I couldn’t find a “grammar help” community so I thought this might be a good place to pose this question. Sorry for asking something that boils down to “please help me with my homework” but I’m at a loss. I’m supposed to be using MLA format.
Here’s the text I’m quoting:
“While recognizing the critical potential of the dystopic imagination, this volume examines it as a form of urban representation; the modern city, after all, appears to be an instantiation of a dystopic form of society.”
Here’s my sentence:
Prakash notes the utility of dystopian media, stating “this volume examines it as a form of urban representation; the modern city, after all, appears to be an instantiation of a dystopic form of society.” (3)
Is this right? Should I have the period at the end of the parentheses? I tried looking through my textbook and a few online articles but I couldn’t find an example with a parenthetical citation and a quote that includes a period. Thanks for the help!
Period comes after the parentheses. https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/mlacitation/intext
Direct quote:
One study found that “the listener’s familiarity with the topic of discourse greatly facilitates the interpretation of the entire message” (Gass and Varonis 85).
Thank you! This was driving me nuts lol
Wow, I really want to correct the original authors’s grammar. Why use “instantiation” instead of “instance”?
That’s what [sic] is for. Well, not for correcting, but for dunking on.
I’ve never heard it put that way, and you’re not wrong. I’m pretty sure it was intended to mean “that’s not our typo, we’re just quoting the idiot.”
Stuffy, self-important academic tomes require big words to make simple points
My personal pet peeve is people using “societal” when “social” is just as appropriate.
Mine is sate vs satiate
I can see the distinction mattering. “Instantiation” implies an act. Something did the instantiating. “Instance” doesn’t have the same implication of an agent.
This isn’t what you’re asking, but since your question has been answered, and this might actually be helpful for you:
Sorry for asking something that boils down to “please help me with my homework” but I’m at a loss.
You should put a comma before “but”. Like so:
Sorry for asking something that boils down to “please help me with my homework”, but I’m at a loss.
A comma is required when you are separating clauses which would be complete sentences. “I’m at a loss” is a complete sentence, so there should be a comma before the “but”.
This is a rule about English I absolutely despise and generally refuse to follow (makes me twitch as a programmer), but shouldn’t the punctuation (the comma you added) go inside the quotes?
As far as I’m aware, in English, the punctuation goes outside the quotes, unless it’s part of the original quote.
In American, the punctuation goes inside the quotes, even if it’s not part of the sentence being quoted.
I’m unsure of the habits of other English-speaking countries.
Ahhh ok. I speak American. Good reason to find another country I guess.
It depends on the country. This is true in American English and it’s what we teach in schools. In British English (which, in my experience, is what most ESL learners outside the US end up learning), they go outside the quotes. Source.
My experience is that EFL learners tend to be taught American English, but that might just be in Japan.
I’m French and we mostly mearn British English in school. But then again, we’re very close to GB and Japan is very Americanized (occupation and all that). I think a country that’s halfway between them and has no privileged relationship with either should step into this conversation. Like Russia, Mongolia or Kazakhstan. However, as you might have noticed from the previous sentence, I refuse to use the Oxford comma because we don’t use it on French and it doesn’t make sense.
I would be very interested in the experiences of people learning on countries which are neither European nor especially attached to the US.
Not American here. Why would you put the punctuation inside the quotes unless you are quoting punctuation? Unless I misunderstood what you mean.
For example:
Bob wrote “this is amazing!”.
Bob used an exclamation point, so I quoted an exclamation. If it is the end of my sentence then I use a full stop, if I quote it then it would imply the end of their sentence even though it wasn’t.
Frazorth is amazing when he speaks, as I never knew someone could be quite so incoherent.
Would be quoted as
Bob said “Frazorth is amazing.”
It distorts the context.
American English puts punctuation inside the quotes. I’m an American, but I think it makes more sense the way the British do it, so I switched to their way.
You might want to check out a book called The Elements of Style. I believe it teaches punctuation and maybe grammar.
Question was answered, but I’m wondering about the citation. What is the number three in parenthesis? MLA is name of source and possibly page number.
Its the page number, the author and source were mentioned in the sentence previous to this one
Ah, right. I completely overlooked that. Since it was such a low number, I thought it might be a numbered source
