How to use a Block Quote

When you are using MLA citations for your papers, and you are in this class, quotes that are longer than forty words or four lines need to be offset in a block quote. To do this, you will place the quote on a separate line and indent the entire quote. You will not use quotation marks. You will place your punctuation at the end of the sentence and the citation will follow in parenthesis. Notice the distinctions in the following example from an old paper I wrote in rhetoric class. See the differences with the citations inside the paragraph and the citation of the block quote.

       Hortensia was another classical Greek female rhetorician, but contrasting her peers, her own words have been preserved. Hortensia was the daughter of Quintus Hortensius, also an orator. The following speech was delivered at the Forum, where a group of women gathered to protest the taxes they were required to pay for a war they could not vote on. In a sense, her speech is one of the first “no taxation without representation” arguments (Ritchie 16). In this speech, she argued,

Why should we pay taxes when we have no part in the honours, the commands, the state-craft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful results? When have there not been wars, and when have taxes ever been imposed on women, who are exempted by their sex among all mankind? (16)

Her speech is significant, not just because of the content, but also because of her use of rhetorical questions. Why should women pay for a war they can neither participate in nor vote against? In her important book Rhetoric Retold, Cheryl Glenn implores, “rather than arguing for women’s participation in political affairs, an argument that would have been both impossible and fantastic given her context, she uses women’s nonparticipation to argue that women’s war efforts be voluntary” (69). This is a rather brilliant move. She essentially points out that women’s inequality is precisely the reason their support should be voluntary. Why should women who have no say be punished with the cost of war? Her skill with persuasive argument is evident. Her argument convinced Marc Antony and the other men in the Forum. The next day the women’s tax rate dropped from 1400 to 400, and wealthy men were ordered to help fund the war (Ritchie 18).

Notice how this quote does not end my paragraph. I still need to define its significance, so the second part of my explanation is not indented. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. :)