Here are some guidelines to help you as you work with textual support (quotations) as a way to support your ideas.

Avoid "dumped quotations." A "dumped quotation" occurs when the writer offers no introductory strategy regarding the textual support being used. The quotation is often a sentence by itself.

This is what a dumped quotation looks like:

• Chaya sometimes experiences difficulty separating herself from the stories she tells. "Hansel, let out your finger, that I may see if you are fat or lean" (128).

Work the quotation into your sentence. Take the opportunity to control the quotation rather than letting it control you:

• Indeed, Chaya sometimes experiences difficulty separating herself from the stories she tells as is indicated when Rivka tells her one morning that "[a]nyone who cannot get out of bed today will be chosen" to die (128). Hannah replies, "Hansel, let out your finger, that I may see if you are fat or lean" (128).

Avoid "on page ____." Instead of:

• Chaya sometimes experiences difficulty separating herself from the stories she tells. On page 128, Rivka says "Anyone who cannot get out of bed today will be chosen." On page 128 Hannah responds, "Hansel, let out your finger, that I may see if you are fat or lean."
• Write:
• Chaya sometimes experiences difficulty separating herself from the stories she tells. At one point Rivka warns Hannah that "Anyone who cannot get out of bed today will be chosen" (128). Drawing from "Hansel and Gretel," Hannah responds, "Hansel, let out your finger, that I may see if you are fat or lean" (128).

Explain the significance of the quote (but please avoid "this shows/demonstrates that," "this is significant because"):

Chaya does in a sense become Gretel, the child kept as a prisoner and subjected to another's will and power. Indeed, Chaya sometimes experiences difficulty separating herself from the stories she tells as is indicated when Rivka tells her one morning that "[a]nyone who cannot get out of bed today will be chosen" to die (128). Hannah replies, "Hansel, let out your finger, that I may see if you are fat or lean" (128). And later, as she and three others walk through the doors of Lilith's Cave, she tells them a story "about a girl. An ordinary sort of girl named Hannah Stern who lives in New Rochelle" (159). The person she once was is now only one more narrative in her collection.

Avoid "the books says" or "it says" or "it is written that" Instead, identify who is conveying the thought (the narrator, a character, the author).

Generally avoid "you" as in "You discover that Mary is a selfish girl." Instead, use "readers" or "we": "Readers quickly discover that Mary is a selfish girl."

Write in present tense. It's weird, but that's a convention used when writing about literature in English Departments. Thus, instead of::

• When Mary found the key, she unlocked the door

Write:

• When Mary finds the key, she unlocks the door.