When (Not) to Quote

I wish to start this post with a pair of related essay experiences. Both essays turned to quotes from major historical figures to help prove their points. One quoted Winston Churchill, the other, Mahatma Gandhi. When I share this in my classes, I ask my students what they think these essays were about. The answers invariably center around war, politics, history, Britain, and major geopolitical issues of the last century.

Nope. The essays were about horse training and...childhood obesity.

That's right. Someone padded an essay on childhood obesity by turning to the man famous for hunger strikes.

I haven't had many students try to defend these choices, and I will admit, this is far from the worst transgression committed in composition class, but it is a symptom of at least one of three issues: procrastination and poor research, and lazy writing.

Procrastination and Poor Research

Examples include: a bibliography page that barely meets the required number of sources.

This means the student was required to find X number of sources, and rather than find and read books and articles to find the best, most relevant information available, they worked until they found one less than X sources. Then, to reach the required number, they turned to something like Wikiquote and looked up famous people – whether or not the quote or the person being quoted was related to their topic. They drop the quote in their essay and voila! X number of sources achieved! 

This generally happens because of procrastination and using the first available sources rather than the best ones. Had the student been concerned with finding the best sources, they would have found more than the required minimum and would have familiarized themselves with enough of them so, even in a pinch when the due date is fast encroaching, they can turn to solid research to fill the requirement. Best case scenario, though, you never have to think about the number of sources because you've done enough research you'll meet and exceed the required amount easily.

Lazy Writing

Examples include: introductions or conclusions that have more words from, probably dead, famous people rather than the author’s own words.

My tongue-in-cheek comment is not dealing with plagiarism (which is one of the worst sins committed in composition courses), but rather taking the profound statements of others and using them to prove a point you should be trying to prove in your essay. It's lazy writing because, rather than taking the time to really think about what you have to say, you're relying on the words of someone more famous and perhaps more eloquent than yourself. In that respect, it's related to filling space on the bibliography: it's filling space in the body of an essay to reach a page count.

These quotes are usually misplaced and taken out of context. They also may be unnecessarily long and rely more on the reputation of the person being quoted than on what the words actually express. 

The biggest problem is relying on fame rather than expertise: Churchill and Gandhi are certainly famous people, but they are not qualified in horse training and childhood obesity. Being able to properly integrate the works of experts builds your own authority as a writer: you have something to contribute because you know the literature well enough to work with it. But if you default to major historical figures unrelated to your field, it says you don't know what's going on in your field and therefore you don't know what you're writing about.

Conclusion

Quoting for the sake of quoting is a bad practice. It leads to quotes taken out of context, often with unnecessary fanfare that distracts from the subject of the essay. It becomes a matter of building false authority rather than proving your knowledge and your qualifications to write on the subject. There is a lot to gain from quoting, but it can all be undone by doing it poorly. Before quoting, make sure you properly understand what it is you are quoting, where it came from, what it means, and the qualifications, not the fame or popularity, of the person you are quoting.