How to use quotes in a story

A book without dialogue is a slog to read. So is a news story. But once you get quotes from an interview what do you do with them? Here’s a quick guide.

In News Decoder’s Top Tips, we share advice for young people from experts in journalism, media literacy and education. In this week’s Top Tip, News Decoder’s Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner explains how to use quotations in the story and why they are important. 

You can find more of our learning resources here. And learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program or by forming a News Decoder Club in your school.

Journalists talk to people. It is an important way to get information, at a time when many people allow artificial intelligence to do that for them. Facts and figures and things you find on the internet or in documents tell only part of a story. 

How many things have you told a friend or family member that you wouldn’t want to put down in writing? How many times have you been in a discussion with a group of people who had different takes on something that you all experienced? 

Haven’t you ever had a surprising epiphany in the middle of a conversation?

By talking to multiple people who have different perspectives and comparing those thoughts or comments or stories with facts and figures and reports, journalists try to get at the truth of something that happened or is happening. They are also able to instill into an article or podcast the passion and emotion missing from government or academic reports. 

But once you are ready to write your story, how do you use the information you get from interviews and what do you do with those quotes? 

First, do some interviews.

Let’s understand why you even include quotes in a story. One, because it humanizes a story that would otherwise be a tedious read. 

You could give me a whole argument of why pollution in a river is bad. But it hits me if someone says, “The last time I went swimming, I came out with hives all over my body,” or, “The river is right out our door, but I have to drive my son across the city to the public pool to swim because the river is filthy.”

Second, including quotes from interviews you did yourself shows your readers or listeners that you didn’t just slap together the story. That gives you credibility in a world where people won’t trust much of what they read. 

Now, you won’t get that if, instead of interviewing people yourself, you just grab quotes from articles in other publications. When you do that, the opposite happens. You give readers a reason not to trust you, because you are simply reprinting what you read elsewhere. That comes across as lazy and careless. 

The same is true if you take quotes off press releases issued by some corporation, organization or politician. Worse, because if you don’t tell readers that the quote came from a press release you mislead them. You make it seem as if you spoke to someone when you didn’t. And often, public relations people are allowed to just make up quotes in those press releases; the CEOs or politicians never actually said them the things they are quoted as saying. 

Bottom line: Avoid using quotes you didn’t get yourself. 

Using quotes in a story

So let’s say you did an interview or two. How do you use the quotes from that interview?

First, understand that quotes are sacrosanct. Once you have quote marks around something someone says, don’t change what is inside those quote marks. You are telling your reader: This person said this exactly. 

If the quote includes a lot of unnecessary words, what we call blah blah blah, you can’t just delete that within the quote marks. Some people use ellipses (…) to connect the important and relevant parts of the quote without bogging it down with the blah blah blah. Others just take part of the quote. We call that a partial quote. 

Now, that’s a style preference. Personally, I hate to do that because when you do you expect your reader to trust you. They might instead think you are withholding good information because you don’t agree with it. You risk losing that important credibility you gained by doing the interview in the first place. 

Instead, I paraphrase. That means that you take the quote marks off the quote and instead, you attribute it. That means that you tag the information with so-and-so said. 

Not everyone has the the gift of gab.

You might end up paraphrasing a lot in a story if the people you interviewed don’t have the gift of speech and are nervous and stumble on words or are really boring to talk to, but have good information to give you. You can get great information from boring people! 

Remember your role. You are talking to these people because your readers or listeners don’t have access to them or wouldn’t want to talk to them. I’ve done hours long interviews where two quotes end up in the story. Those two quotes made it worthwhile but my readers would never have wanted to sit through those painful interviews. 

And unless you can count on a readership of super-educated people who have great attention spans, keep those quotes short. Really, a quote can be three words: “I felt awful!” she said. 

If a quote is long to the point where it becomes tedious, paraphrase. When you paraphrase, you can cut out the gobbledygook and even change words as long as you don’t change the meaning of what the person said. 

That’s a never. 

Never ever change the meaning of what someone says. If you must change any words from statements in an interview, you need to really understand what the person said and even more so, what the person meant to say. 

To misquote someone word for word

I’ve known journalists accused of misquoting someone when they had the statement word for word on a recording. The person simply couldn’t believe they would have said what they said, even though they said it. 

Now you might think, great! The journalist caught the person. Some people call these “gotcha” moments. 

But think about your role as a journalist. Isn’t it to get at a truth? And should you penalize people who maybe aren’t used to being interviewed and are nervous and might say things because their brains don’t really have time to work out their thoughts properly? People will feel compelled to impress you or say what they think you want them to say.

The rule of thumb I go by is that I try to treat people the way I would want to be treated. I get nervous talking to people. I say things I wish I hadn’t said and don’t really mean. I’d be mortified if everything I said ended up in print in some widely read publication. In a class I once taught I caught a student texting on his phone and he told me he was posting what I had just said. That shut me up. 

Meanwhile, just because someone says something, doesn’t make it true. There is no excuse for including inaccurate or misleading information in a story even if it is said by someone with a fancy title or a prestigious reputation. People can make mistakes, exaggerate and mislead. Quote marks aren’t a blank license to publish. 

Quotes should pop out.

Quote marks are like little neon borders around a piece of information. They should stand out. So avoid putting quote marks around basic facts like dates or times or an undisputed amount of money. Quotes should transmit emotion or opinions or ideas. Or as my friend and colleague Deidre Pike says, “Quote the memorable. Paraphrase the mundane.”

But do you actually have to speak to someone to quote them in a story? A while back, I’d have said yes. But now so much communication is done by email or digital chats that it has become a standard form of dialogue. How many people hate talking on the phone now? Limiting yourself to only people you can talk to in person or by telephone or videoconferencing could limit the types of people you get, and the goal is to get the best information from the best people you can. 

Transparency is important, though. Let your readers know that you interviewed the person over WhatsApp or LinkedIn or whatever form it took. (My disclosure: the quote I grabbed from Deidre Pike was from her response to a Linkedin inquiry I posted).

But don’t do that as a default. You are less likely to get that great emotion and passion in a post than you would in person or the phone or on a Zoom call. So try for voice or in person interviews whenever you can. 

Plus interviews are fun. That person-to-person direct communication builds a connection that you don’t get through instant messaging or email. Hearing someone burst out laughing is way better than an “LOL!” in a text. And while waiting for a message to drop you can’t tell if the person just got distracted because their dog jumped on their lap or the question troubles them and they are taking time to think. But if you are watching them, you can tell. 

It is harder too to get those memorable anecdotes for a story that will bring it to life. And you can’t count on the uncomfortable silences that get people to open up. 

Regardless of how you get your quotes, getting them is only the first step. Knowing how to use them in your story will make all the difference. 

And you can quote me on that. 

Questions to consider:

1. How can a quote from an interview improve a story?

2. Why would you paraphrase something someone says instead of quoting it directly?

3. Why should double check information that an expert told you?