How many quotes in a paragraph

Everything on Grammar Monster is free. A-Z glossary punctuation A-Z confused words common mistakes ordered by seriousness vocabulary for learners tests and games More free grammar help Twitter Page YouTube Channel. This is called nesting quotations. For example: He looked the judge up and down and said: "My dog might not be able to say 'sausages' like the one on TV, but he can hold his own in a fight with a badger. Read more about single and double quotation marks.

In , the publisher Arthur C. Fifield sent Gertrude Stein the following rejection letter shortly after receiving her manuscript for The Making of Americans: "Dear Madam, "I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your M.

Not even one time. Search forums. Log in. Best of luck to the class of for their HSC exams. You can do it! Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here. YOU can help the next generation of students in the community! JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. How many quotes per paragraph? Thread starter yours Start date Sep 29, How many? Also, how many paragraphs? I'm talking about modules. I think this is a more specific way to consider how 'in-depth' an essay is since we've all agreed the page count can be everything and anything.

So you are aiming at around a minimum of 8 solid quotes! Excessively lengthy references can become confusing to your reader. MLA recommends listing no more than three sources, maximum, in any one reference. As ever, use your own judgment. It's your paper, you decide; and don't worry if your decisions vary from case to case. The most important thing is that the source of each of your quotes is clearly identified in your references, and that the placement of your references does not obstruct the flow of your paper.

If a passage you are citing contains a quote, the quote within your quote is placed in single quotation marks. This is the original passage, as printed in the website, word for word, down to the punctuation: No one saw "mountains of dead bodies" or "rivers of blood".

When quoting this passage, the quotes within the quote "mountains of dead bodies" and "rivers of blood" are placed in single quotation marks : According to Japanese scholar Tanaka Masaaki, "No one saw ' mountains of dead bodies' or 'rivers of blood' " Masaaki Ch. The rule, again: when quoting a passage that contains a quote, the quote within the quote is placed in single quotation marks , as above; notice that the larger quote within which the quote-within-the-quote is embedded, is placed in double quotation marks , as ever.

Although we generally recommend using quotes strategically and therefore sparingly, there may be times when you need to quote lengthy passages to illustrate or prove your claims.

Such lengthy quotes are formatted as block quotes. There is no absolute rule as to what constitutes a "lengthy quote" - some teachers say a quote is lengthy if it exceeds four or five typed lines; others, if it exceeds forty words or four sentences. The point is: once a quote becomes unusually lengthy it is formatted as a block quote. A block quote is a lengthy quote that is visually set off from the rest of your paper. It is single-spaced rather than double-spaced, like the rest of your paper and indented an additional half inch so that it visually draws attention to itself on the page.

The objective is to signal to the reader, even from a distance, that what follows is a lengthy quote. Chinese-American historian Iris Chang offers the following statistics in her effort to illustrate the full scope of the Nanking massacre:. Note that, in MLA, as shown above,the final punctuation of a block quote - unlike the punctuation for a regular short quote - is placed immediately after the end of the last sentence, preceding not following the parenthetical reference.

Sometimes it is necessary to modify the wording of a quote in order to make it flow more smoothly, to add relevant information, to change its tense to suit the point you are trying to make, or to ensure that its transition in or out of your prose is grammatically correct.

Writing in , Iris Chang was undoubtedly correct that Japan's version of the Nanking Massacre exemplified "how the Japanese, as a people [ once ] manage[ d ], nurture[ d ], and sustain[ ed ] their collective amnesia-even denial-when confronted with the record of their behavior through [ the ] period [ of World War II ]. Notice that the material added is placed in square brackets, visually indicating to the reader that it is not part of the original text.

Notice also that, although we have altered the tense of the quote from present to past and through the addition of the word "once" , changed an article from "that" to "the" , and added information to specify the World War II period we have not fundamentally altered the original meaning of the quote, which remains clearly discernible.

The rule, again: any modifications to a quote must be placed within square brackets. You can modify, as long as you do not change a quote's meaning.