Quotation Marks When Writing Questions

[Stained Diviner]

Pardon me for asking a stupid question about a hypothetical bad question.

Let's say I've written this question on Hey Diddle Diddle:

The action in this work is described as such sport, which makes what is likely a puppy laugh, and it ends when a dish runs away with a spoon. The other major action in this nursery rhyme occurs when a cow jumps over the moon. Name this work which, after stating its title, contains the words the cat and the fiddle.

ANSWER: Hey Diddle Diddle

The question is how many quotation marks to add and why. Would the quotation marks make it easier for moderators to read the question, and thus make it easier for students to understand the question? Is it plagiarism if the quotation marks are not included, even though it's pretty clear where the words are coming from?

Also, what's the best way to handle verbs that have been changed to match the tense of the question rather than the tense of the original work? Is it helpful to use quotation marks even with one- or two-word phrases?

[Auroni]

Quotation marks make questions easier to parse and add aesthetic value to the text of the questions that they are put in. They also help the moderator to slightly change their inflection, so that they (and the players) can easily distinguish between things that the writer has paraphrased and what the author has wrote him or herself. However, I would not consider it to be plagiarism if one does not quote lines taken from a poem, because saying something to the effect of "He wrote that a certain object should be 'palpable and mute, as a globed fruit'" makes it pretty clear that there's no insidious attempt to claim the author's work as the question writer's, as you're ascribing the line to the author.

Put them around any stretch of text, no matter how small, that is directly taken from a text.

[TheDoctor]

I definitely agree. There's a big difference between how a moderator reads "the speaker describes shopping for images in the title location" and "the speaker describes 'shopping for images' in the title location." The first could mean almost anything, whereas the second provides the added clue that this particular phrasing belongs to the poem's author. It changes this line from, "do I recognize the situation?" to, "do I recognize this quote?" The latter could provide a clue, therefore, that is more recognizable to someone who has actually read "A Supermarket in California."

[Jane Fairfax]

Is it recommended for moderators to do the quotation motion with their hands for those segments of questions, for emphasis?

[Mechanical Beasts]

Is it recommended for moderators to do the quotation motion with their hands for those segments of questions, for emphasis?

Generally air quotes are used for scare quotes, not legitimate "HERE COMES A CITATION" situations.

[grapesmoker]

Any time I use a direct quote, I write it in quotation marks. If I am describing something, I don't; this seems to be standard operating procedure. As a reader, when a quote comes along, I usually indicate it with my hands without saying the words "quote" or "end quote."

[Joshua Rutsky]

This is a good place to note, though, that while good readers do use inflection to help convey that something is being quoted at a point in a question, not all readers are so considerate. Some readers who are trying hard to push for speed as they read are so caught up in not mangling a word that the inflection is completely lost, and the sentence becomes one gigantic run-on-sounding attempt to speak aloud an entire paragraph of Faulkner without breathing. In such a case, I'd much rather have a slower reader who bothers with inflection than one who is obsessed with speed.

Correct punctuation in a question is essential; without it, a reader may end up misreading a line, have to stop, say, "Huh? That makes no sense....", and then have to pause a few seconds to try to figure out what's happening, then start over. That's not the end of the world, of course, but it isn't ideal for anyone. Quote marks may not be quite as important as making sure that commas and periods aren't swapped in typographical errors, but they certainly make a difference.

One more thing worth mentioning--quote marks carry authoritative weight that statements don't. If you say that Prufrock is about the difficulties of a man torn by indecision when confronted with the realization of mortality in an overwhelming universe, that may be true, but it is still YOUR statement, and is thus more open to interpretive debate than a direct quote. If you say, on the other hand, that J. Harris MIller said of this character that "Memories, ironic echoes of earlier poetry, present sensations, anticipations of what he might do in the future --these are equally present" in his thoughts, you are are making a statement that is verifiable and non-disputable, assuming of course that you are quoting accurately. In a tossup where there isn't a lot of interpretive room--say, one about the composition of benzene--a quote is not going to make a difference in how a question is played out, but I've heard questions in the past where the writer's opinion of a literary work, political event, or historical incident was arguably incorrect. This, I think, makes quoting directly and using marks to indicate such quoting is taking place preferable to general statements at times. Does that make sense?

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Also, what's the best way to handle verbs that have been changed to match the tense of the question rather than the tense of the original work? Is it helpful to use quotation marks even with one- or two-word phrases?

I try to truncate the quote to exclude any verbs that are of inconvenient tense.

[grapesmoker]

If you ever need to make a slight modification to a quotation while retaining the overall sense, the corrected word is usually placed in brackets to indicate that the modification.

[TheDoctor]

If you ever need to make a slight modification to a quotation while retaining the overall sense, the corrected word is usually placed in brackets to indicate that the modification.

Seconded. However, particularly in the context of quiz bowl questions, I find that if you try this method and discover that you have to use so many brackets that your quotation is visually awkward, it's often better to find a way to rephrase the quote, instead.