Tips How to Quote Dialogue In an Essay
What it means to quote dialogue in an essay?
It is good to understand the meaning of quoting dialogue in an essay. While you are writing your essay, you may want to refer to what some other person said directly without changing the phrase. This is where the application of quotes comes in; there are two ways in which you can refer to someone’s statement: you can decide to use reported speech or active speech.
It is in a direct speech that you will need to use the quotation because you are referring directly to what someone else said.
There is importance of using direct speech in your work:
- It makes your statement more valid because you are referring to a point by using the words of another person. Having reference in your work helps your reader to understand the origin of your points and they are not going to doubt it especially if you quote a dialogue.
- It also displays your proficiency in grammar. Not all people would use quotations in their essay simply because it has some rules that need to be followed; most people prefer to report than to quote because they are likely to mess up with the punctuation.
- It makes your work outstanding in that the reader can be able to get first-hand information just as it was said. While reporting some one’s dialogue, you might end up omitting some important words that could be important in support of your points, but when you use dialogue quotations, you are guaranteed to state everything hence strong points for your essay.
It is good to use quotes in your essay, but you have to adhere to some rules. If you do not understand how to quote a dialogue, then you should avoid it because it will mess up your work and change meaning. Below are some of the guides that you should take into consideration before you proceed to quote:
- Avoid quoting every section of your essay- when you insert too much quotation in your work it tends to be boring to your reader because you are over-relying on the words of another person. It reduces the originality of your paper and the reader can even undermine your ability to be creative now that you are dependent on someone else words.
- You should be precise in your quote- avoid quoting things that are not related to the context that you are writing about. Before you quote a dialogue, you need to do analysis and confirm that the impression being brought out from the dialogue relates directly with what you are talking about in your essay.
- Quote only words that relate vividly with what you are talking about- your work would be disorganized if you just place quote anyhow because they may end up bringing another meaning which is contrary to what you were trying to imply.
- Avoid too long quotes in your essay- you should try to use short quotes in your work because the moment they become too long then the reader is likely to fall off from your essay and get confused.
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How to make a quote in an essay
It is good to understand that there are different formats and rubrics to be followed while quoting different phrases in your essay depending on the length and the type of dialogue you are referring. Below are some of the illustrations for different quotes:
- Quoting a shorter passage which is less than four lines
James insisted on the spying character of Desmond unworthy in the book: “The scholar’s eyes glowed so much on her that Dominic held her over his heart.” (think wise 88).
- Quoting an entire passage
“In the fortunes of the mountain” (think big 88-90).
This way you will have summarized instead of writing the entire passage you will have referred to it using the simplest form. Lengthy quotations are not adored in essay writing the shorter it becomes, the better.
Existing dialogue quotation format
It is good to understand how to quote your dialogue because if you make an error while quoting it may change the entire meaning and bring misunderstanding in your essay. The format is the most important because it dictates whether you are right or wrong in your quotation. Quoting has several rules that need to be followed:
- You should place the quotation marks at both ends on your dialogue that you are referring to. It is the quotation marks that differentiate the quote from other sentences in your essay.
- Use single quotation marks inside the double quotes. This applies in the case of dialogue inside a quote. Once you have used the double quotes at both ends, you may want to introduce a dialogue of a certain character inside the quote; this is when you are supposed to use the single quotes.
For example:
“The boys stared at their mother. Mr. Rich said, ‘Lazy boys can’t help you find some work to do!!’”
You can also quote a dialogue by reporting it then use parenthesis at the end.
For example:
You should think before you leap (Faraday 57)
- Use blockquote while proving something in your essay- block quote reference is where you place the dialogue into indents for every line without using the quotation marks. For example:
What is your name?
Elsy.
Where do you come from?
I come from Taiwan.
Are you married?
My dear I am not committed to anyone.
What do you do for your part-time Hussle?
I am a professional writer of academic and website articles.
(Victor, Elsy, know your friend.com)
Dialogue examples
It is very beneficial to go through various writing quotes so that you can be a pro at quoting dialogues. A good writer would always go through the work of other writers to develop themselves. Here are some of the benefits that you are likely to get from exposure to different samples.
- You will be able to understand different formats of the dialogue quotes. When you go through the work of other writers, you will learn about different quotes available for application.
- You will understand how to apply different quotes in your essay. There being a variety of quotes, by going through samples and templates you will be able to understand how to apply different formats of the quotations.
- You will be able to avoid simple punctuation and spelling errors. When it comes to writing multiple lines of dialogue, you may end up messing with the punctuation and this will change the meaning of your sentence. Punctuation is very key in the quotation of dialogue because it identifies different characters in your quote.
- You will get to understand it more through the examples- you may have the theory part of how dialogue should be quoted but once you get to see different examples, it becomes more practical and you can easily understand and apply the skill.
This guide is guaranteed to guide you in writing the best dialogue quote for your essay.
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