How do I use Quotations and examples in my essays?

Quotations and examples are key to wrting a good essay. It is often the case that short quotations consiting of only a few words can be much more effective in suppporting your point than long quoations of many lines can. When inserting a quotation into your essay you must put it inside iverted commas: 'the cat jumped over the gate'. If your quotation is longer than a line, you must put it on it's own line, in inverted commas, with spacing above and below it:

'o, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew. Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self slaughter. O God, O God, How weary, stale, flat and improfitable seem to me all the uses of this world'. (A1 sc2 L129-134).

Then you can continue with your point. If your quotation is from a play or a book, you must cite where in the text it is from.

Your essay will flow better if you are able to incorporate quotations into the main body of your text, if not, thats fine, it cannot be done with every quotation and your sentence may look like this:

Hamlet's grief for his father was mocked by his uncle, seen in the line 'tis sweet and commendable... to give these mourning duties to your father' (A1S2 87).

or

Claudius mocks Hamlet, teling him that his grief is 'sweet and commendable', yet it is 'unmanly grief', as if Hamlet should be ashamed to mourn the death of his father and should 'cast thy nighted colour off' as he is told by his mother.