In your academic writing, keep the emphasis on your ideas and your language; use your own words to summarize and to paraphrase your sources and to explain your points. Try to avoid quoting excessively. It is almost impossible to integrate numerous long quotations smoothly into your own text.

Sometimes, however, quotations can be the most effective way to integrate a source’s ideas.

When to use quotations

Keep in mind that it is not always necessary to quote full sentences from a source. To reduce your reliance on the words of others, you can often integrate language from a source into your own sentence structure.

As Hurst has pointed out, until “an outcry erupted in the Northern press,” even the Confederates did not deny that there had been a massacre at Fort Pillow.⁴

Union surgeon Dr. Charles Fitch testified that after he was in custody he “saw” Confederate soldiers “kill every negro that made his appearance dressed in Federal uniform.”²⁰

The following strategies can help you use quotations appropriately: