Evaluating Quotations: When Should I Quote? When Should I Paraphrase?

Examine the following quotations. If you were using them in your own papers, would you maintain the quotations or paraphrase them? Explain why.

1. “On Thursday morning, August 4, 1892, Mr. and Mrs. Borden and John Morse, a visiting relative, ate an early breakfast together. Around 9:00 A.M. Mrs. Borden left to run errands and Mr. Borden went downtown, as was his custom, to take care of small business matters.”

Marcia Carlisle, “What Made Lizzie Borden Kill?” from Research Papers, p. 7.

2. “Medical Examiner Dolan, assisted by other physicians, held an autopsy this afternoon on the two bodies. It was found that Borden sustained twelve cuts in the face and skull, varying in length 4 to 8 inches. He also suffered a fracture of the skull 2 by 4 inches and 3 inches deep. His wife’s head and face was battered all out of shape.”

New York Times, 5 August 1892, from Research Papers, p. 4.

3. “The descent through the steep tunneled streets gave one the sense of being lowered into the shaft of a mine. At each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged. The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules’ hoofs on the stones went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which sun and air never reach.”

Edith Wharton, In Morocco, from Research Papers, p. 81.

4. “The problems with the Christians start, said Father, as with women, when the hudad, or sacred frontier, is not respected. I was born in the midst of chaos, since neither Christians nor women accepted the frontiers. Right on our threshold, you could see women of the harem contesting and fighting with Ahmed the doorkeeper as the foreign armies from the North kept arriving all over the city. In fact, foreigners were standing right at the end of our street, which lay just between the old city and the Ville Nouvelle, a new city that they were building for themselves.”

Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass, from Research Papers, p. 87.