Page 133 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

132 How to write critical essays
Like his, produce the laws
Ruling their moral state;
And the minutest throb
That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.”
(Shelley, Queen Mab, ll. 225–43)

The double quotation marks here are reproduced from the text
itself where they are used to denote that the lines are direct
speech by one of the poem’s characters. Never add any
quotation marks of your own to extracts which are long enough
to be set apart from your prose.

Identify the source of each quotation

Give a clear reference for even the briefest one-word quotation.
Then, if the reader should doubt its accuracy or feel curious
about its context, there will be precise guidance on where to
find the relevant passage in the original text.
The reference for short quotations which are embedded in
one of your own sentences can be placed either immediately
after the quotation or at the end of the sentence. Enclose it in
brackets.
The reference for long, indented quotations must be given at
the end of each extract. It should be bracketed and placed on a
line of its own to the right-hand end.
In neither case are there any universally accepted, rigid rules
about how full these references should be. However, the
guidelines are these. Be accurate. Be clear. Be brief. Where you
have not referred to a text before in the essay and it is not a
well-known work, you may need to describe it almost as fully
as is required for your formal bibliography. Far more often, you
can provide sufficient guidance by just giving the number of a
chapter, page or line.
If you look back to the above extract from an essay on
Byron, you will see that the first quotation from Childe Harolde
spells out what the numerals represent: ‘Canto III, stanza 75’.
This may be necessary as otherwise the reader might