Quotes: The Quick and Dirty Guide

Use precise verbs that tell us more than “say”

Acknowledges Adds Admits Addresses Argues Asserts Believes Claims Comments Compares Confirms

Contends Declares Denies Disputes Emphasizes Endorses Grants Illustrates Implies Insists Notes

Observes Points out Reasons Refutes Rejects Reports Responds Suggests Thinks Writes

Always integrate quotes into the structure of your own sentences.

Nonconventional: Laura Bolin Carrol defines logos. “Logos is commonly defined as argument from reason, and it usually appeals to an audience’s intellectual side.”

Conventional: One way to understand the rhetoric of this image is through an examination of the rhetor’s use of logos, which Laura Bolin Carrol defines as “argument from reason” (52).


Impress with syntactic prowess! (varying syntactic structures creates prose that is stimulating)


“Emotional appeals,” Carrol tells us, “can come in many forms” (53).

“Ethos,” writes Laura Bolin Carrol, “refers to the credibility of the rhetor--which can be a person or an organization” (54).


Quotes longer than four lines are indented

Grant-Davie extends our understanding of constraints beyond rhetors and audiences:

To this we can add linguistic constraints imposed by the genre of the textor by the conventions of language use dictated by the situation. Other constraints could arise from the immediate and broader contexts of the discourse, perhaps includings its geographical and historical background. (112)

Adding or Omitting words in quotes.

Keith Grant-Davie defines the rhetorical situation as “a situation where a speaker or writer sees a need to change reality and...that the change may be effected through rhetorical discourse” (105).

Keith Grant-Davie writes that “audience [transcends] the idea of a homogenous body of peope who have stable characteristics and are assembled in the rhetor’s presence” (109).