Much Ado About Nothing - Illustrating and Supporting Points

How to use evidence to support a point:

There are three key methods you can use in order to support a point with evidence: paraphrasing, quoting single words or short phrases, and quoting longer sections of text.

Many people forget about paraphrasing, but it’s actually one of the most useful methods. In fact, it is an essential skill which you will find yourself using on many occasions, even when you are not writing English essays. Paraphrasing demonstrates your knowledge of the text and is usually more elegant than quoting multiple words and is also more practical than quoting a very long passage.

Quoting a single word or short phrase is a good choice if you wish to draw attention to a specific language choice. Sometimes, when you have a complex point to make, the best strategy is to use a combination of methods, perhaps by paraphrasing a longer section of the text and quoting a word or short phrase which perfectly complements the paraphrase. This takes practice to do well, but is nearly always better than writing long, unwieldy sentences full of multiple short quotations.

The third method is to quote a full sentence or more. If you want to discuss a longer quotation in close detail, or if a shorter quotation just refuses to make sense, this is the best method to use.

Although you will of course wish to be accurate in your quotations, remember that you will not normally need to use quotation marks if you are referring to a single, ordinary word contained in the text. For example, it is rather silly to quote “cat” unless the use of the word is unusual or unexpected in some way. When you do use an exact phrase or sentence from the text, however, do remember to put quotation marks around it.

See how you do with this quiz on the best way to use evidence from Much Ado About Nothing. Remember, the purpose of this quiz is to test your ability to quote and to paraphrase, rather than to test your knowledge of the text. One helpful tip is that it might be easier to eliminate the incorrect answers first!