Using quotations and evidence is a great way to strengthen a claim and make yourself as a writer more credible. There are effective ways and ineffective ways to integrate a quotation into your own writing. In my significant writing project I was talking about mental health and the impact that art can have on the stigma around it. This is a topic that not only has a lot of statistics around it but also a lot of people have an opinion. In order to create a rounded writing piece that leave me with credibility I included both statistics about my topic as well as the opinions of others. In order to properly integrate a quote I always introduce the idea at hand and discuss it a little bit to get an idea on the table this is done as a way to introduce the quote. I then will integrate my quote either into a sentence of introduce the author which it is from. Then the quote it added and afterwards I explain basically what the quote means in regards to my paper. An example of this would be the picture included below.
When I first began writing I would do a very poor job at integrating quotes, I would not introduce the quote and in the middle of an idea just throw a quote in there. I would also summarize in different words what the quote said instead of interpreting what the quote meant and how it can be used in my paper. This is a skill that I can still use work on in regard to integrating authors ideas without the use of quotes and instead integrate their ideas directly with mine, however I believe this is a skill that I have grown in this class.
