Exercise 8: Quoting Correctly (p. 107, WS)

A. 1. “The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty,” remarked the boxer Mahommad Ali, “has wasted thirty years of his life.” [Even better, put the attribution at the beginning, and run the entire quotation together.]

2. Do you agree with Jerry Seinfeld that “a bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking”?

3. “Three may keep a secret,” Benjamin Franklin cynically remarked, “if two of them are dead.”

4. “A fool learns from his experiences,” said Otto von Bismarck. The German chancellor tells us that “a wise person learns from the experience of others.” [There’s really no need for two attributions. Begin the single sentence with “According to the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck…”]

5. The American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote about the ineptitude of generals, arguing that “the power to command frequently causes failure to think.”

6. Ralph Waldo Emerson warned his readers that “life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.”

7. Donald Trump once offered this advice: “There’s the old story about the boxer after a fight who said: ‘That wasn’t so tough. What was really tough was my father hitting me on the head with a hammer.’”

8. Before the Revolutionary War, Patrick Henry made a passionate speech: “Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

B. In correcting the second part of this exercise, besides looking for technical errors of punctuation and awkward phrasing, you should also check for accurate transcription of the quotation and thus begin a campaign against sloppy transcription of sentences. Also check to see whether quotations have been chosen that are appropriate for separated or integrated presentation: quotations beginning with “I” are best separated by punctuation from the citation (sentences 1, 2, and 5). For these sentences, the student should invent an appropriate comment for the citation: A British colonel observed the horror of battle in World War I: “I’ve seen…” or Vladimir Chaloupka is, on balance, negative about mankind’s potential misuse of technology: “I’m basically an optimist….” In the third part of the exercise, the interrupted quotation, you will probably notice that a few students have mangled the original statement by breaking into it at the wrong place. Sentences 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 can be decently interrupted midway, and 3 is actually the best choice (with the interruption coming directly after “Assisi”). Finally-a point covered later in the chapter-the name of the source should be complete and should be properly spelled.