Do not quote all the time! Quotes should be saved for when the words of the expert author are powerful and can lend weight to your argument. In technical writing, direct quotations are rarely used unless necessary for technical accuracy.
Direct Quote
A direct quote includes the exact word-for-word sentences or phrases that you found in a source. When you copy and paste the text into your paper, you are directly quoting that source. A direct quote must have quotation marks around it and it must include a citation to show the reader where those words came from.
Examples
A magazine article by Tracy Mayor in Computerworld titled "Women in IT: How Deep is the Bench?" is the featured source for this example.
1. Quoting from a Source in a full sentence
In an MLA Style paper, a full sentence direct quote from this source would be written as follows:
"In contrast, the industry shift away from nuts and bolts and toward hybrid skill sets - including higher-level analytics, process and project management, and user-centric social and mobile computing - could open up opportunities for women to move laterally into tech departments from other specialties" (Mayor 18).
2. Quoting from a Source with a signal phrase
In an MLA Style paper, a full sentence direct quote from this source with a signal phrase would be written as follows:
As Mayor states, "In contrast, the industry shift away from nuts and bolts and toward hybrid skill sets - including higher-level analytics, process and project management, and user-centric social and mobile computing - could open up opportunities for women to move laterally into tech departments from other specialties" (18).
3. Block Quoting from a Source (or a long quotation)
Block quotes should be used sparingly. They are multiple sentences quoted directly from a source and take up more than 4 lines in your paper. In an MLA Style paper, a block quote from this source would be written as follows:
In looking as to why to hire women:
Beyond making it easier to recruit other women, adding women to engineering and design teams makes those teams better able to address the needs of Xerox's customer base, which worldwide includes more women than men. Just one example: Women are more likely to be users of the company's multifunction office devices, says Vandebroek. Overall, heterogeneous workgroups are more innovative, creative and productive than "just a bunch of people all thinking the same way" -- a crucial concern for organizations like Xerox, where innovation has a direct impact on the bottom line, says Vandebroek. (Mayor)