Imagine one day I walk into class and say, “Happy Birthday! I brought you a chocolate cake.” Then, I take out a bag of flour, a bottle of milk, a cup of sugar, a few eggs, and a few bars of chocolate…handing all of them to you separately. You would be unimpressed. I wouldn’t have made much effort to present you with a nice gift.
I should have taken the time to combine all the ingredients together in an effective, appealing way. Well, your readers can feel the same way when you just DUMP a direct quotation from the text into the middle of your writing without any set-up.
To add sophistication and style to your writing, you should work to integrate (or blend) direct quotations from a text into your own sentence structure. In this post I hope to give you some tools that will help you combine other people’s words with your own in a grammatically correct and appealing manner. The only real way to master this skill is to practice in your own writing, but these resources are a good place to begin developing your understanding of this ability.
Integrating Quotations with Style Handout
Blending Quotations (with a self-quiz)
More Video Explanations of how to BLEND quotations successfully (pick a few to view):
Knowing how to identify and correct run-on sentences is one of the best skills any young writer can develop and this ability allows apprentice scribes to write more clearly and writing more clearly will raise any ordinary Joe or Jane to rock-star status, leading to wealth, celebrity, and fame. I know. I am hilarious. I just made a grammar joke. If you didn’t get it, read on.
Robin Neal 