Last Name 2 quote! Put the information in quotation marks “and then put the last name of the source and the page number in parenthesis after, with the period after that, like so” (Heinicke 29). Notice that there is a space between the quotation mark and the parenthesis, no comma in the citation, and there is a space between the name and the page number. Even if a student is paraphrasing someone else’s work, there should be a citation after it as shown here (Kramer 17). This is proper and extremely important for avoiding plagiarism. If the author is mentioned in the signal phrase, then the author’s name will not be repeated in the parenthesis, so just a page number will do if there is one. When quoting more than four lines, the quote needs to be indented one inch. This should be equivalent to tabbing twice. The quote should be double-spaced like everything else in the paper. The citation will be at the end, but the period will be before the parenthesis. Furthermore, there is generally a colon before a long quote: There is no need for quotation marks because indenting all the information defines it as a quote. Only use quotation marks if quoting dialogue spoken by a character. Some instructors may request that exceedingly long quotes, if needed, be single-spaced. This is not unusual. Many instructors use MLA formatting with a few of their own special rules. Always pay attention to what an instructor requires when writing a paper. Proper MLA is double spaced. (Young 54) Begin the next line back at the one inch margin without any extra spacing between it and the quote. When leaving something out of a quotation, use an ellipsis . . . to signify the omission. An ellipsis is made with three periods that have spaces in between, as shown in the line above. There are some accepted rules for formal writing. Do not use personal pronouns such as I, me, ours, us, you, and your. The focus should not be on the writer of the paper, which is what
Last Name 3 personal pronoun usage causes. Moreover, using a personal pronoun that includes the reader – such as we, us, our, you, your – may imply that a reader shares the opinions of the paper, and he or she may not. Instead of the pronoun “you,” try a plural noun like readers,