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The language of quoting in academic writing

Article  in  Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics · August 2015

DOI: 10.1075/dujal.4.1.10ver

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 The language of quoting in academic writing

Lieke Verheijen
Radboud University Nijmegen

Because quotation is a fundamental aspect of academic texts, this corpus study

examines the language of quoting in (L2) academic writing. To find out whether
there are subtle linguistic differences in the use of quotation by learners of
English as a foreign language (EFL) and professional academics who are native
speakers of English (NSE), I compare two corpora of scholarly writings: one by
upper intermediate and advanced EFL students and one by NSE experts. 1201
Quotes were extracted from the writings and examined for a broad range of
lexico-grammatical features relevant to using quotes, including introductions
to quotes, lexical items in introducing quotes, ‘special’ quotes, and punctuation
surrounding quotes. The findings make clear that EFL students and NSE experts
differ significantly on various points in their language of quoting. Making stu-
dents aware of these differences could make their academic writing more profes-
sional, native-like, and sophisticated.

Keywords: academic writing, quotation, English as a foreign language (EFL),

native speakers of English (NSE), advancedness

1. Introduction

This study investigates the use of quotes1,2 in academic written English, with a focus
on the language of quoting of upper intermediate and advanced foreign language
learners of English. Quotation is the repetition or ‘borrowing’ of someone else’s
words and making this evident by quotation marks (or some other typographical

1.  This study only deals with direct quotations, i.e. textual material repeated verbatim from other
sources, not with indirect quotations, i.e. those reporting other authors’ words without quoting
them directly.

2.  Quotation should not be confused with citation: quoting is “using the exact words of another
source in your writing”; citing is “acknowledging the source of the idea and indicating its loca-
tion” (Hunter, 2006, p. 5).

Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics 4:1 (2015), 101–121.  doi 10.1075/dujal.4.1.10ver

issn 2211–7245 / e-issn 2211–7253 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
102 Lieke Verheijen

device). It is vital for academic writing for several reasons. First of all, knowledge
of academic language is required for achieving academic success, and seeing that
quotation plays a key role in academic texts, knowledge of how to effectively use
quotes is necessary for students to succeed in their academic careers. In order
to participate and take a stance in the academic debate, it is crucial to be able to
report prior literature. Hyland (1999’ 2002) underscores that explicit reference to
previous research is central to academic writing. Campbell (1990) makes a similar
point: “Successful academic writing involves … the ability to integrate informa-
tion from previous researchers,” which can be achieved through summaries, para-
phrases, quotations, and brief references (p. 211). Schembri (2009) adds that aca-
demic writers, especially students, “stand on the shoulders of giants”, as stressed by
Google Scholar. Quotation is a distinct kind of external reference. It exemplifies
what Fairclough (1992) calls ‘manifest intertextuality’, where a text exhibits the
explicit presence of other texts, which are cued by surface features of the text, such
as quotation marks. Because quotation is an important way of referring to others’
work, students need to be able to incorporate quotes into their academic writing.
They need to learn how to make the most of the resources of the language for refer-
ring to others’ words in order to become skilled writers themselves. Quotes can be
used to clarify, enhance, illustrate, or lend authority to one’s own argumentation
or to provide a definition. Yet quoting too extensively may interrupt the flow of a
text and give the impression that one has merely compiled others’ ideas (Kirszner
& Mandell, 2008). So, students have to learn both when and how to quote — the
second aspect is the focus of this paper.
Secondly, student writings demonstrate that learners of English as a foreign
or second language may experience difficulties with using quotations.3 Thompson
and Ye (1991) elaborate that non-native students tend to “overuse naïve quota-
tion without interpretation” and “introduce evaluation [of quotes] in a somewhat
crude way” (p. 366). Similarly, Rose (1996) states that university students — not
just EFL students — deviate from accepted citation practices. For instance, they
“are unlikely to integrate these cited sources into the context of their own work
adequately or effectively,” parallel to their own incomplete integration into the
academic community (Rose, 1996, p. 34). When students are not taught how to
report and quote others correctly, this may lead to non-attribution in essays and
course assignments and may cause them to be accused of plagiarism, which can

3.  NSE students may have problems with using quotes too, since they also need to learn the aca-
demic writing conventions and need to reach “the appropriate stage of cognitive or intellectual
development” to effectively integrate quotes (Thompson & Tribble, 2001, p. 92). Nevertheless,
they are at a considerable advantage, because they are unhindered by proficiency problems in
English.

© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 103

have grave consequences. If they successfully learn to use quotations, this will de-
crease the occurrence of unintentional plagiarism. All this shows that “effective …
quotation requires a greater level of academic literacy than is commonly thought,”
as Petrić (2012, p. 103) puts it. For students to become full members of their aca-
demic discourse communities, they should acquire the ability to use quotations in
a controlled, successful, and effective way. But what is this effective use of quotes
in academic writing? That brings me to my research issue: what are the linguistic
characteristics of quoting in professional academic writing and how do they com-
pare to those in student writing? The larger theoretical framework of this study
is that of ‘advancedness’ in academic written English: by focusing on the specific
topic of quotation, I aim to contribute to the knowledge of what it means for EFL
students to produce ‘advanced’ academic writing.
Above all, this comparative corpus study into the scholarly quotation practices
of EFL students and NSE experts is an analysis in terms of over- and underuse of
linguistic features of using quotes. In addition, I have analysed the errors made by
EFL students (and, to a lesser extent, NSE experts) in using quotes. The compari-
son allows me to pinpoint how upper intermediate and advanced EFL students
can improve their language of quoting — how to make it more sophisticated, pro-
fessional, and native-like.

2. Background: Previous research

What stands out when examining the literature on using quotes in academic writ-
ing is that, except for Petrić (2012), there is no prior research focusing solely on
quotes. Instead, studies are more broadly oriented, focusing on the whole of cita-
tion/attribution/reporting. Studies on quotation in EFL students’ academic writ-
ing are particularly scarce. The present study aims to fill this research gap.
Within studies on citation, quotes have been investigated from a number of
perspectives. Researchers have explored the frequency of quotation (Campbell,
1990; Pickard, 1995; Hyland, 1999; Borg, 2000; Thompson & Tribble, 2001; Shi,
2004; Ädel & Garretson, 2006; Pecorari, 2006; Shi, 2008; Hyland, 2009; Schembri,
2009; Petrić, 2012), the length of quotes (Pickard, 1995; Hyland, 1999; Borg,
2000; Petrić, 2012), unattributed/undocumented quotation (Campbell, 1990; Shi,
2004; Pecorari, 2006; Shi, 2008; Hyland, 2009), and other problems with quotes
(Stedman, 2011; Petrić, 2012). Many studies discuss the choice for quotation over
paraphrase and summary or vice versa (Campbell, 1990; Tadros, 1993; Rose, 1996;
Hyland, 1999; Borg, 2000; Shi, 2004; Ädel & Garretson, 2006; Petrić, 2007; Shi,
2008; Hyland, 2009; Schembri, 2009; Stedman, 2011; Petrić, 2012). Quotes have

© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company

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104 Lieke Verheijen

been most extensively studied for their rhetorical functions, which are discussed
in practically all these articles.
While some studies investigate a range of academic disciplines (Thompson &
Ye, 1991, over five; Hyland, 1999, 2002; Shi, 2008, eight; Ädel & Garretson, 2006,
ten), others focus on one particular discipline (Thomas & Hawes, 1994; Pickard,
1995; Borg, 2000; Petrić, 2007; Hyland, 2009; Schembri, 2009; Petrić, 2012).
Findings from one discipline need not be representative of other disciplines, so
these cannot be generalised to the whole of academic writings. Other studies ex-
plore differences between academic disciplines (Hyland, 1999, 2002; Thompson &
Tribble, 2001; Ädel & Garretson, 2006; Charles, 2006; Pecorari, 2006). Even with
studies that include writings from multiple fields, it is overly simplistic to make a
broad dichotomy between hard and soft disciplines regarding their use of quota-
tion: it is more likely that a continuum exists on which the disciplines, with their
own conventions and preferences, can be placed.
Another distinction can be made on the basis of who produced the academic
writings under investigation. Some study writings by NSE students (Thompson &
Tribble, 2001; Ädel & Garretson, 2006; Charles, 2006; Shi, 2008), others by EFL/
ESL students (Ädel & Garretson, 2006; Pecorari, 2006; Petrić, 2007; Shi, 2008;
Schembri, 2009; Petrić, 2012). There are also studies comparing writings by NSE
and EFL/ESL students (Campbell, 1990; Borg, 2000; Shi, 2004; Hyland, 2009). Still
others study professional writings, either published texts (Thompson & Ye, 1991;
Tadros, 1993; Thomas & Hawes, 1994; Pickard, 1995; Hyland, 1999, 2002) or PhD
theses (Thompson & Tribble, 2001). However, PhD theses have also been grouped
together with master theses (Charles, 2006; Pecorari, 2006), which indicates that
there is no consensus on the expertness of PhD writings. One study compares NSE
writings by students and professionals (Thompson & Tribble, 2001).
In terms of linguistic features, most attention has been paid to reporting
verbs (also called report verbs, verbs of citation, and referring verbs), with stud-
ies presenting elaborate taxonomies (Thompson & Ye, 1991; Thomas & Hawes,
1994; Hyland, 1999, 2002; Charles, 2006), focusing on a small number (Hunston,
1995), discovering phraseological patterns (Charles, 2006), presenting a computer
program for learning them (Bloch, 2009), or addressing them in a broader study
on citation (Pickard, 1995; Thompson & Tribble, 2001; Ädel & Garretson, 2006).
Reporting verbs appear to be the only research topic so far regarding the linguistic
realisation of quotation.
This leads me to conclude that no prior research has used the methodolo-
gy adopted here: the language of quoting in academic writings by EFL students
as compared to NSE professionals is uncharted territory. This territory deserves
exploration, because it can reveal some of the finer points of academic writing:
discovering the linguistic subtleties that distinguish expert from student writing

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 105

has important practical implications for the teaching and assessment of academic
writing — in particular for EFL students, for whom the language of quoting is
a great challenge since they struggle not only to master academic writing con-
ventions, but also to achieve native-like competence in English. Therefore, I have
studied the linguistic features relevant to the use of quotation in writings by up-
per intermediate/advanced EFL students and NSE experts. I examine various lex-
ico-grammatical features concerning the way quotations can be presented, for as
Petrić (2012) justly notes, it is important for students at more advanced levels to
focus on the “finer detail of the effective re-contextualization of the quoted mate-
rial” (p. 115) — details which are realised by means of lexis and grammar. This
paper addresses the following research questions:
RQ1. How do EFL students compare to NSE professional academic writers in
their use of lexical items in introducing quotes?
RQ2. How do they compare in their use of ‘special’ quotes?
RQ3. Do they reveal different grammatical patterns of introducing quotes?
RQ4. How do they differ in their use of punctuation around quotes?
RQ5. Do NSE professional writings of different academic disciplines reveal dif-
ferences in their language of quoting?
RQ6. What errors do EFL student writers make when using quotes? Do NSE
experts make such errors too, albeit to a lesser extent?
Questions 1–5 are addressed in Sections 4.1–4.5; question 6 is addressed across
these sections whenever errors cropped up. Ultimately, these questions are asked
with one overarching question in mind: how can upper intermediate and ad-
vanced EFL students improve their language of quoting? Because EFL students
are still developing their academic writing skills and their English is still an inter-
language, the following can be expected about their use of quotes, as compared to
NSE experts: they incorporate fewer linguistically sophisticated elements, their
repertoire of linguistic features is narrower and includes less variation, and they
make more errors. These hypotheses are based on two factors: not only EFL stu-
dents’ non-native competence in English, but also their incomplete knowledge of
the academic writing conventions.

3. Methodology

3.1 Materials

Two corpora were assembled for this study: a learner corpus of EFL student aca-
demic writings and a control corpus of NSE professional academic writings. The

© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company

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106 Lieke Verheijen

learner corpus consists of 173 essays written for academic writing courses (in
English) by students of VU University Amsterdam, most of whose native language
was Dutch. The 2010–2011 essays were written by premaster students of Arts &
Culture programmes; those from 2011–2012 by master, premaster, and advanced
bachelor students from various academic disciplines. On the Council of Europe’s
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), these students
can be classified at the upper intermediate level B2, Vantage, or the advanced level
C1, Effective Operational Proficiency. The essays were not written under timed
conditions, which facilitates the comparison with published articles.
As there was no suitable existing corpus of NSE professional academic writ-
ings on hand, I compiled one myself. I used published scientific articles, because
they are most comparable in terms of writing type to the student essays. Tavecchio
(2010) notes that a primary concern in designing a corpus is that it is balanced
and representative of the language (variety) under investigation. Taking this into
account, I used the following sampling criteria to compile a corpus of 120 articles:
– Academic journals: various domains and disciplines;4 authoritative; accessible
online;5 regional variety;6
– Authors: native speakers of English;7 no overlap;8
– Articles: recent (2003–2012); containing at least one quote.9

3.2 Methods

3.2.1 Data collection

I retrieved quotes by searching the writings for single and double quotation
marks, since these establish the boundaries of quotes. Long quotes in blocks of

4.  I had two reasons for this criterion: (1) the EFL essays also represent various disciplines and
(2) this prevents the control corpus from being skewed due to an overrepresentation of texts
from a certain domain or discipline.

5.  This was motivated by practical purposes: it greatly facilitated data collection.

6.  For each discipline, I selected one British and one American journal.

7.  I operationalized this by only selecting articles by authors whose first and last names seemed
‘typically English’. When in doubt about an author’s mother tongue, I checked whether informa-
tion on their language background could be found online.

8.  So that the corpus is not sensitive to individual authors’ writing styles.

9.  An exception is the Journal of Plasma Physics, of which eight of the ten articles I selected
turned out not to contain quotes. It proved infeasible to find eight different articles, because
contributions solely by native speakers of English are rare in this journal.

© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 107

text standing free from the running text are often not surrounded by quotation
marks, so I sought these by scanning the documents manually. I included quotes
from the main text as well as foot- and endnotes. All quotations were extracted
from the EFL student writings, 448 in sum. For the NSE professional writings, the
first ten quotes in each article were selected. As such, the NSE corpus could maxi-
mally contain 1200 items, but because not all articles had ten quotes, it contains
753 quotes. This gives a total of 1201 quotations. Tables 1 and 2 present overviews
of the corpora and their data sets.

Table 1.  The EFL student academic writing corpus and data set
Academic year Period/course Time of composition No. of essays No. of quotes
2010–2011 Period 1 October 2010   31   80
Period 2 January 2011   29 132
2011–2012 Writing 1 October 2011   75 108
Writing 2 January 2012   26   61
Writing 3 June 2012   12   67
Total 173 448

Table 2.  The NSE professional academic writing corpus and data set
Domain Discipline Journal No. of No. of
articles quotes
Arts and humani- linguistics Language   10   64
ties Journal of Linguistics   10   73
art Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism   10   95
Art History   10 100
Physical and life physics American Journal of Physics   10   28
sciences Journal of Plasma Physics   10    3
medicine American Journal of Medicine   10   50
British Medical Bulletin   10   42
Social sciences economics American Economic Review   10   60
Economic Journal   10   41
law Harvard International Law Journal   10 100
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies   10   97
Total 120 753

3.2.2 Data annotation

The 1201 quotes were manually coded in a Microsoft Access database for lexico-
grammatical features essential to the language of quoting. They were coded for
lexical items in their introductions, namely reporting verbs and stance adverbs. It
was coded whether quotes were ‘special’ in any way: long, independent, combined,

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108 Lieke Verheijen

or nested. Their punctuation was coded: both for form (comma, colon, semico-
lon, period, or nothing) and for errors (wrong choice, redundancy, or omission).
Quotations were also coded for their introductions: they can be (a) introduced
by a reporting construction, (b) embedded, (c) preceded by a complete sentence,
or (d) free-standing. It is also possible for quotes to be (e) both preceded by a
complete sentence and introduced by a reporting construction or (f) both embed-
ded and introduced by a reporting construction. Embedded quotes were further
coded: they can be an entire clause, a phrase (VP, PP, NP, AdvP, or AP),10 or some
other phrase-internal element. In case of a reporting construction, I coded two
aspects: its syntactic status and its position relative to the quote. Other features
relevant for the language of quoting were encountered during data annotation,
such as reporting nouns and errors not concerning punctuation (but reporting
verbs, long quotes, free-standing quotes, and embedded quotes). The data were
also consistently coded for these additional features.

3.2.3 Data analysis

The frequencies of the features were subjected to statistical tests. Most were
Pearson’s chi-square tests, but Fisher’s exact test was used when the assumption
of the χ2 test that in larger contingency tables, no more than 20% of expected fre-
quencies should be below 5 and no expected frequencies should be below 1 was
violated. I used standardised residuals to explore disciplinary differences.

4. Results

Table 3 presents an overview of the statistical tests I conducted. The dependent

variables in the table are explained in the following sections, before their results
are elaborated upon.

Table 3.  Overview of results comparing EFL student writings to NSE expert writings
Dependent variablea Relative frequencyb Sig.c
EFL students NSE experts
reporting verbs introducing quotes 58.3% 59.2% NS
reporting nouns introducing quotes   3.1%   8.0% ***
adverbs accompanying reporting verbs   1.1% d   4.0%d *
quotes presented as long quotes   6.9%   9.3% NS
quotes ‘correctly’ presented as long quotes   4.9%   8.0% *

10.  I use the following abbreviations: VP = verb phrase, PP = prepositional phrase, NP = noun
phrase, AdvP = adverb phrase, AP = adjective phrase, [Q] = quote.

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 109

Table 3.  (continued)
Dependent variablea Relative frequencyb Sig.c
EFL students NSE experts
quotes not long enough, but still presented as long quotes   2.0%   1.3% NS
quotes long enough, but not presented as long quotes   9.4%   8.1% NS
quotes that should have been presented as long quotes 14.3% 16.1% NS
long quote ‘errors’ 11.4%   9.4% NS
long quote ‘errors’, excl. definitions and footnotes 11.4%   5.4% ***
independent quotes   1.1%   3.5% *
combined quotes   6.9% 12.2% **
quotation introduction type: ***
–  reporting construction 19.0% 13.3%
–  embedding 48.2% 64.4%
–  complete sentence 12.7% 10.0%
–  free-standing 10.9%   4.2%
–  embedding + reporting construction   6.7%   5.4%
–  complete sentence + reporting construction   1.1%   0.5%
–  miscellaneous   1.3%   2.1%
quotes introduced by reporting constructions (possibly 26.8% 19.3% **
also embedded or following a complete sentence)
syntactic status of reporting construction: **
–  main clause   8.5%   8.9%
–  subclause   9.4%   6.9%
–  prepositional phrase   8.9%   3.5%
prepositional phrase introducing quotes (see Table 6) ***
position of reporting construction: NS
–  before quote 24.3% 17.4%
–  in between parts of quote   0.2%   0.8%
–  after quote   2.2%   1.1%
embedded quotes (possibly with a reporting construction) 54.9% 69.9% ***
syntactic category of embedded quotes: *
–  embedded clause 25.9% 25.1%
–  embedded verb phrase   5.8% 11.4%
–  embedded prepositional phrase   0.9%   2.1%
–  embedded noun phrase 19.9% 26.0%
–  embedded adverb phrase 0%   0.3%
–  embedded adjective phrase   2.2%   4.1%
–  embedded other phrase-internal element   0.2%   0.8%
quotes following complete sentences (possibly including a 13.8% 10.5% NS
reporting construction)
free-standing quotes 10.9%   4.2% ***
free-standing quotes, excl. independent quotes   9.8%   0.8% ***

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110 Lieke Verheijen

Table 3.  (continued)
Dependent variablea Relative frequencyb Sig.c
EFL students NSE experts
punctuation errors with quotes 34.2%   9.6% ***
punctuation error type: NS
–  wrong choice 20.3%   5.3%
–  omission   9.4%   3.1%
–  redundancy   4.5%   1.2%
a Independent variable for all these statistical tests: corpus (EFL students vs. NSE experts).
b Relative frequency = percentage out of total no. of quotes within that corpus.
c NS: non-significant p>.05; S: significant * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001.
d Rel. freq. = percentage out of total no. of quotes with reporting verbs within that corpus.

4.1 Lexical items in introductions to quotations

Since words form the basis of language, a study into the language of quoting re-
quires an analysis of lexical items. Three types are relevant in introducing quotes:
reporting verbs, reporting nouns, and adverbs accompanying reporting verbs.
The EFL students and NSE experts did not differ significantly in their relative
frequencies of reporting verbs in introducing quotes (EFL 58.3%, NSE 59.2%),11 as
shown in Table 3. Differences do crop up when taking a closer look at individual
verbs.

Table 4.  Top ten most frequent reporting verbs introducing quotes

EFL student academic writings NSE professional academic writings
Verb Absolute Relative fre- Verb Absolute Relative
frequency quencya frequency frequencya
1. state   64 24.5% 1. note   43    9.6%
2. describe   23 8.8% 2. write   34    7.6%
3. claim   19 7.3% 3. state   32    7.2%
4. say   18 6.9% 4. argue   27    6.1%
5. write   15 5.7% 5. call   24    5.4%
6. define   14 5.4% 6. describe   22    4.9%
7. argue   14 5.4% 7. say   21    4.7%
8. explain   13 5.0% 8. define   20    4.5%
9. point out    8 3.1% 9. conclude   18    4.0%
10. call/conclude    6 2.3% 10. claim   17    3.8%
Total all verbs 261 100% Total all verbs 446 100%
a Relative frequency = percentage out of total no. of quotes with reporting verbs within that corpus

11.  Unless mentioned otherwise, the relative frequency presents the percentage out of the total
number of quotes within that corpus.

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 111

Table 4 shows that nine of the most frequent reporting verbs are the same in
the corpora, albeit in a different order. Yet compared to the NSE experts, the EFL
students greatly overused the verb state (EFL 24.5%, NSE 7.2%),12 as opposed to
the expected say (Pickard, 1995). And while note is the most popular in the NSE
corpus, it only ranks thirteenth in the EFL corpus (EFL 1.9%, NSE 9.6%). What
is more, I unexpectedly came across some inappropriate use of reporting verbs
by EFL students, such as notice (instead of note), mention, cite, and quote, as in
example (1):
(1) As Juan Cabral quoted, “[Q]” (2010–2011, pe1)

The student did not intend to say that Juan Cabral quoted some other source:
rather, it is the student him-/herself who quoted Cabral, so he/she chose the wrong
verb.
The EFL students used significantly fewer reporting nouns (EFL 3.1%, NSE
8.0%) in their introductions to quotes than the NSE experts.13 This is a weakness
of the EFL writings, because reporting nouns are mostly nominalisations of re-
porting verbs (e.g. observation from observe, statement from state) and nominali-
sations reflect lexical advancedness: they increase the abstractness or formality of
academic writing. The students show less lexical sophistication here.
Quotes introduced by reporting verbs can be accompanied by stance adverbs.
They generally express the writer’s viewpoint on the quotation, as in (2):
(2) As Truus Dokter (interview, 2009) rightly claims, ‘[Q]’ (2010–2011, pe2)

In both corpora, very few quotes introduced by reporting verbs are accompa-
nied by adverbs. Still, the EFL students used significantly fewer (EFL 1.1%, NSE
4.0%),14 so they less often conveyed their evaluation of quotes through adverbs of
attitude (e.g. aptly, persuasively) or style (e.g. admiringly, explicitly). This begs the
question whether they express their viewpoint on quotes in other ways or whether
they refrain from expressing it completely, perhaps because they are hesitant to
voice their opinion on experts’ work.
Lexical variation rates can be used to compare the corpora for the range of
reporting verbs and nouns introducing quotes, and adverbs accompanying report-
ing verbs. These are presented in Table 5:

12.  In this case, the relative frequency is the percentage out of the total number of quotes with
reporting verbs within that corpus.

13.  This excludes nouns in prepositional phrase reporting constructions introducing quotes
(see Section 4.3).

14.  Again, this relative frequency presents the percentage out of the total number of quotes with
reporting verbs within that corpus.

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112 Lieke Verheijen

Table 5.  Lexical variation ratesa of lexical items in introducing quotes

EFL student academic writings NSE professional academic writings
Reporting verbs (42/448)x100≈9.4 (82/753)x100≈10.9
Reporting nouns (8/448)x100≈1.8 (24/753)x100≈3.2
Adverbs (3/448)x100≈0.7 (15/753)x100≈2.0

a Lexical variation rate = (no. of different lexical items/total no. of quotes)x100

In comparison to the NSE professional writings, the EFL student writings con-
sistently had lower lexical variation rates. This implies that their lexical repertoire
is still smaller and less advanced than that of the NSE experts.

4.2 ‘Special’ quotations

Another striking aspect of the language of quoting is the occurrence of ‘special’

quotes, of which I annotated four types. The first are long quotes: these are not
run into the text but set off from it in a block, often indented from the left-hand
margin (i.e. extensive quotes, extended quotes, block quotes, non-integrated quo-
tations, and longer quotations (Swales, 1990; Pickard, 1995; Hyland, 1999; Hannay
& Mackenzie, 2002; Pecorari, 2006)). To evaluate the use of long quotes, I applied
the APA guideline which stipulates that long quotes should have forty words or
more (APA, 2010, p. 92, p. 171).15 The EFL student writings contained significantly
fewer quotes ‘correctly’ presented as long quotes (≥40 words), so quotes that meet
the APA criterion, than the NSE expert writings (EFL 4.9%, NSE 8.0%). By add-
ing up the frequencies of (i) quotes that are not long enough, but still presented as
long quotes (<40 words) and (ii) quotes that are long enough, but not presented as
long quotes (≥40 words), I calculated the frequencies of ‘errors’ with long quotes.
When excluding ‘errors’ with definitions (quotes with fewer than forty words that
are still separated from the running text, because they present a definition) and in
footnotes (quotes with forty words or more that are not set off from the running
text, because they occur in footnotes), which both appear to be exceptions to the
general forty-word rule of long quotes, the EFL students made significantly more
‘errors’ with long quotes (EFL 11.4%, NSE 5.4%).

15.  The MLA guidelines for formatting quotations state that long quotes in a free-standing block
of text should comprise more than four lines of prose or three lines of verse (MLA, 2009, p. 94–
5). Seeing that this criterion depends on the lay-out (font, font size, page margins) of the text, I
chose to use the APA criterion instead, which can be applied more objectively.

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 113

Independent quotes (in Petrić’s (2012) terms, ‘stand-alone quotations’) are

those that occur extra-textually without any introduction, directly below a (sub)
title (3), in parentheses (4), or in a footnote or endnote (5):16
(3) The diffuse line between fashion and art
“For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channeled through me.
Fashion is just the medium.” (Alexander McQueen) (2011–2012, wr1)
(4) (“[W]ar law has a short shrift for the non-combatant who violates its
principles by taking up arms.”) (Harvard International Law Journal, 2004)
(5)2 “The public have reason to be thankful that there is this degree of
bureaucratic obedience, whether it is due to vocational fealty in the form
of public service, or self interest and the desire to please superiors and keep
one’s job”( Schofield, 2001, p. 91) (American Economic Review, 2009)

Both data sets contained few independent quotes. Yet the EFL students used sig-
nificantly fewer (EFL 1.1%, NSE 3.5%) and only used them after (sub)titles and in
parentheses, whereas the NSE experts also used them in footnotes.
Combined quotes are two or more quotations from the same source in a single
sentence:
(6) He referred to this problem as the “resultant of a large number of vibrations of
arbitrary phase” and specifically mentioned its connection to “the blue of the
sky”. (American Journal of Physics, 2008)

This has been described as ‘sophisticated’ use of quotes: selecting and combin-
ing relevant stretches of text and acknowledging them with quotation marks, “so
that the boundaries of the ‘patches’ are clearly visible” (Petrić, 2012, p. 111). The
EFL students used significantly fewer combined quotes (EFL 6.9%, NSE 12.2%), so
they showed less sophistication here than the NSE experts.
Nested quotes are quotations inside quotations, classified by Pecorari (2006)
as ‘secondary citation’. The EFL students and NSE experts barely used them.

4.3 Introductions to quotations

Quotation introduction patterns contribute greatly to the language of quoting.

I distinguish seven patterns for introducing quotes: four main patterns (report-
ing construction, embedding, complete sentence, free-standing), two combined
patterns (embedding + reporting construction, complete sentence + reporting

16.  Not all quotes in footnotes and endnotes are independent; they can just as well be embed-
ded, introduced by a reporting construction, or follow a complete sentence.

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114 Lieke Verheijen

construction), and one miscellaneous category.17 The EFL students and NSE ex-
perts differed significantly in their quotation introduction patterns, although both
groups introduced by far the most quotes by means of embedding and then with
reporting constructions.
The EFL students introduced significantly more quotes with reporting con-
structions (EFL 26.8%, NSE 19.3%). Reporting constructions come in three types:
main clauses (7), subclauses (8), and prepositional phrases (9):
(7) Miller claims, ‘[Q]’ (2010–2011, pe1)
(8) As Warhol pointed out, ‘[Q]’ (2011–2012, wr1)
(9) According to philosopher Henk Oosterling, ‘[Q]’ (2011–2012, wr1)

The groups differed significantly as regards the syntactic status of these construc-
tions: the EFL students preferred subclauses (9.4%), then PPs (8.9%), and then
main clauses (8.5%), whereas the NSE experts preferred main clauses (8.9%),
then subclauses (6.9%), and then PPs (3.5%). The EFL students thus overused as-
clauses and particularly PPs to introduce quotes, as compared to the NSE experts.
Furthermore, the EFL students and NSE experts differed significantly in their
choices for particular PP reporting constructions, as shown in Table 6:

Table 6.  Prepositional phrases introducing quotes

EFL student academic writings NSE professional academic writings
Prepositional Absolute Relative Prepositional phrase Absolute Relative
phrase frequency frequencya frequency frequency
according to X 31   77.5% in X’s wordsb 10   38.5%
in X’s opinion  4   10% according to X  8   30.8%
in X’s words  4   10% in X’s terms  2    7.7%
in X’s perception   1    2.5% in X’s notation  1    3.8%
in X’s opinion  1    3.8%
in X’s terminology  1    3.8%
in X’s view  1    3.8%
by X’s admission  1    3.8%
under X’s formulation   1    3.8%
Total 40 100% Total 26 100%
a Relative frequency = percentage out of total no. of quotes introduced by PPs within that corpus.
b Includes the form in the words of X. This also goes for in the opinion of X, in the view of X, etc.

17.  The ‘miscellaneous’ category contains quotes that do not belong to the other categories.
Most are introduced by one or a couple of words (often discourse markers); some occur in foot-/
endnotes and are preceded by a reference.

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 115

The NSE experts revealed more variation and a preference for in X’s words/in
the words of X and according to X, while the EFL students greatly preferred accord-
ing to X. The EFL students did not differ significantly from the NSE experts as re-
gards the position of reporting constructions relative to quotes: both put the great
majority of reporting constructions before the quote, a few after the quote, and
fewest in between parts of the quote. It makes sense that reporting constructions
mostly occur in front, because they prepare the reader for an upcoming quote.
The EFL students embedded significantly fewer quotes than the NSE experts
(EFL 54.9%, NSE 69.9%). Embedding quotes requires linguistic sophistication: it
is a hallmark of advancedness in academic writing. This result confirms that the
EFL students are still a bit less advanced. The groups differed significantly in the
syntactic categories of their embedded quotes: the greatest difference was that the
NSE experts used many more full NP quotes (EFL 17.2%, NSE 23.4%), as well as
more VP quotes (EFL 5.8%, NSE 11.4%). The groups were similar in their order
of syntactic categories of embedded quotes. In the NSE writings, this order was
(from most to least frequent) clausal — NP — VP — AP — PP — other phrase-
internal element — AdvP; in the EFL writings, NP quotes and clausal quotes were
switched and no AdvP quotes occurred. The EFL students sporadically embedded
quotations incorrectly, which Stedman (2011) describes as “failing to [properly]
integrate a quotation into the grammar of the preceding sentence” (p. 249), such
as example (10):
(10) There is a patent available from 1900, which was awarded to Cornelis J.
Brosnan, which mentioned the intended purpose of the paper clip ‘… (is) to
exerts a pressure upon the papers at this point and holds them more securely
together.’ (2011–2012, wr3)

However, this kind of error was infrequent, given that upper intermediate and ad-
vanced students have generally mastered the ability to embed quotes — although
they do not utilize this ability to its fullest extent.
The EFL students and the NSE experts did not differ significantly in their use
of complete sentences to introduce quotes (EFL 13.8%, NSE 10.5%). Examples of
complete-sentence introductions are presented in (11)–(12):
(11) The Supreme Leader and his Council of Guardians were in able [sic] to
control the whole political system: “[Q]”  (2010–2011, pe1)
(12) In August the Inflation Report succinctly described the dilemma facing
monetary policy as follows: ‘[Q]’ (Economic Journal, 2006)

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116 Lieke Verheijen

The EFL students used significantly more free-standing quotes (EFL 10.9%, NSE
4.2%). Free-standing or ‘hortatory’ quotes (Borg, 2000) are unintroduced; they are
presented as separate sentences and not integrated into the text whatsoever (13):
(13) This can take the form of collaborative jobs, but is also undertaken by sole
individuals. “The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and
the large network of potential laborers.”  (2011–2012, wr2)

Expert writers avoid free-standing quotes: rather, they smoothly integrate quotes
into the text. Exceptions are independent quotes, which are always, and not incor-
rectly, free-standing. When excluding independent quotes, the EFL students still
used significantly more free-standing quotes (EFL 9.8%, NSE 0.8%): in fact, the
NSE experts barely used non-independent free-standing quotes, which corrobo-
rates that their linguistic sophistication exceeds that of the EFL students.

4.4 Punctuation surrounding quotations

Given that precise punctuation is an essential element of “[c]redible citation prac-

tice” (Rose, 1996, p. 45), I analysed the correctness of the academic writers’ use of
punctuation marks around quotations. My analysis is based on well-established con-
ventions on which punctuation marks should be used around quotes, as presented in
e.g. The Wadsworth Handbook (Kirszner & Mandell, 2008) and the MLA Handbook
for Writers of Research Papers (MLA, 2009).18 The EFL students made significantly
more punctuation errors with quotes (EFL 34.2%, NSE 9.6%). Such incorrect punc-
tuation decreases the sophistication and credibility of their academic writing.
I classified punctuation errors in three types: wrong choice of punctuation
mark, omission of punctuation, and redundancy of punctuation. Table 7 presents
an inventory of the variety of punctuation errors I encountered around quotes:

Table 7.  Punctuation error types around quotes

Wrong choice Redundancy Omission
Punctuation Should be Punctuation Should be Punctuation Should be
mark present replaced by mark present replaced by mark present replaced by
comma colon comma Ø Ø comma
colon comma colon Ø Ø colon
semicolon comma semicolon Ø
semicolon colon
period comma
period colon

18.  The APA publication manual (APA, 2010) does not present explicit guidelines on this.

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 117

The EFL students and NSE experts did not differ significantly as regards punctua-
tion error types: both made most errors of wrong choice, then of redundancy, and
least of omission.

4.5 Disciplinary differences in the language of quoting

Standardised residuals revealed that the academic disciplines within the NSE cor-
pus (linguistics, art, physics, medicine, economics, and law) differ significantly in
their language of quoting. Individual examination yields unique ‘linguistic pro-
files’ of the language of quoting in different academic disciplines.19

5. Discussion

Based on these results, several recommendations can be made for EFL students to
improve the incorporation of quotes into their scholarly writings, even when these
students are upper intermediate or advanced. They can make their introductions
to quotations lexically more professional and native-like by (1) using the reporting
verb state much less often, (2) not using reporting verbs inappropriately, (3) using
more reporting nouns, (4) using more stance adverbs with reporting verbs, and (5)
broadening their somewhat limited range of reporting verbs, reporting nouns, and
adverbs accompanying reporting verbs. They can also make more sophisticated
use of ‘special’ quotes by (6) only presenting quotes as long quotes when appropri-
ate, so when they contain at least forty words or when they give a definition, (7)
learning that it is possible to use independent quotes in footnotes and endnotes,
and (8) using more combined quotes. In addition, they can improve their intro-
ductions to quotations by (9) using fewer as-clauses and PPs with according to to
introduce quotes, (10) using a greater variety of PP reporting constructions, (11)
integrating more quotes into their writing by means of embedding, (12) not em-
bedding quotes incorrectly, and (13) not using free-standing quotes, except when
they are independent. Moreover, they still have much progress to make in (14)
choosing the correct punctuation for different quotation introduction types.
The results have also revealed which errors are made by EFL students when us-
ing quotes. Firstly, they sometimes used reporting verbs inappropriately. Secondly,
they made many ‘errors’ with long quotes, by presenting quotes with fewer than
forty words as long quotes and by not presenting quotes with forty words or more
as long quotes. Thirdly, they used many non-independent free-standing quotes.
Fourthly, they occasionally embedded quotes incorrectly. Fifthly, they made many

19.  See Verheijen (2013) for details and statistics.

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118 Lieke Verheijen

punctuation errors with quotes. Errors of the second, third, and fifth type were
also made by the NSE experts, but with much lower frequencies. This means that
these errors were mainly caused by the EFL students’ insufficient knowledge of
the quoting conventions in academic writing. Errors of the first and fourth type,
which are lexico-semantic and grammatical respectively, were not made by the
NSE experts; these were caused by the EFL students’ imperfect command of the
English language. If students avoid all these errors, this will also greatly improve
their use of quotation.
Finally, the linguistic profiles that I found revealing disciplinary preferences
as regards the lexico-grammatical features relevant for using quotes suggest that
students should not only learn the general academic quoting conventions, but also
those of their own academic discipline.

6. Conclusion

The language of quoting turns out to be a locus of differences between EFL student
writers and NSE professional academic writers. The EFL students used signifi-
cantly fewer reporting nouns introducing quotes, adverbs accompanying report-
ing verbs, combined quotes, embedded quotes, independent quotes, and quotes
‘correctly’ presented as long quotes. At the same time, they produced significantly
more long quote ‘errors’, excluding definitions and footnotes; free-standing quotes
(also when excluding independent quotes); punctuation errors with quotes; and
quotes introduced by reporting constructions. The EFL students and NSE experts
also revealed different preferences as regards quotation introduction type, syntac-
tic status of reporting construction, prepositional phrase introducing quotes, and
syntactic category of embedded quotes.20

20.  The design of this study does not allow me to pinpoint what the individual contribution to
the EFL students’ results is of the two underlying factors, (i) non-native competence in English
and (ii) incomplete knowledge of the academic writing conventions. Further research is nec-
essary to make that distinction. It would require an additional corpus study with a different
research design, comparing:
(a) NSE student academic writing and NSE professional academic writing,
(b) EFL professional academic writing and NSE professional academic writing, or
(c) EFL student Dutch academic writing and EFL student English academic writing.

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 The language of quoting in academic writing 119

7. Implications for teaching and assessing EFL academic writing

The insights gained from this study could feed into the improvement of English for
academic purposes (EAP) writing courses and could help develop EAP teaching
materials for EFL students. It is essential for students to get to grips with the quot-
ing conventions of academic writing in general and of their own specific academic
discipline. The differences that have been noted between EFL student writings and
NSE professional academic writings in lexico-grammatical features relevant to the
use of quotations are those in which upper intermediate and advanced EFL students
can still make progress. These features deserve special attention in teaching students
about quotation and in assessing their writings. Besides possibly decreasing the oc-
currence of unintentional plagiarism, EFL students could benefit from education
focusing on the language of quoting on their paths towards becoming more native-
like and professional writers, as well as full members of the academic discourse
community. Moreover, it could help them express their own authorial voice in their
scholarly writings, so that they could finally become masters of their own discourse.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mike Hannay, Pieter de Haan, Wilbert Spooren, Ans van Kemenade, and
the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also
go to Eric Akkerman of VU University Amsterdam, who created the MS Access database used
in this study.

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