitting any words will affect the original material’s most important points.
- Quote short fragments whenever possible. Rather than quote full sentences, see if you can communicate the same idea while quoting just fragments. A lot of what people say, especially in interviews, tend to be repetitive, so picking the most appropriate representation should of their thought will often do.
- Make sure your quote represents the source’s complete thoughts. One danger of quoting fragments is that you drill down the source’s ideas to one sound bite. Thus, it’s easy to end up taking their words out of context. Be responsible when you quote, taking pains to ensure doing so won’t misrepresent the source by putting words in their proper context.
As always, we encourage you to use a grammar corrector whenever you write, regardless of whether you quote long blocks or sparse excerpts. Not only will a software-based proofreader save you time, it’s usually more thorough and accurate than any writer who’s tired, sleepy and bothered by a deadline can ever hope to be.