when starting an essay with a quote grammar
Have no idea how to start narrative essays for high school? Are you looking for good essay samples to follow when composing your paper? Don’t know how to start an analytical essay? Writing an effective opening paragraph that will inform, motivate your reader can be challenging for schoolchildren/college students. It is an important step in the writing process everyone should take.
- Avoid the frequently used quotations and clichés that are familiar to everyone because they will bore your target audience making them think that you have been lazy to search for the original quotes
- Explain how the quote connects to your point
- Select a quotation that your audience can understand and relate to
- Make sure the quote exactly fits the tone of your academic paper
- When introducing a quote, always acknowledge the source. Follow the requirements of a specific citation style
The period before the closing quotation mark must go:
Vary the way you introduce quotations to avoid sounding monotonous. But never sacrifice precision of phrasing for the sake of variety.
Would either (#1 vs #2) of these quotes be an appropriate way to start an essay?
You may also use quotes to carefully point out the main idea of essay/report for the reader or to make a good statement right from the beginning to make your essay interesting and relevant.
- choose quotations that fit your purpose. When looking for them, stick to your aim – is it to inspire, prove a point, alert, invite action, prove complexity or delicate nature of an issue, create good mood by using some humor etc.? Obviously, picking quotes to precisely match your purpose is fairly challenging, but at least think whether selected quotations work towards your overall message or whether they accomplish what was intended.
- consider your audience. Quotation should be in tune with the audience. For instance, its belonging to professionals in a given narrow discipline would normally be intelligible only for people with studies in this same field. In this case, select quotes that would be neither too obvious nor too complex. There are other aspects that could count as well, such as an audience’s age, its experience, gender, interests, familiarity with US history (immigrants or foreigners might be less familiar), etc.
- connect to your point. Be certain to explain how quotation supports your argument or thesis or how it relates to your topic, how it highlights a problem or portrays situation. This is important in case the link is not immediately visible as you risk having an out of context quote that won’t be of great value.
- acknowledge the source. Given that quotations are remarks or thoughts of other authors, it is imperative that these are acknowledged appropriately. When mentioning quotes in an essay, depending on the citation format, more details might be mandatory, such as the exact page, line, or paragraph numbers, etc. – purpose of this is to help reliably locate information and to avoid any plagiarism suspicions. Given how seriously plagiarism is treated by US academic institutions and society, be very careful with this aspect, if anticipating significant public outreach.
Hence, knowing how to start an essay with a quote is an important skill that allows students to make the best of their written assignments or speeches.
2) No indication to the reader how the argument will be made . In addition to the WHAT question (what will you argue?), there is the HOW question. How will you make your argument? Your introductory paragraph should say something about the logic, evidence or points you will present in support of your thesis.
1) No thesis statement . Remember that your thesis statement needs to be an argument, not simply a yes or no response to the question. What will you argue? Within the thesis statement or in the next sentence you must say something about why you are making that argument. Also, be bold and direct about your thesis. OWN it. Dont beat around the bush with lots of qualifying statements.
References:
http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/using-sources/quotations/
http://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/4567/is-it-ok-to-begin-an-essay-report-with-a-quote
http://edubirdie.com/blog/how-to-start-an-essay-with-a-quote
http://depts.washington.edu/pswrite/handout.html
http://www.quintest.fr/research-paper-writing-service-studyclerk/