How to Quote a True War Hero

              Hello again, readers.


             As it turns out, I had a spare minute, so I decided to write out a post, seeing as how the recent wave of comments assured me that I still had a readership (by the way, I encourage all my commenters to follow The Wordsmith Alphabetical for more updates).

             While this post is officially under Craft Talk, it can also be put under Greatest Quotations, since it is about that too, in a way.

How to Quote a True War Hero

This has nothing to do with quoting actual war heroes, I was just shooting for a Tim O'Brien sound

 

             This may or may not become a series, but I imagined that most of my readers want to know what criterion I use when selecting a quote to post about. Well, here are my five points in selecting a good quote, and some on how not to quote.

1. The quotation must come from someone other than you
2. It must be credibly written
3. It must be contextually accurate
4. It must make sense on the first or second reading
5. If at all possible, you must give credit to the author in some form or another

           And finally. . . .

1. The quotation cannot be there only to make the piece pretty
2. It should not be used so often simply to make you look intelligent or well read (put another way, use quotations sparingly)
3. In the case where you do use several quotations, unless the situation demands otherwise, you should not quote the same author more than once.

           What do you think? Do these seem like good rules?

           By the way, as I wrote these out, I'm beginning to see that I'll need a short blog series on how to quote. This should be fun.