Effective quoting

Quotations are a minefield. There are a thousand ways to go wrong—putting too much stress on quotations, quoting too much, quoting the wrong passages, blurring the line between your voice and those of the sources you quote, disrupting the flow of your argument, and so on. This section of Nuts and Bolts presents generic advice on how to quote effectively. Read it in tandem with the next sections on specific documentation styles. In this section I have followed MLA documentation style, but the examples could easily be adapted to Chicago or other styles.