A quotation is the insertion into the text of your paper of the exact words you find in your source. Quotations must be surrounded by quotation marks. At the end of the quotation you must include a footnote or endnote number. This number tells the reader which footnote or endnote contains the information describing the source of the quoted material.

FOR EXAMPLE: President Kennedy supported the aims of the civil rights movement. But according to James L. Roark, he "tried to get black leaders to call off the March on Washington, though the president did invite them to the White House after the march."¹

• Avoid quoting too often or using long quotes. Knowing how to paraphrase is a good skill because it is important to rely on your own words to get your points across.
• Save quotations for times when the exact words of an author are needed. These could be statements crucial to an important point in your paper where you feel that the reader might need to be convinced of what you say by the actual words of the person whose work you are relying on. A direct quotation of this kind also tells the reader that you have not misinterpreted your source.
• If you tell your reader that a high point of the famous March on Washington of 1963 was Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the Lincoln Memorial about ending racial injustice, you probably don't need to quote the words from the source that told you this. The march and speech are well known, and so the reader is likely to already know or accept this fact.
• But if you also tell your reader that President John F. Kennedy tried to get civil rights leaders to call off the march, your reader may be surprised to learn this or doubt its truth. In this case, it is a good idea to quote the passage from the source where you learned of it.