FWCD Writing Toolbox: Blending Evidence

Blending / Embedding Textual Evidence:

• Definition: Integrating both context and evidence into your own grammatically correct sentence

• Write it as a half-and-half sentence.

  • Include a context clause (what’s happening in the moment--use a when clause).

  • Don’t write it as a separate sentence (dropped quotation). 

  • Don’t write it as a comma splice.

• Be succinct.

  • Use a partial, relevant quote.

  • The more quote you use, the more you have to explain. 

• Only use a speaker tag if the quote is from dialogue or a play.

  • Choose a verb that precisely reflects the action of the moment.

  • Avoid “says,” its synonyms, or its variations.

Quote integration sample 1:

1. Just before she dies, Cinderella’s mother delivers a special message to her.  "Dear child, be pious and good, and God will always take care of you, and I will look down upon you from heaven, and will be with you." (1).   

   • Not great: We just took a whole sentence from the story and dropped it into our essay.  

2. Just before she dies, Cinderella’s mother delivers a special message to her.  Her mother says, "Dear child, be pious and good, and God will always take care of you, and I will look down upon you from heaven, and will be with you" (1).  

   • Better but still not great!  We identified the speaker, but we still haven’t really zeroed in on a partial quote and integrated it into our own sentence.

3. Before she passes on, Cinderella’s mother claims that “God will always take care of” Cinderella, provided she is “pious and good” (1).  

   • Much better! We have pinpointed the exact words and phrases we thought were important and we integrated the partial quotes into our own sentence.  

• Note:  a good rule of thumb to see if you integrated a quote well is to remove the quote marks and read the sentence.  If it reads well, you did good work. For example, here is the sentence without quote marks from C, and it clearly reads well:

  • Cinderella’s mother claims that God will always take care of Cinderella, provided she is pious and good. 

Quote integration sample 2:

1. At Cinderella’s wedding, the evil sisters get attacked by pigeons.  “And so they were condemned to go blind for the rest of their days because of their wickedness and falsehood” (4).  

   • Not great: We just took a whole sentence from the story and dropped it into our essay.  

2. In the story, it says the sisters “were condemned to go blind for the rest of their days because of their wickedness and falsehood,” which suggests that, ultimately, people get punished when they do bad things (4).  

   • Better! We took a piece of the original sentence and worked it into our own sentence.   

3. Ultimately, the evil sisters get their comeuppance; the pigeons peck out their eyes to punish their “wickedness and falsehood”  (4).  

   • Better still! We really zeroed in and found the most important words to quote from the text and wove them into our own sentence.