Review by jeminah28 -- Why Do We Quote? by Ruth Finnegan

[Jeremie Mondejar]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Why Do We Quote?" by Ruth Finnegan.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Are you aware of plagiarism? Plagiarism is punishable by law. We are sometimes unaware that we 'quote' from other people without telling the audience who is the real source. Usually, the sayings from 'Anonymous' author often times use, as if the person who says it, formulated it. We love to talk, we repeated words, what we have heard from others as young as we are, like nursery rhymes, songs and parent's words of wisdom. Why Do We Quote? by Ruth Finnegan, explains why people use quotes, citations or sayings as a part of everyday life. Many people become rich because of the 'sayings' of prominent people like a quote printed on a shirt, mugs, books, toys, magazines and even through articles. Originality is better than getting or adapting the words from other people to captivate more costumers in business ventures.

Does originality matter in whatever aspects of life? Ruth cited examples to illustrate why people tend to quote in conversation, as a part of a joke, speech, teaching and even in songs. The Holy Bible is the most quoted one, especially Proverbs. Shakespeare quoted many times, too, in poetry, in movies and also by several writers. Sometimes, when we run-out of our own words, we use quotes to explain what we mean; quotes from other people become acceptable to the hearers, but sometimes those word may sound boastful. As I personally observed in seminars, conferences and small group gatherings, quotation become the agenda, but less noticeable, which makes the sessions resulted in jejune atmosphere.

The book is quite long, but flicking through the pages, the indicator signs of transitioning to 'quotation' makes me more interested to follow suit the author's point. Moreover, Ruth did not forget why people use quotation as an inspiration to self as well as with others, which I appreciated the most. She had good points in presenting pros and cons of quoting people in a dialogue. To cheer up one's mood, many people use quotes from well-known people like Mahatma Gandhi, Oprah Winfrey, Charles Spurgeon and Bill Gates, to name a few. We love to quote because the quoted phrase serves as the best way to describe our current situation. Check this book. You will be amazed of various quotations from people in different walks of life.

The book is full of information like different symbols used to indicate a quote, gestures and the proper usage of quoting people. One thing I enjoyed myself in this book was the author had various examples of quotes like "too many cooks spoil the broth." I will recommend this book to teachers, writers, leaders, and politicians, they will grasp easily the quoted phrases throughout the pages.

The author had plenty of ideas, but I lost many times between her explanations and examples, which made me rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I noticed that the book needs to enhance more in formatting the examples, headings, chapters, title and sub-title. I cannot easily distinguish between the examples and explanation because the author did not indicate them properly with a comma, colon, asterisk, making it bold or italic and a double space, which makes the sentence a bit longer. The Kindle Version of this book was not in a good format for I noticed unnecessary periods, no periods and the title in each chapters cannot be easily identified; I found several errors regarding with this matter.

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Why Do We Quote?
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[Falconcrest]

Though the book seems to have quite a few errors. I am interested in reading up on the various, people and quotes in the book. Thanks for the insightful review.

[Reynaa]

The subject of this book seems quite relevant, with so much being copied on the internet for profit, like you mentioned quotes on t-shirts and mugs. I feel like a lot of people could use the information within. The author seems to habe a great point but maybe it wasn't presented in the best way.
Thank you for a comprehensive review!

[Jeremie Mondejar]

Though the book seems to have quite a few errors. I am interested in reading up on the various, people and quotes in the book. Thanks for the insightful review.

Thank you. You will learn a lot, I encourage you.

[Jeremie Mondejar]

The subject of this book seems quite relevant, with so much being copied on the internet for profit, like you mentioned quotes on t-shirts and mugs. I feel like a lot of people could use the information within. The author seems to habe a great point but maybe it wasn't presented in the best way.
Thank you for a comprehensive review!

You're right! I love the concept and I am happy I read this book.

[Julius_]

A very interesting story about quoting and plagiarism check. This was a nice review. Thanks for it!

[Jeremie Mondejar]

A very interesting story about quoting and plagiarism check. This was a nice review. Thanks for it!

Thank you for your time.