0

“I am alone, and this loneliness is killing me”, is a quote, quoted by someone that I happen to read on the internet

Is the sentence after the quote correct?

What I’m trying to say is that I saw this quote on the internet. The quote is not the problem, but is the sentence I wrote after the quote correct?
I hope that when people read this they can understand what I am trying to say, especially if written in a blog or journal.

If the sentence is wrong, how would you put it?

Improve this question
3
  • 3
    Yes, syntactically your cited text is "correct". But I'd say using "quote" as a verb immediately after using it as a noun is stylistically weak. It's also poor semantically, because most likely this "someone you read on the internet" was the actual person who originally said/wrote the cited "quote". But "to quote" [some text] doesn't mean to produce it (as an original utterance) - it means to cite something someone else said or wrote. Just get rid of the second instance of "quote" - ...this loneliness is killing me” is a quote from someone that I happen to read...
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 12, 2022 at 11:29
  • 1
    ...I don't know if you were concerned about the "validity" of the cited "quote" itself, but I'd say it's a bit of a stretch from I am alone to this loneliness... On purely stylistic grounds, I think I'd prefer ...and my loneliness is killing me to strengthen the link between the two clauses.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 12, 2022 at 11:39
  • People used to object to the use of "quote" as a noun and say you should use "quotation" instead; possibly in school assignments you should follow this rule, although in most contexts it is very common to say "a quote".
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 11:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Grammatically it is almost completely fine, but I would use 'happened', since this occurred in the past and does not occur at this very moment:

"A quote, quoted by someone that I happened to read on the internet"

In addition, as FumbleFingers mentions in a comment, the double use of quote is not very appealing. You can use 'cite' as an alternative for the verb 'quote', or 'citation' for the noun 'quote'.

Nevertheless, I'd leave out the "quoted by someone", because the fact that an anonymous user also happened to cite this quotation - and that this person was thus not the original source - is of no consequence to either the interpretation of the quote nor the person you're citing it to:

x is a quotation I found/read on the internet.

Moreover, when you say "I found a quote", it implies that it was presented to you in that form — that is, as a quote.
Otherwise you could say "I'm quoting something (a sentence, a paragraph, &c.) I found on the internet".

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .