When writing it is often really helpful to use outside sources to use as evidence to support your argument. By doing this you give your writing more credibility because the evidence that you are using can come from experts on a certain topic, and can also give the writer a better idea of what they are writing about. Integrating quotes is one way to provide this evidence. The part of integrating quotes that is important to the writing process is being able to add them to the text smoothly and clearly. You have to first make sure that the quote you are planning on using makes sense based on the context of the paper. A random quote just used to have a quote will be confusing for the reader and it will lower the quality of the paper. Just before I integrate the quote I will first introduce the author and what their paper was about. By doing this I am giving context to the reader so they have a good idea where the quote is coming from and why it is relevant. After putting in the quote I will then have three to four sentences where I explain the relevance of the quote and the bigger picture of how it fits into my essay. In one of my writing pieces for my english 110, Forming a Self Identity I used multiple different sources for evidence. The whole essay was about how stories and the outside environment can help a person form their own self identity. One of the quotes I used was from a man named Ken MacArthur who talked about a story that changed his life. After I explained the context of the quote I went on to say how MacArthur’s story is an example of stories being passed on from one generation to the next. It is really important to know how to integrate quotes and interpret them because it means that you can take another person’s ideas, plus your own, to develop your own understanding and be able to explain it well. This will help to make for an even better essay.
