How to Use a Quote in an Essay

If you want to make your essays sound as credibly as possible, you will need to use quotes from reputable resources. This is not always easy to do because you have to figure out a way to work someone else’s words into your own. It's an important part of preparing for a college interview, but also you use qoutes almost every time, when you write a text. Even if you only use a couple quotes in your writing, you will have a greater sense of authority than you would without them. Without quotes, the readers have to believe everything you say. Most of them won’t. Here are some tips to help you effectively work quotes into you college essays.

Don’t Slap a Quote into a Paragraph

I’ve seen far too many people try to quote a piece by simply inserting a sentence from it in their work. This is not exactly a good idea. Rather than putting a sentence directly into your paragraph, you should try using part of it in line with one of your own sentences. For example:
Bad: Shakespeare once said “To be or not to be? That is the question.” With that statement, he implies…
Good: According to Shakespeare, the question is “to be or not to be?” This statement suggests…
You can see there that I used a part of the quote in my own sentence, rather than using the full quote dead on. The only exception to this would be if you need to quote a paragraph from something. In…