I'm working on a paper, and I just wanted to know if this is correct grammar. The first thing that caught my attention was a question in the opening paragraph of the preface: “…how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?” Is the use of the colon correct, and do I include the "..." before the quote since there is more text before the part that I quoted or not? TIA
I'm not an expert but I would remove the "...". I would also rewrite the sentence so it reads "How did the Oakland Athletics (one of the poorest teams in baseball) win so many games?" But that might just be me.
If you're one for big words maybe try: So how did a financially downtrodden team like the Oakland Atheltics win so many games? Honestly what you have written looks fine to me.
Let me put it like this: Many schools/colleges/universities have their own style guidelines on how to handle quotations but under the standardized MLA style your quotation is perfectly fine. And yes, you do include the "..." if you don't want to tamper with the original quote; something picky instructors (like, say, me) hate with a vengeance
I can't change what's in the quote guys. It's a quote, I didn't write it. I suppose I should have made it clear that I was asking about that whole segment. This is what I wrote in my paper and am asking about: "The first thing that caught my attention was a question in the opening paragraph of the preface: '…how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?'"
Just an aside: You sure can. As long as you don't use quotationmarks and cite the proper source you can rephrase it like you see fit.
You don't need the "The first thing that caught my attention" because this is implied when you use the quote. Also, I'd re-phrase what you have to something more concise like: The preface opens with the following, "how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?” but to answer your question, technically the colon is ok, but has a much harder pause than a comma. I'd just use a comma so somebody can read it "smoother." Also, you don't need the "..." but should use some sort of citation after the quote (i.e. author / page #) Hope this helps. I've been teaching college freshman english for four years now.
If the question "how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?" was a complete sentence, then you don't need the ellipses. ("...") If there was something before, for instance, "What you have to ask yourself is how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?" then the ellipses are correct. As far as the colon is concerned, either a colon or a comma before the quote is permissible. Colons are usually reserved for longer quotes, when the quote is set off in its own paragraph, but it is not incorrect to use it as you have.
I have more writing before this section talking about how the book caught my attention, so it makes more sense with the rest of the context, but thank you.
