Normally, when ending a quotation and a sentence at the same place, you put quotation marks after the period:
Kilgore Trout, not knowing who or what did it, simply states, “for all I know, that car may have been occupied by an intelligent gas from Pluto.”
When citing the quote, however, you should give the source’s page number or page range within parentheses after the quote marks and before the final punctuation mark. You should not give any abbreviation for the page number, just the number itself:
Kilgore Trout, not knowing who or what did it, simply states, “for all I know, that car may have been occupied by an intelligent gas from Pluto” (77).
If the author or book is not obvious to your reader from the context, give the author’s last name and/or a shorthand reference to the title before the page number. No comma should intervene.
His father accused Poe of behaving in a “moody and unruly manner” towards the family, as well as having a “complete absence of any gratitude” (Krutch 77).
Throughout our lives, money will be an issue unless you are born with “different circumstances” (Breakfast 106).
If your quote runs four lines or longer in the text of your paper, then you should block quote. Indent the quote one inch on both sides, single-space it, justify its margins, and remove its quote marks. When block quoting, give the parenthetical citation after the ending punctuation mark, so your reader knows that the citation refers to the entire passage, not just the last sentence. In general, block quotes should be introduced with a contextualizing sentence that ends with a colon:
At the conclusion of Lord of the Flies, Ralph and the other boys realize the horror of their actions:
The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. (186)
Posted by Justin Wells : 05/24/2008