Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Bicyclist: Paraphrases

Quotes are great when they lend a human voice and add drama or humanity to cold facts, like this quote:

"Geez, you might as well ask what wasn't injured," Taylor said.

Dry things like numbers and basic facts without any context are probably best turned into paraphrases. Like this:

"I had a mild concussion, a broken neck, six broken ribs, a broken arm, and a broken pelvis," Taylor said.

In this case, if you turn it into a paraphrase, it doesn't lose any meaning since she was just dryly reciting a laundry list of trauma. See here:

Taylor said she had a mild concussion, a broken neck, six broken ribs, a broken arm, and a broken pelvis.

It's not wrong that you use a quote in such a situation. But it's not nearly as necessary as the first quote.

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