Blending Quotations

Blending not Dropping

All writers know of importance of citing information and giving credit to the source of ideas not original to an author.  In-text parenthetical citation is prevalent in academic writing and must not be overlooked.  However, citing sources is only half the battle.  Blending quotes is the skillful application of cited information.

Integrating quotations requires writers (as in you) to skillfully blend small amounts of quoted information from an original source into sentences of your own creation.  (Of course, you can't forget your MLA parenthetical citation.)   

Of course, you want to make sure you are using the correct quotations for your idea.  Some simple rules to follow when choosing quotes can be found here.

Dropping quotations into writings is not evidence of a mature writer. 

For example:

WRONG: T.S. Eliot, in his "Talent and the Individual," uses gender-specific language. "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists" (Eliot 29).

RIGHT: T.S. Eliot, in his "Talent and the Individual," uses gender-specific language. He argues, for instance, that "no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists" (Eliot 29).

Essay Quote Citation vs Blogging Hyperlinks

As I covered in my previous post, MLA citation is extremely important to avoid plagiarism.  In-text parenthetical citation allows writers to quote information from outside sources in order to support their writing; the source information always goes in a parentheses when not mentioned in the blended sentence.

To refresh your memory, the following is an example of a dropped quote vs. a blended quote using in-text parenthetical citation.

• Dropped
• "He spoke to us in German and then left us behind" (Donaldson 45).

• Blended
• "I never thought of myself as proud," says Jennings in his book Pushing the Limits of Political Journalism (107).

When blogging, in-text parenthetical citation is not necessary. Instead, bloggers hyperlink the credited information to the original source.

For example:

I found an article that uses accurate hyperlinking and blending from ReadWriteWeb: This article is about Read It Later's new app Pocket, which allows users to save pages to read later:

Pocket founder Nate Weiner posted his rationale for making his app free. He has two essential arguments.

The first is that "it is hard to ask most people to pay for something they don't understand." 

Here is another example from the blog Ars Technica about the CISPA legislation.  (CISPA is the government's new legislation about controlling Internet privacy after SOPA was ultimately shut down by opposition on the Internet.)

The controversy over the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act intensified on Tuesday when a White House spokeswoman warned Congress not to pass "cybersecurity" legislation without "robust safeguards to preserve the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens." While the statement by National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden did not mention CISPA specifically, there was little doubt which legislation she was talking about.

Finally, here is a third example on theguardian that is also discussing the overwhelming fight about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) concerning Internet privacy:

After the act was shelved, Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents music labels, wrote a blistering article in the New York Times attacking Wikipedia and Google for spreading misinformation in order to cause a "digital tsunami" that "raised questions about how the democratic process functions in the digital age".

Notice that each example introduces the credibility of the author, quoted information identified by the quotation marks, and a hyperlink to the original statement.  These three items are extremely important for blending quotations with correct citation in a blog.

Blending quotations is exactly the same when written in an essay.  The only difference is using parenthetical citation instead of hyperlinks when writing a research paper.

Remember, a quote in research for citation is not what someone "says."  That is dialogue.
A quote for research citation is not a famous statement or phrase by someone.  Yes, that is considered a quote, but it is not what one looks for when using to support your writing.

Again, keep the tips covered in this post in mind when you are writing your next blog post and/or your research paper.  Plagiarism is no joke.