I'm writing an essay and i need to include passages from a short story, what is the proper format?

I need to include in text citations of Willa Cather's Paul's Case. How would i format them? this passage for example: “On the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.”

I'm writing an essay and i need to include passages from a short story, what is the proper format?
The previous answer was good. Make sure that you enclose in quotes as you have above and then you need to cite the reference - usually you use the author, date, and page number. Example:



“On the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow” (Cather, date, p.__).



If this is for college or HS - you generally want to follow your own teachers preference as the previous answer suggested. However, the website below is a good reference for using quotations in essays.
Reply:There is a variety of ways in which you can integrate quotes into an essay. The different methods of integrating quotes using MLA citation are as follows:



1) "Ellipsis points" shorten the quote so that it only includes the piece that you want to present to your audience. Introduce the quote, and then integrate it into the sentence. End the quote with quotation marks (no period). Then include, in parentheses, the author's name and page number from which you got your quote with the period OUTSIDE of the parentheses.

Example: The author writes, "On the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows...blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow" (Cather [insert page number here]).



2) "Block quotes" (for quotes more than three lines long) can be used when the quote is vital to your paper's thesis. To use a block quote, introduce it in one or two sentences, skip down a line, indent, single space, downsize one font and do not use quotation marks. Cite in parentheses the author's name and page number of the quote, with the period outside of the parentheses.



3) "Splicing" is a way to insert the quotation as part of your own sentence. You can also use brackets to replace a word with a different one that will make the quote flow more smoothly with the rest of your sentence. In doing so, however, be careful that you aren't changing the original meaning of the quote.

Example: The narrator of "Paul's Case" paints an image where "...whole flower gardens [bloomed] behind glass windows, against which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lillies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow" (Cather [insert page number here]).



4) You can also include the author's name as part of the introduction to the quote. In this case, you do not need to include the author's name again in parentheses at the end of the sentence, just the page number from which you took the quote.

Example: Willa Cather paints an image where "...whole flower gardens [bloomed] behind glass windows, against which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lillies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow" (insert page number here).



At the end of your paper, include a page titled "Works Cited." This is where you will formally include your bibliography for whatever pieces you took quotes and information from. If you do not know how to do this already, you can get help with MLA citations from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resour... I also recommend getting the newest version of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
Reply:That is an excellent question. If you have time before you hand in your work, ask your teacher what he/she wants.



Normally you type an essay double spaced. When you have a long quotation, you single space the quotation and indent 5 spaces from both margins





I would strong recommend that you ask your teacher though.