I’m writing a thesis paper, and I was wondering if its considered bad form to start a paragraph with a quotation. Help please?
You really should start out with a sentence that describes what you hope to address. A quote can be used as a preface, I suppose, or introduced after your beginning paragraph. I graduated from college many years ago, but I don’t think things have changed enough to make beginning the body of a paper with a quotation a good idea.
Will you be including an abstract?
I assume you mean one of those quotes that authors sometimes include at the beginning of a book or chapter to set the tone. I did that at least once, and it seemed to go over fine with my professor. I guess it depends on what sort of paper it is. None of my papers ever called for an abstract - I don’t know what field regularly uses those.
Research papers in sciences usually include an abstract. Literary thesis and similar papers may have the first chapter or paragraphs as their abstract, or summary.
Agreed. It might help if you told us what you are writing it on. If you are doing something on, say, globalization (nice broad topic) you might want to open with a description of some of the protests as an introductory narrative. If you don’t have an abstract, you are going to want your whole first chapter to be an intro, then a complete breakdown of what you are gong to do, why you are doing it, why you are using the methods you are using, why the topic has any relevence, blah blah blah. But it should be ok to open with a quote.
All the above replies assume that the paragraph in question is the first one in the paper. Is this what you mean?
If the quote is being used as an epigraph - what chula calls ‘one of those quotes that authors sometimes include at the beginning of a book or chapter to set the tone’ - then it really isn’t part of the first paragraph and so should be clearly set apart from it. I don’t see anything wrong with this, although it does need to be well-chosen to make it worthwhile.
On the other hand, there are the cases when the paper begins with a quote which is then used as the starting point for the argument? There is nothing wrong with this either. However, you do need to be careful, as the examiner will probably expect the sort of introductory comments mentioned by Ringo and Neurotik. Diving right into the argument can be an effective way of opening a paper precisely because introductory comments are the obvious, expected approach, but this requires skill and experience to pull it off. It is probably better to play it safe.
That, in fact, is the one time when starting a paragraph with a quotation is a good idea. Other quotations within the paper should as a general rule be preceded by some sort of comment, either identifying who it is by or why it is significant. Don’t expect the reader to do this for themselves. For the same reason, it is also a good idea to avoid ending a paragraph with a quote. If the point you are making with it is that important, comment on it further to make sure that the reader gets the point. The exception is a quotation at the very end of a paper as the reader can be expected to realise that you regard that quote as being particularly significant.
Thank you, APB. I knew there must be a word for it.