Senior English Critical Writing Handbook - Selwyn House School

Prose Quotations of Four Lines or More (Inset Quotations)Indent 1" from the left margin each line of the quoted passage, but go all the way to the rightmargin. Follow the example above to indicate the page number(s) from which the passage hasbeen extracted. Double-space inset quotations. Write an introductory principal clausecompletein all its grammar (subject-verb-complement) -before the quoted passage, and end itwith a colon, as follows:Ernest Jones begins his famous essay “Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant” as follows:As a child Hamlet had experienced the warmest affection for his mother, and this, as is always so,had contained elements of a disguised erotic quality, still more so in infancy. The presence of twotraits in the Queen’s character accord with this assumption, namely her markedly sensual nature andher passionate fondness for her son. (218-19)Note that it is conventional not to include the hundreds digit in the second number, if it be thesame as the first. For inset quotations only, the terminal punctuation comes before the pagenumbers—presumably to allow for a terminal question mark, which would undoubtedly lookvery odd after the parenthesis.No quotation marks appear outside an inset quotation: insetting takes the place of thequotation marks. The advantage of inset quotations is that the writer can set them down exactlyas they appear in the original; he does not have to worry about double and single quotationmarks.The writer should take care that inset quotations—especially long ones—be fully justified andnot merely decorative or pretentious. After the inset quotation, the writer must point out thedetails in the quotation that support his introductory opinion. Please note that the writer’sexplication of the inset quotation is part of the larger paragraph and is therefore not indented.Ideally, the writer should also supply a clincher sentence to the entire paragraph. Here is anotherexample of the inset quotation that might help clarify its use:When Bert Munroe finally comes into the meeting an hour late, excusing himself because he has had to pick uphis hired man, who is out in the car sleeping off his drunkenness, Molly knows sub-consciously that the man is herfather (hence the language of the body's acting independently of the mind and of wondering why she is acting as shedoes):Molly's throat closed with terror. For a second she thought she was going to faint. "Excuse me, Imust go," she cried, and ran out of the room. She walked into the dark hallway and steadiedherself against the wall. Then slowly and automatically she marched out of the front door and18