If there is a necessity to insert a quotation in the text of a composing paper, a student has to do it properly because it needs special knowledge. There are different formatting styles available. And the simplest of them is MLA. However, do not think you won’t need to do anything all to do the job. If you want to do things properly and add citations correctly, learn some of the peculiarities of this type of formatting. The article below will teach you to cite poetry correctly.
You may ask why you need to put poems citation in the text at all. Being a student means that you will be assigned a lot of written work. being a student of English or Literature, or Art means you will need to do lots of those. They may include Descriptive, Reflective, Argumentative types of essays, etc. With such a load of tasks, you will need to look for methods of doing your home task really fast.
Normally, you will be using citations from the original text if you want to convey the author’s idea about a certain topic. If you don’t do that, they would consider it plagiarism. If you don’t insert citation words by work but paraphrase it you don’t need to use quotation marks. However, in this case, you still need to add an in-text citation when you finish the idea. You should also remember placing the title of the poem in the quotation marks. There is no need to underline them. If you remove one or several lines of the poem in your text, remember to insert ellipses.
When citing poems in written works in the field of Humanities or Art, MLA formatting style if the most frequently used one. When you begin working with this style, you need to take into account a lot of rules that help you do proper citation. In another case, the text will contain plagiarism.
Let’s first see what citing means. Say, you are working on a project and you found some author’s idea that you want to use in your work. If you want to use it in the text without changes, word by word, just like its author said – it means you cite it. If you use MLA style, you will be inserting quotations of different lengths. When the poem quotation contains up to 3 lines, it is called a short one.
When you say citing you mean presenting the author’s words just as they go in the original source. If you use MLA style, you have options of using quotes. Choosing the right option, you need to consider the length of the quotation. Short poetry citations are usually no longer than 3 lines (4 lines for prose).
An example is taken from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien:
From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,
Light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken…
If the quote you use is longer than 4 lines, it is considered a long one. Also, there are situations when you will want to remove some words from the direct in-text quotation because they do not have any meaning for your project. In this case, you need to identify the important information in the citation fast and use it in the proper form in your text.
When you start citing, you should do it properly. The title of the quote comes first. For this purpose, you may use italics or quotation marks instead. However, the title length will be a decisive factor. Short titles are conveyed the following way:
“Be Proud of Who You Are”;
“Our Brothers”;
If you have a longer title of the poem, you should type it in italics. Below are some examples:
Tape for the Turn of the Year;
The Sea and the Mirror;
When you use quotes from poetry, no matter if it is few words or a paragraph, remember to use quotation marks in the beginning and end. For citing exactly the phrase of the author they apply parentheses. Punctuation marks are also of great importance. You may be using a period of coma after the parenthesis. Do not forget to make the number of the citation correspond to the number of the relevant line. Let’s check the following example:
“According to the lyrics of the author, “and every fair from fair sometime declines” (7).
If you plan to use quote lines following each other, put a virgule (/). It will help you define where you can “divide” the lines you chose to use. The author’s name is put in the parenthesis divided with a hyphen.
If there is a need to use a quotation consisting of more than 4 consecutive lines, put a “long quotation”; or else called blockquote. Begin with a signal phrase in the intro of your citation; indent it twice; add double space. The punctuation marks should be used the way they are in the original text.
Other elements of poetry quotations are put as if you quote prose.
And remember, no matter what type of quotes you use, you should always do the proofreading to check if everything is used correctly.
Before you proceed to compose your essay, you should always learn the basic concepts of citing poetry in this format. There are tons of information available on the topic online and inland libraries. It is also essential to read the poetry from which you take the quotation. This will let you realize which part of it is most suitable for your project.
Before using the quotation define whether it is long or short. Short ones contain no more than 3 lines.
Examples below will help you understand the above theory better:
If the source text has line numbers you should also put them. The right place to put them – in parentheses, just when quotation marks the end, before the final punctuation.
If there is a longer piece of poem you want to quote, you should do the following:
Emily Dickinson concludes “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” with a characteristically bittersweet stanza:
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong June
To an admiring bog! (5-8).
In Social sciences, they use APA format for citing. It has its own peculiarities. Here are the rules to consider when quoting in APA:
Longer quotes should begin with new lines and contain block quotations.
You must always remember to provide feedback or comments on your choice of the quotation. You should explain why exactly this specific piece of the original text was chosen and how it helps reveal your essay idea.
There is no specific place to pout quotations. You can choose any position which is proper by your opinion- beginning, end or middle of the sentence.
If you decide to skip some words of phrases from the quote, you should use ellipses in the place where such words or phrases were missed.
“On the… different shores of the Dream” (23).
If you change grammar in the quotation you should type in brackets: The speaker states that “Darkling [he listens]” (51).).
We hope this guide helped you understand how to use different types of citations in different formats. However, if you still feel puzzled about putting quotations in the text, you can always turn for professional help online.
We can do all types of writing and citing. You will receive a winning essay with a properly used and formatted quotation.
