“If you’re going to quote other scholars, not as primary sources whose work you mean to analyse, but because they’ve got insights you want to support yours, make sure they’re carrying your luggage and not the other way around.” Cassuto, 2024, p. 40

Here’s what that luggage metaphor is saying. A quotation you use as evidence is meant to be working for you. It picks up what you’ve already said and carries it a bit further, or backs it with a name the reader will recognise as an authority. Your argument stays the traveller. The quotation is a temporary porter.

Too often it runs the other way. The writer’s paragraph stops making a case and starts trailing after somebody else’s words, hoping the reader will mistake borrowed authority for an argument. You can always spot this kind of paragraph because it could be cut and the whole text would just lose a name – not a point. In this paragraph, the quotation was never carrying anything of the writer’s. The writer was carrying the quotation the whole time, hoping nobody would notice their argument wasn’t there.

We’ve all written that paragraph. Reviewer 2 has read it plenty of times too, which is presumably why they keep asking “so what is your point here?” in the margin next to what seems to be a perfectly respectable quotation.

So what does a quotation carrying your luggage look like on the page? Well, your topic, the thing the paragraph is about, comes first, written in your own words, stated plainly. Clearly. The quotation follows, and it follows because it does something the claim needs. It maybe names a term more precisely than you could, states a position you’re about to complicate, or gives a form of words so exact that to paraphrase it would lose it. Once the quotation has done that job, you go back to your own sentences and keep walking. The quoted scholar doesn’t get to take over the paragraph just because they turned up in it.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not arguing against citation, quotations or even dropping big names if it’s relevant. Bourdieu, Butler or Uncle Tom Cobbley can absolutely appear in your paragraph. The question isn’t whether they are allowed in, it’s what they are there to do once they arrive. Are they carrying something of yours down the corridor, or are you standing at the door holding the bags, waiting to be let in?

Some of the reticence towards other scholars is about confidence. If your instinct is to reach for a quotation the moment your own claim needs backing, it’s important to notice. It may mean that you don’t yet trust that your own words will let the topic or claim stand up to scrutiny. Not sure? One way to find out is to write the claim/topic first, alone, and see if it holds up. Does it make sense? Does it just need a bit more evidence to be comprehensible? If it does, the quotation is something you can then choose to add or leave out. If your topic or sentence doesn’t make sense on its own, no citation or quotation is going to save it. It’ll just be well-dressed words.

One useful trick. After you’ve quoted somebody, write the next sentence without the word “this” as in “This quote shows that…” . “This” is letting the quotation state your point for you instead of you stating it and letting the quotation support/extend it. Rather than writing “this”, say what you think the quotation demonstrates or how you move on from it, in your own words. And then see whether that sentence would survive if you deleted the quotation above it. If it wouldn’t, you know it was the quote doing the work, not you. The quote was doing all the movement. You were carrying them.

That’s the test. Before a quotation goes into your paragraph, determine which way the carrying is going to go. Try it out. See who’s the traveller and who is the porter. And then decide what to do.