When to Use a Block Quotation
A typical quotation is enclosed in double quotation marks and is part of a sentence within a paragraph of your paper. However, if you want to quote more than four lines of prose from a source (or three or more lines of verse), you should format the excerpt as a block quotation, rather than as a regular quotation within the text of a paragraph. Such quotations have some of their own documentation conventions: a block quotation will begin on its own line, it will not be enclosed in quotation marks, and its in-text citation will come after the ending punctuation, not before it.
For example, if you wanted to quote the entire first paragraph of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, you would begin that quotation on its own line and format it as follows:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” (Carroll 98)
The full reference for this source would then be included in your Works Cited section at the end of your paper.
Formatting Block Quotations
The entire block quotation should be indented one inch from the left margin. Watch the video below to see how to do this quickly in Word using the ruler bar at the top of a document. The first line of the excerpt should not be further indented, unless you are quoting multiple paragraphs—in which case the first line of each quoted paragraph should be further indented 0.25 inches. Like the rest of your paper, a block quotation in MLA style should be double-spaced. Note that for poetry or drama or other genres where the typographical layout on the page is complex or significant, you should reproduce that layout in your own block quotation.
Block Quotations
Watch this video from Imagine Easy Solutions for more information on formatting block quotations. The author’s advice about using block quotations sparingly is important. Again, think of Geneseo’s writing seminar’s model of academic writing as conversation: it can be tempting to hand over your paper to the voice of someone who has already been published, but your professor is more interested in your developing skill at entering the conversation than in the sources (which professors are quite capable of reading for themselves!).
